Genocide?

As the US and the UN argue over the definition of the word and where it applies, a massive campaign to kill people in Sudan persists.

By Lila Schow

Stir in Colorado Over Professor's Writing:

 

CU Professor, Ward Churchill's "Some People Push Back; On the Justice of Roosting Chickens" Read it for yourself.

 

George W Bush seeks to boost US aid to the tsunami-hit nations to a total of $950m.

The $950m tsunami aid package includes:

$346m to reimburse the US Agency for International Development (USAID) and the Defence Department for their relief efforts in the region

$339m for reconstruction - from rebuilding roads and schools to major water systems

$168m to help victims with food, shelter, housing and education

$35m for tsunami early warning systems and disaster mitigation efforts

$62m for technical assistance for reconstruction activities and the costs of US government operations in the affected countries

Anti-Consumer Class Action Bill Signed Into Law, 02/18/05

President Bush signed the inaccurately named "Class Action Fairness Act of 2005" into law on Friday, February 18 in a White House ceremony after the leadership in the U.S. House of Representatives passed the bill on February 17 with a floor vote of 279-149. On February 10, the Senate voted to pass the bill after a floor vote of 72 to 26.

This bill will dramatically curtail the rights of consumers to pursue state-law class action claims. Most cases will be shifted to federal courts, which are usually more favorable to corporations and less advantageous for consumers.

Debt due to medical bills is the largest single cause of personal bankruptcies in the United States, a newly published study on the Health Affairs web site reported. About half of those filing bankruptcy in 2001 did so because of medical bills resulting from illness or injury. What is most unexpected about the data is that most individuals or couples who went bankrupt were not part of the 45 million uninsured. Nearly 76 percent had health insurance at the start of their illness.[emphasis added]

Medical bills cause more than half of US personal bankruptcies

"I'm going out telling the story that I think is the biggest story of our time: how the right-wing media has become a partisan propaganda arm of the Republican National Committee. We have an ideological press that's interested in the election of Republicans, and a mainstream press that's interested in the bottom line. Therefore, we don't have a vigilant, independent press whose interest is the American people."

-- Bill Moyers, Final PBS "Now" Episode, Dec. 17, 2004

Suppose you are the party responsible for invading a country under totally false pretenses. Suppose you had totally unrealistic expectations about the consequences of your gratuitous aggression.

    What do you do when, instead of being greeted with flowers, you find your army is tied down by insurgents and you have no face-saving way to get out of the morass? If you are the moronic Bush administration, you blame someone else.

    Here is Rumsfeld excusing himself for his dismal failures in Iraq: "Partly it's [the insurgency] a function of what the Syrians and the Iranians are doing."

    You see, the facts that the US invaded Iraq on false pretenses, killed and maimed tens of thousands of Iraqis, shot down women and children in the streets, blew up Iraqis' homes, hospitals and mosques, cut Iraqis off from vital services such as water and electricity, destroyed the institutions of civil society, left half the population without means of livelihood, filled up prisons with people picked up off the streets and then tortured and humiliated them for fun and games are not facts that explain why there is an insurgency. These facts are just descriptions of collateral damage associated with America "bringing democracy to Iraq."

Nothing to Fear But Bush Himself By Paul Craig Roberts

New allegations of prisoner abuse by US forces in Iraq and Afghanistan have been revealed in documents released by the US Army.

The alleged incidents include beatings and mock executions. In one case, a man said he was hit with a baseball bat.

The documents were the latest in a series obtained via legal action by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU).

Scott Ritter got everyone in a twist this weekend by announcing Bush has June plans to bomb Iran

Iraq Occupation Was 'Wild West,' Says Ex-US Official

The latest chapter in the legal history of torture is being written by American pilots who were beaten and abused by Iraqis during the 1991 Persian Gulf War. And it has taken a strange twist.

    The Bush administration is fighting the former prisoners of war in court, trying to prevent them from collecting nearly $1 billion from Iraq that a federal judge awarded them as compensation for their torture at the hands of Saddam Hussein's regime.

    The rationale: Today's Iraqis are good guys, and they need the money.

    The case abounds with ironies. It pits the U.S. government squarely against its own war heroes and the Geneva Convention.

    Many of the pilots were tortured in the same Iraqi prison, Abu Ghraib, where American soldiers abused Iraqis 15 months ago. Those Iraqi victims, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld has said, deserve compensation from the United States.

    But the American victims of Iraqi torturers are not entitled to similar payments from Iraq, the U.S. government says.

Tortured by Saddam, American POWs Now Face Bush

Jackie Hudson will be released from federal prison in Victorville, California after the completion of her 2 ½ year sentence.  Jackie, along with Ardeth Platte and Carol Gilbert entered Minuteman III silo N-8 near Greeley, Colorado, on Oct. 6, the anniversary of the bombing of Afghanistan as an act of protest against the US's illegal possession of weapons of mass destruction. Read more about their story.