From Hiroshima to Iraq, 61 years of uranium wars

From Hiroshima to Iraq, 61 years of uranium wars
A suicidal, genocidal, omnicidal course

by Leuren Moret

Global Research, June 12, 2007
San Francisco Bay View - 2006-12-26

The conduct of secret nuclear wars since 1991, through the use of depleted uranium weaponry by the United States and Great Britain with their allies, has taken place in the Middle East, the former Yugoslavia, Afghanistan2 and Lebanon.3 It has been carried out for the express purpose of destroying the public health and mutilating the genetic future of vast populations in oil rich and/or pipeline regions. continued

book report: the weather makers

It has been over a week since we had our book club meeting and I have been slacking in writing about it.

Well, the author makes a valiant effort to convince us of impending doom and gloom with massive data (from ancient history and future predictions). We all know global warming is happening and we need to do all we can to save the environment. But what we don’t know for sure is how much of it is human contribution and how much a natural phenomenon. The imminent apocalypse is determined by computer calculations based upon lot of assumptions and extrapolations. It is possible it all may come to pass but it is also likely that other hitherto unknown factors come into play to alter the outcome, as the author has given examples of happening in the past.

Just a side remark: the hottest temperature occurred in Al Azizia,libya 58C (136F) recorded on Sept 13, 1922, long before ‘global warming’ became a familiar phrase.

Regardless, while our government is still contemplating to join the world community to accept its share of responsibility for the global warming, here are some common sense things we can do.

. Walk or ride bike whenever we can.
. Use energy efficient light bulbs and appliances
. If possible organize errands - trip to the library, grocery store, the video store,
etc such that you make one trip instead of several.
. Maximize right turns when running errands and see if you can synchronize your driving with green traffic lights. Buy the next car a hybrid or electric.

There is lot more at this web site:


Next Book:
Paul brought a list of great books and we selected The Turning by David Korten. In Paul’s words: A look at the empire and how to transform it into an earth community. The book generated a great following with groups throughout the world establishing communities to follow his recommendations.

Change in meeting day:
Instead of first Thursday we’ll meet on the last Thursday, July 26.

Ps. can any one figure out how many trees Tonya needs to plant to compensate for her share of contribution to the global warming. Please let her know so that she can have guilt free sleep at night

latest on pakistan

News
Thursday, June 14, 2007


Most Pakistani madrassas serving useful purpose
By Khalid Hasan
WASHINGTON: The US should refrain from getting involved in Pakistan’s broader madrassa reform efforts and accept that many of the traditional madrassas serve a useful purpose in educating Islamic intellectuals and providing shelter and food for impoverished youth, according to Lisa Curtis of the Heritage Foundation.
madrassahs
madrassah in pakistan


‘Feel good’ book about Musharraf in the works
WASHINGTON: A “feel good” book about President General Pervez Musharraf is currently under publication in which he has been favourably compared with some great American presidents. The author, Prof Carl Wheeless from the United States, taught at FC College Lahore in the 1960s. He was recently invited by Gen Musharraf to spend another year at FC College, the president’s alma mater. The book will cover the time in office and record of several Pakistani heads of state, but it is understood that the current holder will come out of the assessment “looking big”. An inside source told Daily times that Wheeless, though a scholar with a good reputation, and author of Landmarks of American Presidents: a Travellers Guide, was given special privileges to write the book by the government, including logistics support, a research grant and other necessary facilities. In view of the current agitation in the country, Oxford University Press has been asked to expedite publication. khalid hasan

Courtesy DailyTimes.com.pk: feel good book
feel good book

Picture of the day

JERUSALEM - June 11: A schoolgirl, one of 10 children of the Palestinian Juma family of the East Jerusalem neighbourhood of Jabel Mukaber, sits on the debris of her home that she found flattened on her return from school on Monday. Jerusalem municipality workers and Israeli police demolished the house on the pretext that it had been built without permission.—AFP

Darfur- the real story!

AMY GOODMAN: We turn now to Darfur. President Bush has ordered new sanctions to be placed on the Sudanese government for its role in the violence in Darfur. Last week's announcement blocks thirty-one companies tied to the Sudanese government from using the US banking system.
The sanctions were seen as a victory for the Save Darfur Coalition, a US group leading a vocal campaign pressuring the White House to take action. But the New York Times reported Saturday some of Save Darfur's public efforts have angered aid groups working on the ground in Sudan. The aid groups say Save Darfur's call for imposing a
no-flight zone could lead to a halt in aid flights and put their workers at risk. Aid groups have also criticized Save Darfur for not spending its multi-million dollar budget on aid to Darfur's refugees.
Mahmood Mamdani is one of the world's most prominent Africa scholars. Earlier this year, he wrote a major piece for the London Review of Books called “The Politics of Naming: Genocide, Civil War, Insurgency.” He was born in Uganda and now splits his time between Uganda and New York, where he is a professor at Columbia University. Mahmood Mamdani stopped by our firehouse studio Friday. I began by asking him about the name of his article, “The Politics of Naming.”
MAHMOOD MAMDANI: I think the larger question is the names -- genocide, in particular -- come into being against a background of the twentieth century and mass slaughter of the twentieth century, and particularly the Holocaust. And against that background, Lemkin convinced the international community, and particularly states in the international community, have an obligation to intervene when there is genocide. He’s successful in getting the international community to adopt a resolution on this.
Then follows the politics around genocide. And the politics around genocide is, when is the slaughter of civilians a genocide or not? Which particular slaughter is going to be named genocide, and which one is not going to be named genocide? So if you look at the last ten years and take some examples of mass slaughter -- for example, the mass slaughter in Iraq, which is -- in terms of numbers, at least -- no less than what is going on in Sudan; or the mass slaughter in Congo, which, in terms of numbers, is probably ten times what happened, what has been happening in Darfur. But none of these have been named as genocide. Only the slaughter in Darfur has been named as genocide. So there is obviously a politics around this naming, and that’s the politics that I was interested in.
AMY GOODMAN: And what do you think this politics is?
MAHMOOD MAMDANI: Well, I think that what’s happening is that genocide is being instrumentalized by the biggest power on the earth today, which is the United States. It is being instrumentalized in a way that mass slaughters which implicate its adversaries are being named as genocide and those which implicate its friends or its proxies are not being named as genocide. And that is not what Lemkin had in mind.

AMY GOODMAN: The simplifying of the conflict by the US media, you write extensively about this, who the sides are.
MAHMOOD MAMDANI: Well, I was struck by the fact -- because I live nine months in New York and three months in Kampala, and every morning I open the New York Times, and I read about sort of violence against civilians, atrocities against civilians, and there are two places that I read about -- one is Iraq, and the other is Darfur -- sort of constantly, day after day, and week after week. And I’m struck by the fact that the largest political movement against mass violence on US campuses is on Darfur and not on Iraq. And it puzzles me, because most of these students, almost all of these students, are American citizens, and I had always thought that they should have greater responsibility, they should feel responsibility, for mass violence which is the result of their own government's policies. And I ask myself, “Why not?” I ask myself, “How do they discuss mass violence in Iraq and options in Iraq?” And they discuss it by asking -- agonizing over what would happen if American troops withdrew from Iraq. Would there be more violence? Less violence? But there is no such agonizing over Darfur, because Darfur is a place without history, Darfur is a place without politics. Darfur is simply a dot on the map. It is simply a place, a site, where perpetrator confronts victim. And the perpetrator’s name is Arab, and the victim’s name is African. And it is easy to demonize. It is easy to hold a moral position which is emptied of its political content. This bothered me, and so I wrote about it.
continued on: democracy now

more on Darfur at: Darfur? It's the Oil, Stupid ... China and USA in New Cold War over Africa's Oil Riches

Pakistani President Musharraf

President Pervez Musharraf Family interview:
President Pervez Musharraf Family interview

Musharraf thrilled by student
Musharraf thrilled by student Part 1

Musharraf answers the student
Student thrilled by Musharraf Part 2