Discontented Soul

CNI Info Alert

The suicide bombing a week ago, on February 25, which left 5 Israelis dead, sent shivers up and down the collective spine of peace watchers in the West. Would the Israelis resume their traditional response policy of raids, assassinations, bombings and arrests? Would the Sharm al-Sheikh "understanding" that had brought "relative calm" in the area collapse under the weight of retaliations?
As Alison Weir reminds us in If Americans Knew, the term "relative calm of late" has become a wildly misleading cliché, bearing no meaning for Palestinians since the "understanding" was proclaimed at Sharm al-Sheik on February 8. Since that time, according to the Palestine Center for Human Rights, 11 Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank, including 3 children, have been killed by the Israeli Occupation Forces; according to the Palestinian Red Crescent, another 30 suffered injuries or wounds at the hands of the IOF. In the period between January 15, the date of the Palestinian elections that brought Mahmoud Abbas to power, and February 8 Sharm al-Sheikh meeting between Abbas and Ariel Sharon, 32 Palestinians had been killed, and 12 wounded. Between November 8, the last previous suicide bombing, and January 15, 115 had been killed and 187 wounded. We are looking at a total of 158 Palestinian dead and 229 wounded, between the two suicide attacks.
In the meanwhile, and almost every day, the IOF makes incursions into Gaza and the West Bank, usually resulting in raids, shooting, bombings, and arrests. In the period of the "relative period of calm" between February 8 and February 25, dozens of incursions, shelling and raids occurred. More than 70 people were arrested. They can be read in the Weekly Reportsavailable on the Palestine Center for Human Rights website.
They also make it clear that despite pronouncements to the contrary, the closures of checkpoint crossings between Israel and Gaza continue enforce, and Gazans are unable to cross into Israel for any reason.
In addition, the IOF supervises the steady construction of the Apartheid Wall, now working its way around Jerusalem. The Palestine Center for Human Rights reports show that almost every day, Israelis cease land from the Palestinians - 50 dunums here, 301 dunums there. During the week of 10-16 February, for example, the people in the villages of Hazma and Anata northeast of Jerusalem lost 50 dunums due to the construction of the Wall; in the same week, some 301 dunums was taken from villagers living in Toura al-Gharbiya. A dunum is one-quarter of an acre.
Admirably, the Israeli High Court has issued a series of rulings recently halting the construction of the wall so that grievances brought buy Palestinians can be heard. But, as the Palestine Center points out, these are almost always ignored by the IOF, and construction of the wall resumes, regardless of the law.
The suicide bombings are deplorable as innocent lives are lost, but the behavior of the Israeli army toward the civilian population of Palestine goes unchecked or undeplored by the western media. Congressional representatives ... continually rant about the need to check the violence of the Palestinians before aid to the Palestinians can be given. But when it comes to real numbers, Americans need to realize that the Palestinians, not the Israelis, are the chief victims of this conflict - regardless of what the US and Israeli national leaders say, and even during a so-called "period of relative calm."

Bush's Brain "Blinks"
by Bob Burnett
Published on Friday, March 4, 2004 by CommonDreams.org

New Yorker regular, Malcolm Gladwell, has written a new book about instantaneous decision-making, "Blink." The title would provide an apt characterization for the presidency of George W. Bush, whose actions often are based on little more than his gut-feelings...

[T]he primary rule for Bush decision-making seems to be: never admit making a mistake. The Administration places a premium on its image of resolute toughness and, therefore, believes it to be a sign of weakness to acknowledge any policy shortcomings. For this reason it is incapable of learning from its mistakes...

The White House Stage Manages the “Get Syria” Move
by Saul Landau and Farrah Hassen
Published on Friday, March 4, 2005 by CommonDreams.org

After 9/11, Administration neo-cons offered a "noble lie" to sell the public on the need to invade and occupy Iraq (The Iraqis will shower our troops with flowers and kisses). The same group has invented a new "virtuous prevarication" to build support for an attack on Syria. Ignoring recent testimony by CIA Director Porter J. Goss that "Islamic extremists are exploiting the Iraqi conflict to recruit new anti-U.S. jihadists" (Washington Post, February 17, 2005), this group of high US officials in Defense, State and the Vice President's office have organized a "get Syria" movement.
Without evidence, US officials accused Damascus of responsibility for the February 14 assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri in Beirut, and of sponsoring terrorism in Iraq as well...

Desperate Martians Now Wooing Venusians
by Walden Bello
Published on Friday, March 4, 2005 by Focus on the Global South

Adapted from the author's speeches during an anti-war tour of Italy, Feb. 22-27, 2005
EUROPE and the world have witnessed over the last few days the unfolding of a diplomatic offensive that is designed to convince Europeans, "to put Iraq behind them." The effort is, in fact, geared to persuade not only Europeans but also the world that with the recent elections in Iraq, there is a new game that must be played, and the name of that game is democracy.
The reality is that the old game of domination and occupation continues, and the US is not winning. The triumphalism that accompanied George W. Bush’s tour of "Old Europe," with his brand new Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice, at his side, was a public relations effort to counter the reality of the spread of a wide and deep resistance in Iraq. There is not only the military resistance that we witness day-to-day on television. There is also a political resistance that is broader than the military resistance. There is, as well, massive civil resistance, which encompasses not only trade union opposition but all those acts ordinary citizens engage in day-to-day to deny legitimacy to the occupation that James C. Scott calls the "weapons of the weak."...

Axworthy fires back at US - and Canadian - critics of our BMD decision in An Open Letter to US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice
by Lloyd Axworthy
Published on Friday, March 4, 2005 by the Winnipeg Free Press (Canada)

Dear Condi,
I'm glad you've decided to get over your fit of pique and venture north to visit your closest neighbor. It's a chance to learn a thing or two. Maybe more.
I know it seems improbable to your divinely guided master in the White House that mere mortals might disagree with participating in a missile-defense system that has failed in its last three tests, even though the tests themselves were carefully rigged to show results.
But, gosh, we folks above the 49th parallel are somewhat cautious types who can't quite see laying down billions of dollars in a three-dud poker game...

© 2005 Winnipeg Free Press

A Less Super Superpower
by Jonathan Schell

Published on Thursday, March 3, 2005 by TomDispatch.com

One of the most difficult things to judge in the world today is the extent of American power. On the one hand, there is no doubt that the United States possesses a far larger pile of weapons than any other country, that the American economy is also larger than any other country's and that America's movies and television programs are consumed globally. America is widely accorded the title "only superpower," and many of its detractors as well as its supporters describe it as the world's first truly globe-straddling empire. On the other hand, it is not yet clear what the United States can accomplish with these eye-catching assets. For power, as Thomas Hobbes wrote in one of the most succinct and durable definitions of power ever offered, is a "present means, to obtain some future apparent good." Power, after all, is not just an expenditure of energy. There must be results...
A portrait of a peculiar relationship with Europe emerged [from Bush's recent tour]. To Bush's Don Quixote, tilting, at God's command, against imagined evils, Europe played Sancho Panza, humoring the Knight Errant but mocking him behind his back. Or perhaps it was more like that other great inverted relationship between master and servant, P.G. Wodehouse's upper-class twit Bertie Wooster and his sagacious, potent butler Jeeves, who contrives to get Wooster out of his ceaseless ridiculous scrapes in high society. The difference is that Europe's rescue is only feigned. Yes, France will help in Iraq -- with one officer, who will stay at NATO headquarters in Europe...

Torture Endangers the Soul of Our Nation
by Phillis Engelbert
Published on Thursday, March 3, 2005 by CommonDreams.org

...[I]n the 9-11 era, torture has been approved by the highest levels of government, employed by military and intelligence agencies, and accepted by the public. We have been told that the Geneva Conventions are a luxury we can no longer afford - that if we want to be safe, we must gather information by any means necessary. The question of whether torture produces reliable information notwithstanding, we must ask: in trying to safeguard our lives, are we, as Americans, losing our collective soul?
Torture, while long an unspoken element of the CIA's repertoire, came into favor after 9-11. Within one week of the attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon, Vice President Cheney stated on "Meet the Press" that the government was going to operate on "the dark side" and would "use any means at our disposal.to achieve our objective." Cofer Black, then the CIA official in charge of counter-terrorism, told the House and Senate Intelligence Committees in September 2002, "All you need to know is that there was a 'before 9/11' and there was an 'after 9/11.' After 9/11, the gloves came off." According to top State Department officials, and reported by Jane Mayer in the New Yorker of February 14, the decision to suspend the Geneva Conventions - a decision based, in part, on the opinion of then White House counsel and now Attorney General Alberto Gonzales - was made by President Bush on January 8, 2002...

Privatizing American Unity
by Robert Steinback
Published on Thursday March 2, 2005 by the Miami Herald

There are only a few elementary forces capable of naturally binding a people together as a society or nation. Unrestrained, across-the-board privatization attacks the only desirable bonding agent the people of the United States have - our sense of shared social commitment.
I fear that the relentless, unabated push for privatization will eventually turn America into a nation of dog-eat-dog, every-person-for-himself competitors, shredding our sense of shared national destiny - which has been the strength of all Western nations. How, after all, can you bond with someone you are conditioned at every turn to view as a rival to be bested?
Make no mistake: The wall-to-wall privatization of American society is the goal of Bushian economic strategy. Both President George Bush and Florida Gov. Jeb Bush view every government revenue stream as ripe for diversion to the private sector - Social Security, Medicare, public schools, prisons, child safety and welfare, health-insurance coverage, even military operations and more.
Not all privatization is bad. Free-market competition is the best choice where profit, efficiency, capital distribution and innovation are the goals. The breakup of AT&T's government-protected monopoly in 1984 unleashed healthy market forces to sort out rightful winners and losers in the telecommunications industry. I can envision a day when the U.S. Postal Service is privatized.
Sometimes, though, society properly wants everyone to succeed. Do we really want some children to win while others lose? Is it desirable for some elderly people get adequate food and medical care while others don't? Should competition determine who gets mental-health or drug-addiction treatment, the chance to go to college or proper prenatal care?
Free-market competition works fine for those capable of competing. But children, the elderly, the mentally ill, the unemployed and other groups can't effectively compete for their own prosperity. A true nation frees capable individuals to be productive, yet joins together to support and encourage those who aren't productive yet, are no longer productive or who need help in order to regain productivity. You are free to rise as far as you want individually, but we should unite as a nation to mitigate the worst of life's ills: uneducated and exploited children, desperate and suffering elderly, abandonment of the mentally and physically ill, hunger and destitution for the able-bodied but unfortunate.
This concept of shared national goals and sacrifices emerged only in the 20th century as the industrial revolution progressed. From it came universal public education, labor unions, child labor laws, food safety standards, Social Security, welfare and unemployment insurance among many other government policies.
In its extreme forms - communism and pure socialism - this philosophy morphs into tyranny. But in its milder Western form, social welfare consciousness is just a safety net for those unable to compete.
There are two other natural forces - ancient ones - that bind people together as nations. One is a shared tribal or cultural history, which the United States, as a nation of immigrants, never had. The other is war - the threat of an external enemy.
Prior to the 20th century, America struggled for its national identity. Rivalries among the states finally erupted in the Civil War in 1861.
What finally put the ''united'' in U.S.A. were World Wars I and II, and in between, the Great Depression. All Americans suffered through all three, and the nation triumphed together. But this cohesion is threatened by Bushian privatization - of which the governor's proposed expanded school-voucher program, and the president's proposals for Social Security modifications are the latest volleys.
I see an ominous link between the president's economic and international policies.
Bushian philosophy overtly encourages us, as a national mission, to concern ourselves only with our families, not our fellow citizens. Save for your own retirement. Educate your own kids. Worry about your own productivity. Let your fellow Americans fend for themselves.
With no common tribal history, and no sense of shared social commitment post-privatization, what generator of national unity will remain for us as Americans?
Ah, yes. War. War in Iraq. War in Syria. War in Iran. War against terrorists. Never-ending war.
One day soon, it may be all that unites us Americans.

Beyond the Definite Article
by Meg O'Shaughnessy
Published on Thursday March 2, 2005 by CommonDreams.org

As we approach this awesome anniversary, marking the collision of presupposition and preemption, I listen keenly to the progressive dialogue re-emerging in the wake of our stunned mourning, and hear renewed urgency in the tone of activists "Stop the War!"
I am struck by the implication in that definite article - the.
Iraq...
As geologic seconds tick loudly, it is solely by apprehending and embracing, with humility and wisdom, the truth of the obvious, that we as individuals and as a human collective derive our lives from one singular and precious planet, that we can begin to pull out of this mad nose dive.
May we awaken from our denial and delusion to speak with one voice to Mr. Bush, and his willing team. Now. Out of Iraq, take pen to Kyoto, rejoin the world community at this turning point and shoulder the role of leadership in a world that cries for reason and justice and aches for human hearted.
Drop the article. Stop War.

Attacking Iran: I Know It Sounds Crazy, But...
by Ray McGovern
Published on Thursday March 2, 2005 by TomDispatch.com

For a host of good reasons - the huge and draining commitment of U.S. forces to Iraq and Iran's ability to stir the Iraqi pot to boiling, for starters - the notion that the Bush administration would mount a "preemptive" air attack on Iran seems insane. And still more insane if the objective includes overthrowing Iran's government again, as in 1953 - this time under the rubric of "regime change."
But Bush administration policy toward the Middle East is being run by men - yes, only men - who were routinely referred to in high circles in Washington during the 1980s as "the crazies." I can attest to that personally, but one need not take my word for it...

© 2005 Ray McGovern

A US attempt to insert language restricting abortion rights into documents prepared by a conference marking the 10th anniversary of a meeting in Beijing has sparked a determined response from European delegates as well as representatives of non-governmental organizations...

Dems Forget First Amendment
by John Nichols
Published on Monday, February 28, 2005 by The Nation

What is the issue on which Congressional Democrats least likely to take a bold - and appropriate - stand?
War and peace? No...
The Patriot Act? No...
Freedom of speech? Yes. When the House voted in mid-February on the so-called Broadcast Decency Enforcement Act, only 36 Democrats took the side of the First Amendment. They were joined by one Independent, Vermont Socialist Bernie Sanders, and one Republican, Texas renegade Ron Paul...
Unfortunately, most Democrats appear to believe that censorship is what America is all about. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-California, voted for censorship, as did 161 other members of the opposition party that is supposed to take civil liberties more seriously than does the Republican majority.
If fairness, some prominent Democrats did choose the Constitution over political expediency... U.S. Rep. Henry Waxman, D-California, another House veteran with a long record of defending free speech rights, were among the proud if somewhat lonely foes of censorship.
Waxman echoed the concerns of thinking members of Congress when he said, "No one knows when one person's creative work will become another person's definition of a violation of indecency."
Sanders asked an equally appropriate question when he explained that, "The specter of censorship is growing in America today and we have to stand firmly in opposition to it. What America is about is not necessarily liking what you have to say or agreeing with you, but recognizing your Constitutional right to say it. Today, it is Janet Jackson's wardrobe malfunction or Howard Stern's vulgarity. What will it be tomorrow?
While the import of Sanders's question should be obvious, most Democrats answered that they simply did not care.
Talk about indecency!

© 2005 The Nation

What A Rich Nation Should Really Be Doing About Social Security
by Gar Alperovitz
Published on Monday, February 28, 2005 by CommonDreams.org

Listening to the debate between the Administration and even its most adventurous critics one would imagine that only an extremely limited range of Social Security options are even conceivable. One would also imagine that we live in an extremely poor society which is ultimately going to have to find ways to squeeze its seniors financially or somehow we will all perish. The truth is radically different.
This is the wealthiest nation in the history of the world. A serious progressive strategy should go far beyond the current debate by building upon this self-evident fact. It should affirm the goal of a truly bountiful–rather than penny-pinching–future for its citizens when they retire. Here is the ball to keep your eye on:...

It's Called Torture
by Bob Herbert
Published on Monday, February 28, 2005 by the New York Times

As a nation, does the United States have a conscience? Or is anything and everything O.K. in post-9/11 America? If torture and the denial of due process are O.K., why not murder? When the government can just make people vanish - which it can, and which it does - where is the line that we, as a nation, dare not cross?...

How many other individuals have disappeared at the hands of the Bush administration? How many have been sent, like the victims of a lynch mob, to overseas torture centers? How many people are being held in the C.I.A.'s highly secret offshore prisons? Who are they and how are they being treated? Have any been wrongly accused? If so, what recourse do they have?
President Bush spent much of last week lecturing other nations about freedom, democracy and the rule of law. It was a breathtaking display of chutzpah. He seemed to me like a judge who starves his children and then sits on the bench to hear child abuse cases. In Brussels Mr. Bush said he planned to remind Russian President Vladimir Putin that democracies are based on, among other things, "the rule of law and the respect for human rights and human dignity."...

Nuclear Terror at Home
by Noam Chomsky
Published on Saturday, February 26, 2005 by the International Relations Center

If you can imagine some rational observers from Mars looking at this curious species down here, I don’t think they’d put very high odds on survival—another generation or two. In fact, it’s kind of miraculous that we’ve come along this far.
The world has come extremely close to total destruction just in recent years from nuclear war... There’s a document called The Essentials of Post Cold War Deterrence that was released during the Clinton years by the Strategic Command, which is in charge of nuclear weapons. It’s one of the most horrifying documents I’ve ever read. People haven’t paid attention to it.
The Strategic Command report asks how we should reconstruct our nuclear and other forces for the post-Cold War period. And the conclusions are that we have to rely primarily on nuclear weapons because unlike other weapons of mass destruction, such as chemical and biological, the effects of nuclear weapons are immediate, devastating, overwhelming—not only destructive but terrifying. So they have to be the core of what’s called deterrence.
Everything means the opposite of what it says. Deterrence means our offensive stance should primarily be based on nuclear weapons because they’re so destructive and terrifying. And furthermore just the possession of massive nuclear forces casts a shadow over any international conflict, like people are frightened of us because we have this overwhelming force.
We have to have a national persona of irrationality with forces out of control, so we really terrify everybody, and then we can get what we want. And furthermore they’re right to be terrified because we’re going to have these nuclear weapons right in front of us, which will blow them all up—in fact, blow us all up if they get out of control...
When the Bush administration took over they just made it more extreme. They moved from the Clinton doctrine of control of space to what they call ownership of space, meaning—their words—“instant engagement anywhere” or unannounced destruction of any place on earth.

The Language Police: Gettin’ Jiggy with Frank Luntz
by Nancy Snow
Published on Saturday, February 26, 2005 by CommonDreams.org

If you need any more confirmation that America is the numero uno propaganda nation, look no further than the GOP language meistro Frank Luntz, who has produced a memorandum of “The 14 Words Never to Use.” Thanks to the Internet and the blogosphere, we mere mortals can get our grubby mitts on what the conservative elite persuader Luntz is doing to scrub our brains free of individual thoughts...
Getting the picture? We need to stop using the language of what happens to real people and replace it with the language of the corporation, which has no purpose other than profit and no conscience. Luntz is particularly jiggy with trade language. He implores us to stop using “foreign” or “global” and replace it with “international.” Foreign is just too scary to patriotic nativists. In his memo, “The Eleven Steps to Effective Trade Communication,” he says that wordsmiths must appeal to America’s greatness. “Americans love being told we’re the best, that we’re number one. We will do anything—ANYTHING—to remain number one, and will oppose anything that undermines our superiority. It is essential in any discussion of trade to declare that we are ‘the greatest economic power in the world’ and that ‘we will remain the greatest economic power in the world only so long as we continue to do business with other nations.’” Anyone who opposes “international” trade should be called a “defeatist” for giving up the fight to be number one. There’s just a tiny step further here to calling anyone who questions the fairness and justice of certain trade agreements as, dare I say it, “un-American” or even “anti-American.”...
So remember, do six reps of You Own It, It’s Personal, It’s Your Choice in the Free Market Economy Where Everyone’s An International Trade Winner. DO NOT READ BETWEEN THE LINES...

Peace Activists in the War Room
by Karen Houppert
Published on Saturday, February 26, 2005 by The Nation

...The President's insistence that a US military presence in Iraq is the only thing staving off chaos is simply wrongheaded, Cagan insists. The task ahead, for peace activists, is to get Americans to see that "we have a responsibility to help get the country back on its feet but we need to do that by putting money into Iraqi institutions and companies-not just US firms," she says, explaining that there is an array of solutions out there beyond the simplistic, Bush-provided paradigm. "We need to make it clear we are not advocating a cut-and-run policy, but at the same time, insist that the first step is to take out of the equation the most problematic thing: the US military presence."
The other big obstacle antiwar activists face is that time-honored American trait: apathy...

© 2005 The Nation

Democracy, Terror and Fantasy
by Dennis Roddy
Published on Sunday, February 27, 2005 by the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette (Pennsylvania)

"We have set out to encourage reform and democracy in the greater Middle East as the alternatives to fanaticism, resentment, and terror."- President George W. Bush, on the first anniversary of the Iraq war.

WASHINGTON - Most of us know democracy as a system of governance. Our president understands it as a ritual incantation, something summoned as a curative for everything from terrorism to impetigo.
Absent the weapons of mass destruction, the major predicate for our assault on Mesopotamia, George W. Bush now hawks democracy as the remedy for terrorism. Democracy will ameliorate many ills: social restiveness, dispossession, tribal division. But to peddle democracy as the solution to terrorism betrays a cheap misapprehension of both institutions...

The promises of fundamentalism will ultimately prove false
Monday, 28 February 2005

IT SEEMS to be a law of human nature that when any society goes through a period of upheaval and transformation, simplistic world-views increase their appeal.
Right now, Australia is looking like a classic case in point: for the past 30 years, we've been living through a cultural revolution that has radically redefined the kind of society we are becoming and now, right on cue, the fundamentalists are here to tell us how to make sense of it all.
The revolution that has preceded the rise of fundamentalism has been breathtaking in its scope. In response to the women's movement alone, we've reinvented the institution of marriage, sent women to university in record numbers, watched the divorce rate go through the roof and the birthrate through the floor.
"The family" has evolved into a smaller, more adaptable and more diverse creature; the political landscape has been redrawn; the workplace has been feminised.
Meanwhile, the economy has been restructured, the gap between rich and poor yawns more widely than ever, the workforce has learned to live with job insecurity, and rising under-employment has become the "back story" behind our ever-brighter official unemployment figures.
The information technology revolution has changed the way we live, work, and communicate with each other, and the revolution in our sense of ourselves as a culturally diverse society has, in many ways, presented the biggest challenge of all.
Our response to all this has been to look for relief from the stress of constant adaptation to new realities. Some of us have sought refuge in retail therapy (which is why consumer spending has hit a new high); some have retreated into despair; some have resorted to drugs — licit and illicit — to ease their pain.
The underlying, unifying theme has been disengagement. Faced with too many challenges seemingly beyond our control, we have retreated into a private world of home renovations, backyard barbecues and kids' schools. We've turned the focus inwards and switched to an agenda we feel we can control.
We're looking for new certainties and new simplicities to replace our growing sense of uncertainty and complexity, and this mood creates a rich breeding-ground for all the varieties of fundamentalism — religious, economic, political, environmental, cultural. "Back-to-basics" is often the rallying-cry, and its appeal is magnetic.
The religious fundamentalists offer the simple certainty of a literal interpretation of scripture, and a set of ready-made answers to questions about the meaning of life. The economic rationalists tell us "the market" will fix everything. Consistent with the one-size-fits-all mood, some medical researchers are even telling ageing women that testosterone is the answer to problems of flagging libido. (You might think the quality of the relationship could be relevant, too but fundamentalists don't much like the multi-factorial approach.)
But the current surge of religious fundamentalism — especially Pentecostalism — is not only about the appeal of certainty; it is also connected to two of our national pre- occupations: self-centredness and materialism. The growing emphasis on "me" finds its echo in the fundamentalists' relentless emphasis on "personal salvation". And the national embrace of materialism coincides neatly with the fundamentalists' convenient belief that material prosperity is a sign of God's blessing (whereas other Christians might see wealth, as Jesus apparently did, as a barrier to entry to the "kingdom of God").
Fundamentalism demands blind adherence to the basic tenets of the faith, and in its resistance to ambiguity and mystery lie both its appeal and its danger. Simple certainty feels good, but what if it is misplaced? What if the Indian mystic Krishnamurti was right when he suggested that freedom from the desire for an answer is essential to the understanding of a problem? What if ambiguity and uncertainty are inherent features of human life and human systems? If so, mightn't fundamentalism's promise of certainty actually arrest our journey towards maturity and wisdom?

Hugh Mackay is a psychologist, social researcher and writer, and chairman of the ACT Community Inclusion Board.
This is an edited extract from the 2005 Manning Clark Lecture to be delivered by Mr Mackay on Thursday at the National Library. Tickets are $10, bookings to Manning Clark House, 6295 9433.

Why is the President Punishing Drug Users for Offences He Has Also Been Linked to
by Joe Conason
Published on Sunday. February 27, 2005 by the Toronto Star

On the audiotapes of George W. Bush recorded secretly by his erstwhile confidant Douglas Wead in 1999, the future president revealed how much he feared candid discussion of his personal use of marijuana and cocaine. As quoted in The New York Times, Bush vowed that no matter what rumours and facts circulated about what he did or might have done, he would doggedly decline to answer forthrightly...

Standing Up to U.S. Will Gain Us Respect Abroad
by Linda McQuaig
Published on Sunday, February 27, 2005 by the Toronto Star

It's now clear how the Bush administration sees things: Canadian sovereignty exists only at its pleasure. If we do what Washington wants, we retain our sovereignty. If we don't, all bets are off.
This is what U.S. ambassador Paul Cellucci clarified last week in his angered response to Paul Martin's announcement that Canada won't join the U.S. missile defence scheme. Cellucci noted that Washington would simply deploy its anti-missile system over Canadian airspace anyway, and expressed puzzlement over Canada's decision to "in effect, give up its sovereignty."...
Canadian advocates of missile defence have long argued that joining the scheme is the best way to protect our sovereignty — the logic apparently being that Washington is going to intrude into our airspace anyway, so it's better if we look like that's what we wanted all along. It's only rape if you resist...