Some stage calls to avoid contact, whether with neighbors or panhandlers, co-workers or supervisors, Greenpeace canvassers or Girl Scouts. Some do it to impress those within earshot, others so they don't look lonely.

Men talk to their handsets while they're checking out women. Women converse with the air to avert unwanted approaches by men.

Camera phone shutterbugs fake being on the phone so they can get a good angle without looking suspicious. And certain cellular vigilantes fake for the benefit of real callers who are oblivious to the rules of common decency.

"I fake phone talk to get a point across," said Ty Hammond, of Pullman, Wash., who once forced an apology from a woman spewing excessively personal details into her cellphone in an elevator by shouting (made-up) escapades of his own into his (powered-off) phone. "People need to know phone etiquette and fake phone calling is a great tool for showing them."

The fake phone call has an etiquette, or at least a technique, all its own. Inexperienced cellphonies risk exposure with their limited repertoire of "uh-huhs."

Sophisticated simulators achieve authenticity by re-enacting their side of an actual dialogue. Or they call voice-activated phone trees, so it sounds like someone is talking on the other end.   more »

In the many letters and commentaries published in my local paper since the beginning of the Iraq war, quite a few conclude with the blazing sentiment, "God Bless America."

Bumper stickers abound with the same words wherever I drive on the east coast. Signs in front of businesses proclaim, "God Bless America."

Almost as if God blessing America is a given, something that goes without saying because...well, because we're America. This raises a fundamental question that is seldom, if ever, asked or discussed--should God bless America?

Our president, a man who parades his Christian faith with obvious relish, calls us a peace loving country wherever he speaks, even as he bangs the military drum he carries so proudly wherever he goes.

Yet, when we look at the economic, political, and military actions of our country, national leaders like Mr. Bush, Mr. Cheney, and Mr. Rumsfeld carry out policies that ignore the most fundamental tenets of the Gospels--to love your neighbor as yourself, to respond to evil with good, and to be peacemakers.

Our responses to 9/11 clarify how Christian principals played no role in the decisions made by our politicians, the same politicians who work so hard to present themselves as devout servants of God.   more »

The former vice-president Al Gore launched a withering attack on the White House yesterday for authorising wiretaps without court oversight, and accused President George Bush of repeatedly breaking the law.

The strongly worded speech makes Mr Gore the most prominent political figure in America to weigh in on the wiretapping scandal.

Mr Gore, who lost the 2000 election to Mr Bush following the intervention of the supreme court, also went further than other Democratic critics in accusing the president of wrongdoing.

The revelation last month in the New York Times that Mr Bush signed secret orders in 2002 authorising the National Security Agency to monitor the email and telephone calls of thousands of Americans has outraged members of Congress and the judiciary.

Mr Gore said yesterday that the decision to bypass the courts was part of a pattern of behaviour from the Bush administration of "indifference" to the constitution.   more »

I consider Zionism to be a mental illness which makes otherwise decent folks behave like Nazis or Afrikaners. - Jeffrey Blankfort

After wiping Palestine off the map and expelling over 700,000 Palestinians from their homes, confiscating the land they've lived on for generations, Israel still had a considerable Palestinian minority within its borders.

Set to realize the dream of creating a state for Jews only, which had obviously failed, Apartheid laws were imposed in order to make the non-Jewish citizens of the Jewish state to leave.

Many leading human rights defenders have correctly referred to the situation in the West Bank and Gaza Strip as Apartheid. Collective punishment, house demolitions, settlements for Jews only, prices on electricity and water several times higher for Palestinians than Jewish settlers; the Apartheid on the occupied territories is obvious.

Still, I find it strange that the inequality for the Palestinians within the state of Israel is neglected. In some perspectives, their rights within Israel proper today are more limited than in the territories conquered in 1967.   more »

With the first calls for impeachment circulating in Congress and across the country, President George W. Bush and his advisors met in Washington over the weekend to map a defense based on the so-called "idiot defense," sometimes referred to as the "I was out of the loop" method of shifting blame to others.

Under this plan, Bush will come clean with the American people and tell them that he didn't have any idea of what was going on.

He didn't give orders for spying, doesn't know about where the reports on WMD in Iraq came from, or why FEMA didn't act sooner, or why various unpopular initiatives were put forth by his administration during the past several years.

A key part of the strategy is for Karl Rove, Dick Cheney, the GOP leadership in the House and Senate, and the Republican Over-Centralized Committee to enter plea bargains, which would allow them to get away with fines of $50 and the loss of their privileges to the White House's executive bathroom.   more »

On a hot and sticky evening last week, some two years after she arrived, the 25-year-old from Derbyshire, sat outside one of the few remaining bars in the town of Lamai that she still feels safe in, sipping an ice-cold Singha beer.

The pot-holed and flood-damaged road through the town was teeming with traffic, the air thick with dust and petrol fumes. Stalls offering lethal local whisky and fake designer goods competed for pavement space with stray dogs and people selling chickens and ducks.

On the narrow road, hundreds of motorcycles tried to out-do each other by constantly blasting their horns, while dilapidated jeeps crawled along, their Tannoys blaring adverts for the best foam parties and Thai lady boxing.

In the glut of neon-lit 'lady bars', drunken, lonely Western men were propped up by groups of beautiful Thai women, giggling and whispering and wondering whether tonight was going to be the night that they would get lucky and hit on a man with a bulging wallet and an urge to get married.

Were they shocked by the news, two weeks ago now with the men already caught, of the rape and murder of the Welsh student Katherine Horton? Yes, it seems. But they may well be the only ones.   more »

It has taken me years of living here to realise just how class- ridden America actually can be, and nothing exemplifies this more than the college frenzy. It is now worse than ever, too; the more complicated the process becomes, the more important it is to play the system.

Which means that, for all the moves by colleges towards economic and racial diversification, the middle classes and the wealthy still win out. Financial aid for poorer students is continually increasing, but that has not been enough to halt the trend.

Private tutoring for the SAT, the standardised test that is one of the most critical factors in admissions, has become a business worth half a billion dollars a year.

Two other statistics complete the story of the class divisions: a high-school student has a one-in-two chance of obtaining a bachelor's degree by the age of 24 if his or her annual family income is more than $90,000, but those chances sink to one in 17 if the income is below $35,000.

Michael Young famously pointed out in The Rise of the Meritocracy the danger that privilege based on merit can become hereditary, and that is exactly what is happening in the US.   more »

The increasingly frequent demonization of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in the Western media has become an integral part of the stepped-up efforts of Washington, London, the EU-3 and Tel Aviv.

Propaganda to bring Iran under US control, efforts that may, if scattered newspapers reports are to believed, culminate in the aerial bombing by US or Israeli forces or both of Iranian nuclear facilities early this spring.

A London Sunday Times article of December 11, 2005 revealed that Israeli armed forces had been ordered “to be ready by the end of March for possible strikes on secret uranium enrichment sites in Iran.” Scotland’s The Herald (January 10, 2006) echoed the Times’ report.

Meir Dagan, the chief of Israel’s spy service, Mossad, General Aharon Zeev-Farkasj, who retired earlier this month as head of Israeli military intelligence “and Israeli policy makers all agree that a military option against Iran’s nuclear facilities cannot be ruled out.”

But they say “Israel has no intention, for now, of trying to deal with Iran alone or through military means.”

But do they have an intention of dealing with Iran through military means in partnership with the US?   more »

16 JANUARY

"Jarhead": New Movie Rattles Complacent America

Iraq: Had the Shia Backed the Resistance US Occupation Would Be Over by Now

What Are We Going to Do About Zionism & Pro-Israel Zealots?

Paul Krugman Tells Us What's Wrong with the Health Care System

Atrocities at Guantanamo: Will Somebody Force-Feed Bush The Truth?

Ahmadinejad: "A Free Debate on the [Jewish] Holocaust"

Bob Herbert: Alito Is "Extreme Right-Winger"

American Air War in Iraq: Safe Slaughter at a Distance