When people ask why so many tens of millions of people lack decent health care and education, one answer is clear.

For over two decades the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and the governments that control those institutions have consistently told weak national governments in less developed countries to reduce public social spending.

Blind faith-based economic policies of privatization of state resources, reduction in public spending and deregulation in general have created a laissez-faire hell for the huge impoverished global majority.

Occasionally, as Bill Gates did last week with his declared initiative against TB, corporate multi-millionaires offer to use some of their wealth to alleviate some of the suffering.

But had their corporations been subject to equitable taxation and regulation and the resulting revenues been applied to social spending on health and education, much untold suffering might have been avoided in the first place.

One might also note that individual corporate initiatives backed by warmongers like George Bush, Tony Blair or Gordon Brown can be regarded legitimately as public relations stunts that do nothing to change the fundamental causes of poverty.   more »

Given their tradition of activism, why aren't American women today rising up against a government that dragged them into war with lies, that spies on their peaceful activities and diverts money from their children's schools or their mothers' nursing homes to pay for an immoral war?

I mumble excuses. We have no strong opposition parties or militant trade unions. We have a corporate media that keeps women ignorant. We're either too affluent to care or too poor to do anything about it.

I insist that we keep trying, with efforts like CodePink: Women for Peace, the National Organization for Women and other women's groups, like Gold Star Families for Peace.

I say that millions have come out to protest against the war but get demoralized when our government refuses to listen. But deep inside, I ask myself the same question: Where are the women? Why aren't they rising up?

I remember when we first started CodePink before invasion of Iraq, and we felt compelled to leave our families, our jobs, our warm homes, and camp out in front of the White House to try to stop the war.   more »

A White House leak revealing astonishing details of how Tony Blair and George Bush lied about the Iraq war is set to cause a worldwide political storm.

A new book exposes how the two men connived to dupe the United Nations and blows the lid off Mr Blair's claim that he was a restraining influence on Mr Bush.

He offered his total support for the war at a secret White House summit as Mr Bush displayed his contempt for the UN, made a series of wild threats against Saddam Hussein and showed a devastating ignorance about the catastrophic aftermath of the war.

Based on access to information at the highest level, the book by leading British human rights lawyer Philippe Sands QC, Professor of Law at London University, demonstrates how the two men decided to go to war regardless of whether they obtained UN backing.

The revelations make a nonsense of Mr Blair's claim that the final decision was not made until MPs voted in the Commons 24 hours before the war - and could revive the risk of him being charged with war crimes or impeached by Parliament itself.   more »

The fact that Hamas does not recognise the legitimacy of the state of Israel does not mean that it is not capable of negotiating a peace deal. If Israel withdraws from the territories it occupied in 1967, the movement will end armed resistance.

A so-called expert was asked on the BBC's Arabic service last week what he thought Hamas should do now it is likely to be the government in the Palestinian territories.

Hamas would have to change, he said, because the Palestinian people would want a government that recognises Israel, is willing to resume peace negotiations and will be acceptable to the United States.

If this is truly what the Palestinian people want they might as well have settled for Fatah and not elected Hamas.

They gave Hamas their trust precisely because it is not what the expert was suggesting: it does not recognise the state of Israel, is not willing to pursue a humiliating peace and is more interested in being accepted by the Palestinians than by the US or anyone else.   more »

Saddam Hussein's trial in Baghdad has become a circus. The presiding judge refuses to return to court, and defence lawyers have been murdered.

What to make of this spectacle? Emotionally, it's good to see the petty tyrant on trial for his life. But morally and legally, Saddam's trial is a travesty of justice. This is an old-fashioned Soviet-style show trial set up by U.S. occupation authorities.

Its goal is not to determine Saddam's guilt or innocence, but to justify the U.S. invasion of Iraq -- which, by the way, was a blatant violation of international law.

The court lacks any legal basis, being created by the puppet regime installed by the U.S. after the invasion.

Saddam has no proper legal defence. Witnesses remain secret and beyond cross-examination. Defence witnesses risk murder by Shia hit squads.

Pre-trial publicity -- the vast propaganda campaign by the U.S. to demonize Saddam -- and Iraqi TV programs (controlled by U.S. authorities) about Saddam's alleged crimes, would trigger a mistrial in any proper legal system.   more »

The top climate scientist at NASA says the Bush administration has tried to stop him from speaking out since he gave a lecture last month calling for prompt reductions in emissions of greenhouse gases linked to global warming.

The scientist, James E. Hansen, longtime director of the agency's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, said in an interview that officials at NASA headquarters had ordered the public affairs staff to review his coming lectures, papers, postings on the Goddard Web site and requests for interviews from journalists.

Dr. Hansen said he would ignore the restrictions. "They feel their job is to be this censor of information going out to the public," he said.

Since 1988, he has been issuing public warnings about the long-term threat from heat-trapping emissions, dominated by carbon dioxide, that are an unavoidable byproduct of burning coal, oil and other fossil fuels.

He has had run-ins with politicians or their appointees in various administrations, including budget watchers in the first Bush administration and Vice President Al Gore.   more »

29 JANUARY

The Greatest Threat to America? Obesity

"Terrorism" Is Armed Resistance to Occupation by a Foreign Power

Police Faked Evidence in Jean Charles de Menezes 'Tube' Assassination

Robert Fisk: Hamas, Democracy & The West's Hysterical Response

Saddam Show Trial Collapses in Chaos

Spies, Lies & Wiretaps: The Bush Regime Cons America [Again]

Maureen Dowd on Frey, Oprah & The Fiction of Truth

Hamas Is a Liberation Movement