The killing of innocent people (in Iraq, in Lebanon) is called accidental, whereas the deaths caused by terrorists (on 9/11, by Hezbollah rockets) are deliberate.

This is a false distinction, quickly refuted with a bit of thought. If a bomb is deliberately dropped on a house or a vehicle on the grounds that a "suspected terrorist" is inside (note the frequent use of the word suspected as evidence of the uncertainty surrounding targets), the resulting deaths of women and children may not be intentional. But neither are they accidental. The proper description is "inevitable."

So if an action will inevitably kill innocent people, it is as immoral as a deliberate attack on civilians.

And when you consider that the number of innocent people dying inevitably in "accidental" events has been far, far greater than all the deaths deliberately caused by terrorists, one must reject war as a solution for terrorism.   more »

It was Jay Gould who once bragged that he could pay half the working class to kill the other half.

In American labor history, that often meant fomenting and exploiting racism to divide and conquer. Apparently, CBS wants to give us a TV metaphor for it: it announced that the contestants on the upcoming season of Survivor will be divided according to race.

For those unfamiliar with the series, Survivor (which started in 2000) pits teams against each other on a desert island. Contestants must go through various obstacle courses as well as create their own means of survival, including food and housing.

The twist of the series is that the losing team must vote to remove one of its own members from the show. This leads to an encouragement of chicanery, as team members, too, are pitted against each other. Imagine The Crucible meets Gilligan's Island, and you get the concept.   more »

The Israeli military and economic siege of Gaza has led to a collapse in Palestinian living conditions and many people only survive by looking for scraps of food in rubbish dumps, say international aid agencies.

"The pressure and tactics have not resulted in a desire for compromise," Karen Abuzayd, the head of the UN Relief and Works Agency is said to have warned. "But rather they have created mass despair, anger and a sense of hopelessness and abandonment."

Israel closed the entry and exit points into the Gaza Strip, home to 1.5 million Palestinians, on 25 June and has conducted frequent raids and bombings that have killed 262 people and wounded 1,200. The crisis in Gaza has been largely ignored by the rest of the world, which has been absorbed by the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and Lebanon.

"Women in Gaza tell me they are eating only one meal a day, bread with tomatoes or cheap vegetables," said Kirstie Campbell of the UN's World Food Programme, which is feeding 235,000 people. She added that in June, since when the crisis has worsened, some 70 per cent of people in Gaza could not meet their family's food needs. "People are raiding garbage dumps," she said.   more »

In the last five years American behaviour in the Middle East has been barbarous and will not soon be forgiven.

Meanwhile, the gas-oil junta has hijacked the old American republic through the artful use of great quantities of corporate and church cash in order to falsify the electoral tallies of easily hacked electronic voting machinery; means now exist to nullify or alter any election returns as happened in Florida 2000; in Ohio 2004.

There is a good deal of grim comedy in the words if not the current deeds of the little president.

Although he and his co-conspirators relish the use of the big lie (eg turning the dull but genuine war hero John Kerry into a cowardly fraud while ignoring the slackerdom of Bush and Cheney and Rumsfeld who proudly fought in none of our many wars).

Now in an attempt to avoid blame for the Iraq war and further confuse the world about why Iran and Syria must be destroyed Old Rumsfeld and Old Cheney are trotting out dim garbled images of Hitler and appeasement as they pretend that the anti-war American majority favours Islamic fascism.   more »

To consider whether U.S. President George W. Bush is winning his "global war on terror" (GWOT) five years after al Qaeda's devastating 9/11 attacks on New York and the Pentagon, one has only to look at the news of the past few days.

In Afghanistan, where the war began, NATO and U.S. forces are struggling to cope with a resurgent Taliban whose guerrillas have killed some two dozen western troops, including two U.S. soldiers in a suicide bombing in Kabul Friday, since Sep. 1.

NATO's U.S. commander, Gen. James L. Jones, admitted Thursday that the alliance was going through a "difficult period" and needs as many as 2,500 more troops, as well as additional aircraft, to bolster ongoing operations in southern Afghanistan, significant parts of which have reportedly fallen under the effective -- if not yet permanent -- control of the Taliban.

The government of neighbouring Pakistan, meanwhile, has agreed to withdraw its troops from northern Waziristan, effectively returning full control of the region -- as it did in southern Waziristan last year -- to tribal militias dominated by close allies of the Taliban.   more »

10 SEPTEMBER

'War on Terror': An Ideological Masterstroke by Capitalism in Crisis

Frank Rich: Whatever Happened to the America of 9/12?

Celebrity Culture: 21st Century State Religion

Post-9/11: Media Manipulation and Ideology

The West Ignores Israel's Genocide in Gaza

Brainwashing America: Propaganda and the Mass Media