Los Angeles is a company town. The company is the Hollywood entertainment racket.

In this town, because it's Hollywood's town, a person can be paid for celebrity, not for performance. That is the tragedy and the pragmatic reality of David Beckham's $250-million (U.S.) deal to join the Los Angeles Galaxy of Major League Soccer.

It's a tragedy because this mad, money-fuelled adventure will probably end in tears, bankruptcy or both. Beckham is not going to truly elevate soccer in the United States.

What will happen is a Beckham-inspired blip of interest in American soccer. Beckham can bring hoopla, but he can't win hearts. He can't change a culture.   more »

Of course, purchasing more sustainable versions of the things we actually need has to form part of the solution. No-one’s arguing against low-energy lightbulbs (unless they are being used to offset short-haul air flights, that is).

But so much of the ethical consumption boom focuses on luxury goods: fair trade roses grown in huge hothouses next to Kenya’s Lake Naivasha, sucking up precious water resources and then being air-freighted to Northern supermarkets.

Pointless gadgets such as solar-powered cappuccino whisks; silver cufflinks handmade in Mexico, screaming ‘gilt without the guilt!’.

Their main impact is to make the shopper feel good – ‘I’m doing something for the planet!’ – without having to change their lifestyle one bit, while the companies laugh all the way to the bank.   more »

Today, Britain’s role is that of a key US ally in this new world order which came into being after the Second World War.

With the collapse of the Soviet Bloc in the early nineties US power has spread like a veritable cancer, intent on spreading that extreme variant of capitalism, the free market, to every part of the globe.

Simply put, this translates to the super exploitation of human and natural resources in the interests of an international economic aristocracy.

In Europe, Britain performs the same function as that of South Korea in Southeast Asia, Colombia in Latin America, and Israel in the Middle East, each a regional bastion of US power and free market prerogatives.

In return each receives a share of the spoils in the form of aid, trade credits, access to markets and/or arms and military protection.   more »

Bush's speech on Iraq policy last week gives rise to five broad observations:

1. It provided a more realistic analysis of the situation in Iraq than any previous presidential statement.

It acknowledged failure, though it dodged accountability for that failure by the standard device of assuming personal responsibility.

Its language was less Islamophobic than has been customary with Bush's rhetoric since Sept. 11, 2001, though the president still could not resist the temptation to engage in a demagogic oversimplification of the challenge the United States faces in Iraq.

Calling it a struggle to safeguard "a young democracy" against extremists and an effort to protect American society from terrorists. Both propositions are more than dubious.   more »

So now we wait for the end. The man who led America into the most disastrous war in its history has run out of tricks, out of troops and out of time. It is no longer a question of whether George W. Bush's presidency will officially die, but when -- and how many more Americans will have to die before it does.

We find ourselves, almost four years into the Iraq war, in a very strange situation.

What do you do when it has become obvious that the leader of your country is -- there is no kinder way to put this -- a delusional fool? And that his weird fantasy war is hopelessly and irretrievably lost? Apparently, you just wait.

The Democrats are raging and ranting, but they will not cut off funds. Still crippled by their fear of being labeled "soft on national security," the majority party will watch the end from a safe distance, like survivors who quickly paddle away from a doomed ship to avoid being pulled down in the suction when it goes down.   more »

At 3a.m., they were hooded, nooses put around their necks and dropped to their deaths. Whether on purpose or due to incompetence, the hangman rigged the rope in such a manner that it tore off Barzan’s head.

Horrifying video footage allegedly showed his decapitated body lying on the ground in a pool of blood, as Bander’s corpse swayed above. Their families claim they were not informed of the executions and only found about the deaths from the television news.

The executions took place just over two weeks after the hanging of Saddam Hussein, which had the character of a sectarian lynching.

Members of the Shiite fundamentalist parties that dominate the US puppet government chanted Shiite slogans and insulted the former dictator as he stood on the gallows.   more »