November 2005 Archives
After being arrested again, Mordechai Vanunu speaks, see the video .
[Bush stayed put in Crawford this year; I'd guess that the protests that met him there were more subdued than those what would have had he gone to Iraq again -- assuming that people in Iraq could exercises democratic rights Bush claims to be helping to bestow upon them. Below is a piece I wrote in 2003 with Bob Jensen when Bush popped up in Iraq for Thanksgiving. It makes reference to "Dances with Wolves", which was shown on PBS today.
[Most striking scene on this viewing for me was John Dunbar dancing alone around the fire in his camp -- made a nice connection between Native American and modern dance. Standout line was Dunbar saying that white hunters, who slaughtered a field of buffalo only for their pelts and tongues, were "a people without value and without soul."
[Until I did a search today, I didn't realize that the hit movie came out the year before the 1991 Gulf War; guess it's harder for some to make the connections than others. "The Journal of John Dunbar." Now there's a potential best seller.]
New Purported Bush Tape Raises Fear of New Attacks
by the Disassociated Press
A tape today surfaced in U.S. media outlets of someone purporting to be George W. Bush at a U.S. military base in Baghdad.
I admit it, I was angry. Tens of thousands killed, the rule of law under major assault, the United States driven to war on a pack of lies. And there, Judith Miller was having a very pleasant chat with Marvin Kalb of the "Kalb Report" at the National Press Club last Monday night.
Before the event, I'd discussed with Jon Schwarz the best question to ask Miller. We decided it should be about her two famous "aluminum tubes" stories published in September, 2002 claiming Iraq had an ongoing nuclear weapons program.
Reports have it that Sajida al-Rishawi, an Iraqi woman, attempted to blow up wedding celebrators, passerbyers and herself at the Radisson Hotel in Amman last Thursday. The Associated Press is reporting that her brother Thamer al-Rishawi "was killed during a U.S. assault on Fallujah in April 2004, when an air-to-ground missile hit his pickup as he was driving wounded people to a hospital, according to Ramadi residents speaking on condition of anonymity for fear of retribution from militants."
A group calling itself "Al-Qaeda in Iraq" has reportedly claimed responsibility for the bombings in Jordan; the group is headed by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who takes his name from the impoverished town of Zarqa in Jordan where he was born.
I visited the place when I was in Jordan earlier this year. I was traveling with my dad back from Syria to Amman and we stopped in for an hour, wandering its crowded streets. My dad lived in Zarqa for a time after being driven out of his home in the Galilee, now northern Israel, by Zionist forces in 1948. Zarqa is a cramped small city now, but in 1948 virtually all that was there was an Army base.
