Meryl Ann Butler

Mr. Danny and kids making paper

Soaps

Can purchasing children’s handmade paper cards or soaps for holiday gifts, change your world? You betcha.

In an economy fraught with fears, that is an investment that can’t lose.

The kids, staff and parents at the very green, Salem, Massachusetts, Greenhouse School—named for the original function of the building—have been quietly plugging away, turning recycled waste paper into beautiful handmade items: cards, bookmarks, invitations, gift tags, journals, ornaments, and decorative wrappers for the school’s aromatic handmade soaps.

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Amnesty International

"The Israeli blockade of the Gaza Strip is having ever more serious consequences on its population. In the past month the supply of humanitarian aid and basic necessities to Gaza has been reduced from a trickle to an intermittent drip.....

"The Israeli authorities might be allowing through enough for the survival of Gaza's population, but this is nowhere near enough for the 1.5 million inhabitants of Gaza to live with dignity," said Donatella Rovera, Amnesty International's researcher on Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories.

As supplies are being further withheld, most mills have shut down because they have little or no grain. People who have long been deprived of many food items now cannot even find bread at times.

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Habib Trabelsi

“The aims of the Zionist enemy in the Red Sea have never ceased,” wrote the Islamist cleric on his website, illustrating his long article with a quote by a former commander of the Israeli navy regarding “a diabolical plan” which aims to “transform the Red Sea into a Jewish lake.”

Columnists fear that a plan is underway for ‘internationalization’ of security in the Red Sea. Columnists fear that a plan is underway for ‘internationalization’ of security in the Red Sea.

Not only do columnists and analysts openly accuse Israel of sponsoring acts of piracy that multiply off Somali waters, but they also do not hide their fears of an internationalization of security in the Red Sea, where Israel plays a decisive role.

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Andy Hughes

Paulson shoots another arrow into the heart of the Economy
The announcement in the last few days of a deal reached between the U.S. Treasury and the moribund insurance giant, A.I.G. provides a very lucid insight in to the nefarious and destructive world of the Troubled Asset Relief Program, otherwise known as T.A.R.P..Not only have A.I.G. received $152 billion to date and subsequently reported a third quarter loss of $25 billion, now they are to be cleared of their obligation on $53 billion worth of toxic credit default swaps. U.S. taxpayers are now on the hook for $205 billion courtesy of an institution which played in the Wall St. casino that passes for a "Financial Sector" and lost. Under the "Free market" system, so expounded upon by Government and Wall St. alike, A.I.G should be in chapter 11. Bailing out A.I.G and other failing institutions does absolutely nothing to address the fundamental issues at hand.

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Deanna Spingola

Emperor Meiji

Coincidentally or not, at about the same time that the international bankers were promoting and funding Japan’s war-hawk behavior under Emperor Meiji (Hirohito’s grandfather) against Korea, China and Manchuria, banker-backed U.S. imperialists were looking for ways to seize productive land and control in Cuba (achieved by the Platt Amendment on March 2, 1901), banish the Spanish and expand into the resource-rich Philippines. William Howard Taft represented U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt in a highly confidential meeting in Tokyo with Japanese Prime Minister Katsura on July 27-29, 1905. They agreed that Japan would relinquish economic control of Hawaii and the Philippines to the U.S. while Japan targeted adjacent Asiatic countries. This insidious treaty sealed Korea’s death warrant. It was approved by Britain, or rather the British financiers behind the throne who were also funding Japan’s warfare.

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Mary Shaw

On December 3, 100 countries signed the Cluster Munitions Convention, which prohibits the use of cluster bombs.

So what rogue nations were conspicuously absent? The primary makers or users of cluster bombs -- the U.S., Israel, Russia, China, India, and Pakistan. This is the company we keep.

The problem with cluster bombs is that they are imprecise, and are notorious for killing or maiming innocent civilians, including children.

Cluster bombs are indiscriminate weapons, meaning that they cannot distinguish between an enemy solder and a civilian child. They kill whoever crosses their path. Furthermore, the clusters release numerous "bomblets" and many of them do not explode on impact. So they lie around and become de facto anti-personnel mines. Even worse, they sometimes look like toys to a child. ―In fact, according to a study by Handicap International, 98 percent of cluster bomb victims are civilians and 27 percent are children.

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Louise Whiteley

Thoughtcrime does not entail death. Thoughtcrime IS death. ~George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four.

Unlike the contestants on Big Brother, the citizens in Orwell’s novel tend to hold their tongues, but ultimately surveillance of their actions is guaranteed to uncover any deviant thoughts they might entertain. Recently, neuroscientists have started to decipher the thoughts of individuals even in the absence of incriminating actions, as they lie still and silent in a brain scanner.

Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) uses the magnetic properties of blood to infer the amount of oxygen in brain tissue, and thus indirectly the level of neural activity. This allows scientists to test hypotheses about where in the brain various mental processes are carried out, and, once particular brain areas or patterns of activity have functional ‘labels’, to work out which processes are active when the subject cannot, or will not, say what they are thinking. Researchers have been able to identify regions in the brain that produce a higher fMRI signal when subjects tell a lie, and media reports now speculate about a future in which this could be used to judge whether someone is dissembling in court. This future is in fact disturbingly close – a commercial company called ‘No Lie MRI’ is already “working to have its testing allowed as evidence” in the US, and the emerging field of neuroethics is calling for an urgent debate about the potential uses of such research in civil society and the military.

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Len Hart

The 'bailout' is another Bush/GOP scam, a big black hole into which some 1.5 trillion dollars has already has been sucked! The dollar will eventually collapse as did German Marks under the Weimar Republic. Only the big banks benefit but they, too, will collapse. There is no bailout for the 'buck'. The emerging picture is one of fat cats scrambling to cover bare asses while putting the screws to you. This sucks!

Already $billions$ have been squandered, wasted, or simply stolen. Where is the accounting? Where has the money gone? Where is the loans that were supposed to have been made to folks hoping to own a home? How has the bailout benefited Americans in any way whatsoever? I'm open to any credible GOP explanation! I won't get one! Rather, I had expected Bush to tell Paulson: "You're doing a heckuva job!" The scary part is this: perhaps both Henry Paulson and Brownie have done precisely what Bush had intended. Like New Orleans earlier, the US economy is in ruins. Like New Orleans, there is no restoration in sight. There is, however, evidence that it was all planned.

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Ramzy Baroud

World media rashly celebrated the "historic" security pact that allows for US troops to stay in Iraq for three more years after the Iraqi parliament ratified the agreement on Thursday, 27 November. The approval came one week after the Iraqi cabinet did the same.

Thousands of headlines exuded from media outlets, largely giving the false impression that the Iraqi government and parliament have a real say over the future of US troops in their country, once again playing into the ruse fashioned by Washington that Iraq is a democratic country, operating independently from the dictates of US Ambassador to Baghdad Ryan Crocker and the top commander of US troops in Iraq, General Ray Odierno. The men issued a joint, congratulatory statement shortly after the parliamentary vote, describing it as one that would "formalise a strong and equal partnership" between the US and Iraq.

Jonathan Steel of the British Guardian also joined the chorus. "Look at the agreement's text. It is remarkable for the number and scope of the concessions that the Iraqi government has managed to get from the Bush administration. They amount to a series of U-turns that spell the complete defeat of the neo-conservative plan to turn Iraq into a pro-Western ally and a platform from which to project US power across the Middle East."

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Fred Reed

Oh god. It's getting worse. Everything. I knew it would. Death and taxes are long shots by comparison.

So I'm in Washington, a federal enclave, as someone said, surrounded on all four sides by reality. This was supposed to be a medical trip to have vital internal organs pawed, sliced, and injected with strange fluids. Kidneys, carburetor, remaining brain, that sort of thing. But this is Washington. Horrors everywhere.

Hillary. I don't hate Hillary. She's smart, tough, sane, been around, corrupt, and personally repellent as a fanged garden slug. By today's standards, that's a bargain.

But why the hell is she Secretary of State? How many years has she spent abroad? What languages does she speak? What does she know about the street in Karachi, Cairo, Guadalajara? She probably thinks Mumbai is what you eat with an RC Cola.

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