Why-War? News http://www.why-war.com/news/ Important and obscure information about America's "War on Terror". en-us http://backend.userland.com/rss Why-War? 60 Analysis: Bush Challenges Hundreds of Laws "In just five years, Bush has challenged more than 750 new laws, by far a record for any president, while becoming the first president since Thomas Jefferson to stay so long in office without issuing a veto." Tue, 02 May 2006 13:17:18 EDT http://www.why-war.com/news/2006/04/30/bushchal.html http://www.why-war.com/news/2006/04/30/bushchal.html China, Russia Welcome Iran into the Fold "Gennady Yefstafiyev, a former general in Russia's Foreign Intelligence Service, wrote: 'The US's long term goals in Iran are obvious: to engineer the downfall of the current regime; to establish control over Iran's oil and gas; and to use its territory as the shortest route for the transportation of hydrocarbons under US control from the regions of Central Asia and the Caspian Sea bypassing Russia and China. This is not to mention Iran's intrinsic military and strategic significance.'" Tue, 18 Apr 2006 08:24:28 EDT http://www.why-war.com/news/2006/04/18/chinarus.html http://www.why-war.com/news/2006/04/18/chinarus.html Security and Terror "Nothing is therefore more important than a revision of the concept of security as the basic principle of state politics. European and American politicians finally have to consider the catastrophic consequences of uncritical use of this figure of thought." Sun, 16 Apr 2006 08:28:14 EDT http://www.why-war.com/news/2002/01/01/security.html http://www.why-war.com/news/2002/01/01/security.html Review: Ecology to the New Pollution "Taken together Virilio's grey ecology and 'hyper-vigilance regarding immediate perception' constitute a bold reaffirmation not only the life of the planet, but our own lives, our memories, the anima of our souls; everything that distinguishes us from mere automata." Sun, 16 Apr 2006 07:19:10 EDT http://www.why-war.com/news/1998/01/01/ecologyt.html http://www.why-war.com/news/1998/01/01/ecologyt.html Highly Speculative Reasoning on the Concept of Democracy "Democracy thus inscribing itself in polls and consensus necessarily arouses the philosopher’s critical suspicions. For philosophy, since Plato, means breaking with opinion polls. Philosophy is supposed to scrutinize everything that is spontaneously considered as 'normal.'" Sat, 15 Apr 2006 05:50:43 EDT http://www.why-war.com/news/1998/01/01/highlysp.html http://www.why-war.com/news/1998/01/01/highlysp.html Philosophical Considerations of the Very Singular Custom of Voting Thus, it is simply not true that voting is considered to be an expression of the freedom of opinion. For in reality it is subject to what I call the principle of the homogeneous: candidacy is available to anyone, but to be elected to a place pre-coded for potential power you have to conform to a certain norm. Fri, 14 Apr 2006 11:09:28 EDT http://www.why-war.com/news/2003/01/01/philosop.html http://www.why-war.com/news/2003/01/01/philosop.html The Iran Plans There is a growing conviction among members of the United States military, and in the international community, that President Bush’s ultimate goal in the nuclear confrontation with Iran is regime change. Thu, 13 Apr 2006 13:46:50 EDT http://www.why-war.com/news/2006/04/08/theiranp1.html http://www.why-war.com/news/2006/04/08/theiranp1.html Zapatistas quit the jungle for soapbox "Marcos has said the rebels will embark on a cross-country, pre-election tour aimed at uniting workers, students and activists around a leftwing agenda. The new phase of Zapatista action 'is not to draw lines, is not to promote the armed fight in another state', Marcos said. He added: 'It is to go and ask the people what they think and how their problems are being resolved.'" Tue, 09 Aug 2005 16:11:28 EDT http://www.why-war.com/news/2005/08/08/zapatist.html http://www.why-war.com/news/2005/08/08/zapatist.html Make Media, Make Real Trouble: What's Wrong (and Right) with Indymedia "I looked at IMC sites based in cities where I knew there were actions, and found nothing. Eventually, I found what I was looking for—on the BBC. The experience, unfortunately, is not uncommon. Each time I try and find news among the Indymedia drivel, I ask myself the same question: What happens when—in our attempts not to hate the media but to be it—we end up hating the media we’ve become?" Tue, 09 Aug 2005 16:06:45 EDT http://www.why-war.com/news/2005/06/15/makemedi.html http://www.why-war.com/news/2005/06/15/makemedi.html The Zapatistas: The Second Stage "Now, suddenly, in June 2005, the Zapatistas proclaimed a red alert, calling all their communities to leave their villages and come into the forest for a massive "consultation" of the base. The reason? They said they could no longer afford simply to wait indefinitely as the Mexican state ignored the promises they had made a decade earlier in the truce agreements. ... The Zapatistas declared that they had ended the first phase of their struggle, and that it was time to move on to a second stage, one that would be political and not military." Tue, 09 Aug 2005 15:38:53 EDT http://www.why-war.com/news/2005/07/15/thezapat.html http://www.why-war.com/news/2005/07/15/thezapat.html The Battle of Gleneagles "The Eco-village was the epicenter of brilliant tactical coordination. This was a result of months of reconnaissance work and a chaotic yet functional plan of blockading that provided both fluidity and agility. As soon as a report would come in that one blockade was breaking or being threatened by the police, the transportation team would have vehicles ready to take people to the location and reinforce the blockade." Tue, 09 Aug 2005 12:51:36 EDT http://www.why-war.com/news/2005/07/11/thebattl.html http://www.why-war.com/news/2005/07/11/thebattl.html Horizontalidad in Argentina "Horizontalism is not an ideology, however, it is a relationship — a way of relating to one another in a directly democratic way while at the same time creating through the process of discovery. What has resulted is the creation of an amazing complex of movements, all linked." Tue, 09 Aug 2005 12:41:49 EDT http://www.why-war.com/news/2005/07/26/horizont.html http://www.why-war.com/news/2005/07/26/horizont.html With Garang's Death, Southern Sudan May Secede "northern Arabized minority groups led by Bashir may junk the peace accord and attempt a power grab. In fact, some Islamic fundamentalists have issued fatwas against anyone renting places or giving support to the SPLAs in the capital city." Tue, 09 Aug 2005 11:50:27 EDT http://www.why-war.com/news/2005/08/08/withgara.html http://www.why-war.com/news/2005/08/08/withgara.html PR: Minutemen Leave Early; Protesters Celebrate "The Minutemen left California as a failure, drawing few people to their project while encountering strong resistance from a broad coalition of opposition." Tue, 09 Aug 2005 11:46:48 EDT http://www.why-war.com/news/2005/07/08/minuteme.html http://www.why-war.com/news/2005/07/08/minuteme.html Transcript: Raise the Fist case far from over "Once you sign a plea you cannot appeal it. I was threatened with 20 years in prison under an additional terrorist enhancement if I didn't take a plea, and I didn't have the financial resources to acquire the appropriate legal council for trial. I was railroaded." Tue, 09 Aug 2005 11:43:07 EDT http://www.why-war.com/news/2005/07/10/raisethe.html http://www.why-war.com/news/2005/07/10/raisethe.html Analysis: Civil War In Iraq, Made In the USA "'Every single thing the U.S. did led to civil war,' says Christian Parenti, author of 'The Freedom,' his account of occupied Iraq. 'The failure of reconstruction, the firing of the army, the blatant theft of Iraqi oil money, the use of the Badr Brigade, the use of Peshmerga, the use of death squads, the use of indiscriminate detention and torture, the destruction of Falluja and other towns in Al Anbar province,' explains Parenti, created a raging insurgency and sparked civil war. Tue, 09 Aug 2005 11:37:36 EDT http://www.why-war.com/news/2005/08/04/civilwar.html http://www.why-war.com/news/2005/08/04/civilwar.html What the New Southern Sudan Leaders Must Do "When former military liberation movements come to power, the very 'command character' that ensured success against the enemy tends to become the structural flaw which impedes their building of the democratic institutions required by civil society ... The much-celebrated attainment of formal peace with the north and, maybe eventually, independence for the south, should not be equated with liberation, and certainly not with the creation of lasting democracy." Tue, 09 Aug 2005 09:43:43 EDT http://www.why-war.com/news/2005/08/08/whatthen.html http://www.why-war.com/news/2005/08/08/whatthen.html Darfur Genocide Easily Trumped by Michael Jackson on Nightly News "U.S. broadcast media are failing to provide even minimal coverage of the ongoing crisis — some say genocide — in Darfur, Sudan, according to a new report, which concludes that media fixation with celebrity, as well as the Iraq war, is crowding out news of important events that deserve global attention 10 years after the genocide in Rwanda." Tue, 09 Aug 2005 09:40:26 EDT http://www.why-war.com/news/2005/07/13/darfurge.html http://www.why-war.com/news/2005/07/13/darfurge.html Three Strikes For Empire Three seemingly unrelated recent events highlight the imperial nature of the Bush administration's foreign policy: U.S. F-16 sales to Pakistan, the creation of an office in the State Department to plan for future U.S military interventions in developing nations and the indefinite detention in Guantanamo prison of a German man held on the basis of secret evidence that even U.S. intelligence disputes... Tue, 05 Apr 2005 16:29:33 EDT http://www.why-war.com/news/2005/03/28/threestr.html http://www.why-war.com/news/2005/03/28/threestr.html Another Commission Recommends Bureaucratic Buffet to Fix U.S. Intelligence And the recent suggestions of the presidential commission on intelligence make the 9/11 commission's appetite for recommendations look restrained. The presidential commission went on a federal feeding frenzy and recommended stuffing the intelligence community with many new offices and organizations. Tue, 05 Apr 2005 16:27:28 EDT http://www.why-war.com/news/2004/04/05/anotherc.html http://www.why-war.com/news/2004/04/05/anotherc.html Under Bush, a New Age of Prepackaged TV News "Under the Bush administration, the federal government has aggressively used a well-established tool of public relations: the prepackaged, ready-to-serve news report that major corporations have long distributed to TV stations to pitch everything from headache remedies to auto insurance. Many were subsequently broadcast on local stations across the country without any acknowledgement of the government's role in their production. Tue, 22 Mar 2005 00:52:46 EST http://www.why-war.com/news/2005/03/13/underbus.html http://www.why-war.com/news/2005/03/13/underbus.html Pentagon Favors Air Strikes on Syria to Overthrow Assad, Free Lebanon "The Pentagon is now convinced that air strikes on Syria have become necessary to overthrow the Assad regime, liberate Lebanon and stop support of insurgents waging a guerrilla war against American forces in Iraq as well as Palestinian militants against Israel, the U.S.-sponsored Al Hurra TV network says." Mon, 07 Mar 2005 15:38:12 EST http://www.why-war.com/news/2005/03/04/pentagon.html http://www.why-war.com/news/2005/03/04/pentagon.html Newspapers desperate to remain relevant "But ad rates are set by circulation figures: As circulation drops, so too will the amount papers can charge advertisers. / The result can be a vicious cycle. As advertising declines, newsrooms find it more difficult to afford overseas bureaus, extensive national operations and other editorial additions that help produce an authoritative daily report. As they cut back, they risk sending readers elsewhere for news, leading to further circulation declines and lower ad rates." Wed, 02 Mar 2005 16:33:48 EST http://www.why-war.com/news/2005/02/27/newspape.html http://www.why-war.com/news/2005/02/27/newspape.html IDF distributing 'resident' stickers to W. Bank settlers "The Israel Defense Forces recently began to distribute 'resident' stickers to West Bank settlers to be affixed to their cars' windshields. The stickers are intended to allow settlers to drive quickly through army checkpoints along the Green Line." Tue, 01 Mar 2005 19:07:44 EST http://www.why-war.com/news/2005/02/28/idfdistr.html http://www.why-war.com/news/2005/02/28/idfdistr.html Could hackers attack the newest heart monitors? "Or ratchet it way up and consider the possibility that, the next time he goes in for surgery to replace his current ICD, Vice President Dick Cheney upgrades to an implanted device that automatically transmits data to his cardiologist and permits the physician to remotely tweak the Veep’s ticker." Sun, 27 Feb 2005 16:52:51 EST http://www.why-war.com/news/2005/02/02/couldhac.html http://www.why-war.com/news/2005/02/02/couldhac.html