The political system has not been corrupted. It is working effectively, like always. The backbone is the patronage system. Politicians have wonderful memories. They know who they owe. Prostitution is a profession, allegorically the oldest one. Politics is a business. At one time it was popular to think that if someone rich enough were to get elected, he (at that time it would surely be a he) would be immune, but who can owe as much as the rich?
informationclearinghouse.info

Government without Representation: A Call to Action
There are events in human history that galvanize a people into action. Such events are so profoundly wrong and troubling that they can no longer be ignored by the great majority of the citizenry. Instinct tells us that we are nearing a crossroads in the history of our nation, when we must decide upon a course of action. In this momentous decision there can be no neutrality. It is understood that there can be no reconciliation with corrupt power and authority. Either we stay the course and witness the systematic destruction of not only our own nation, but perhaps the entire world; or we refuse our allegiance to this system of inequity called capitalism and operate upon a new premise, or paradigm.

Upwards of eighty percent of the people recognize that they have essentially no representation in government. They appreciate the political process for the sham it is and many of them refuse to participate in it. In the process they allow a small minority to elect people to office, some of them as servants to the people, others not.

Inside the Global Dominance Group
…At the beginning of 2006 the Global Dominance Group’s agenda is well established within higher circle policy councils and cunningly operationalized inside the US Government. They work hand in hand with defense contractors promoting deployment of US forces in over 700 bases worldwide.

There is an important difference between self-defense from external threats, and the belief in the total military control of the world. When asked, most working people in the US have serious doubts about the moral and practical acceptability of financing world domination.
Catchy name.

…In the best of all possible worlds, ExxonMobil might recognize the sources of its good fortune and give something of reasonable scale back to the American people (beyond the relatively modest amount it donates to the arts, education and other causes).

It might, for instance, help make heating oil available to low-income citizens, as Venezuela is doing in Massachusetts, New York and Maine.

Or it could simply contribute money to help offset the pain: Appropriations for the Low Income Housing Energy Assistance Program for this fiscal year are only $2.1 billion, nearly $3 billion short of what Congress authorized.

Beyond this, ExxonMobil could make a major contribution to helping rebuild New Orleans, where it has an important refinery. Private citizens have donated about $3.2 billion so far to the rebuilding effort. The $13 million contribution ExxonMobil touts on its Web site is a mere one-eighth of 1 percent of the increase in its 2005 profits.

Actually, given its New Orleans refinery, ExxonMobil might do very well by doing good: It could protect its investment by getting serious about helping the city build strong Category 5 levees and restoring hurricane-slowing wetlands. The estimated total cost is $31 billion – $5 billion less than ExxonMobil’s 2005 huge profit flows.

Unfortunately, we do not live in a world where significant, voluntary “give-backs” to American society are common.
baltimoresun.com

Chavez just rejected an Exxon Mobil bid because they won’t get with his program.Oil corporations working in Venezuela are obligated to ‘do good.’

WASHINGTON Less than a month after an assertively anti-American president took office in Bolivia, the Bush administration is planning to cut military aid to the country by 96 percent.

The amount of money Bolivia normally receives is small; much of it is used to train Bolivian military officers in the United States. But the cut holds the potential to anger the powerful Bolivian military establishment, which has been responsible for a long history of coups.
Evo Morales, a Socialist leader, became president on Jan. 22 and has promised to end U.S.-financed programs to eradicate the Bolivian coca crop.

Coca is the main ingredient in cocaine. U.S. officials say if Bolivia ends the programs, farmers in Peru and other coca-producing states could demand the same. And that could lead to a flood of cocaine in the Americas and Europe.

The State Department said the military aid is being cut because of a law that says Washington must end military assistance to countries that have failed to ratify a pledge not to extradite Americans to the International Criminal Court.

The Bush administration does not recognize the court as legitimate.
Under pressure, just over 100 countries have signed an agreement. The administration has in some cases waived the rule and provided military aid to countries that have not signed, but officials would not provide numbers.

Bolivia and five other countries – Romania, Bahrain, Kyrgyzstan, Ethiopia and Jordan – have signed the agreement, but have not ratified it in their legislatures. The administration waived the requirement for the other five countries, leaving their military aid at roughly the same level as in previous years.

Administration officials said some of those other countries won exemptions because they were allies while others were not members of the International Criminal Court system.

One senior State Department official said the administration had no choice but to cut Bolivia’s aid. But another State Department official said the administration could choose, later, to provide the money. The officials declined to be named, citing department rules.

In the current fiscal year that began Oct. 1 2005, Bolivia is to receive about $1.7 million. Next year, according to the budget proposal, Bolivia would get only $70,000. Just over half of the money this year would be used for civil defense supplies and other nonlethal equipment. About $792,000 would be used primarily to send Bolivian military officers to the School of the Americas, a combat training school for Latin American officers at Fort Benning, Georgia.

For many Latin American countries, including Bolivia, the training is an important part of their military tradition. In recent years, Bolivia has sent between 50 and 100 officers a year to the school, said Adam Isacson, program director for the Center for International Policy, which tracks military aid to Latin America. Cutting the financing “would antagonize the Bolivian military,” he added.

The Bolivian military was responsible for numerous coups and partial coups in the 1960s and 1970s. The last one was in 1980.
iht.com

Engineers in Uganda are secretly draining Lake Victoria to generate electricity, flouting an international agreement to protect the world’s second largest freshwater lake, according to a new report.
Daniel Kull, a hydrologist with the UN’s International Strategy for Disaster Reduction in Nairobi, Kenya, says the country is directing more of the lake’s waters than agreed 50 years ago under an international pact.

Mr Kull has calculated that the water level in the lake is almost half a metre lower than it should be. Official reports on the hydroelectric dam operations published for March and November last year show that water releases were almost twice their permitted rates, he says. The report is published by a US environmental lobby group, International Rivers Network.
guardian.co.uk

Two hundred years after Anglican reformers helped to abolish the slave trade, the Church of England has apologised for profiting from it.

Last night the General Synod acknowledged complicity in the trade after hearing that the Church had run a slave plantation in the West Indies and that individual bishops had owned hundreds of slaves.

It voted unanimously to apologise to the descendents of the slaves after an emotional debate in which the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, urged the Church to share the “shame and sinfulness of our predecessors”.

The Church’s missionary arm, the Society for the Propagation of the Faith in Foreign Parts, owned the Codrington plantation in Barbados and slaves had the word “Society” branded on their chests with red-hot irons.
telegraph.co.uk

Israel’s Shin Bet security service chief has said his country may come to regret the overthrow of Saddam Hussein, because strong dictatorship is preferable to the present chaos in Iraq. Yuval Diskin, who was secretly recorded talking to teenage Jewish settlers preparing for military service, also said Israel’s judicial system discriminates against Arabs.
guardian.co.uk

Skeletons are being removed from the site of an ancient Muslim cemetery in Jerusalem to make way for a $150m (£86m) “museum of tolerance” being built for the Los Angeles-based Simon Wiesenthal Centre.

Palestinians have launched a legal battle to stop the work at what was the city’s main Muslim cemetery. The work is to prepare for the construction of a museum which seeks the promotion of “unity and respect among Jews and between people of all faiths”.
independent.co.uk

U.S. Jews block conference set to include anti-Israel professors
Pressure exerted by Jewish organizations in the United States has succeeded in preventing an American Association of University Professors (AAUP) conference, in which a number of supporters of an academic boycott on Israel were scheduled to take part.

The AAUP announced Thursday that it was indefinitely postponing the conference, which was scheduled to take place in Italy next week.

Some twenty professors were invited to take part in the conference, less than half of whom openly oppose an academic boycott of Israel.

yup. tolerance

Church of England Takes a Position Against Israel
(IsraelNN.com) The Church of England voted earlier this week to divest from all holdings which the Church deems support Israel’s presence in Yesha areas.

The resolution is to “heed the call from our sister church, the Episcopal Church in Jerusalem and the Middle East, for morally responsible investment in the Palestinian occupied territories and, in particular, to disinvest from companies profiting from the illegal occupation, such as Caterpillar Inc., until they change their policies.”
bulldozers like the one that crushed Rachel Corrie and doubtless many others

The US government is developing a massive computer system that can collect huge amounts of data and, by linking far-flung information from blogs and e-mail to government records and intelligence reports, search for patterns of terrorist activity.

The system – parts of which are operational, parts of which are still under development – is already credited with helping to foil some plots. It is the federal government’s latest attempt to use broad data-collection and powerful analysis in the fight against terrorism. But by delving deeply into the digital minutiae of American life, the program is also raising concerns that the government is intruding too deeply into citizens’ privacy.
csmonitor.com

LOS ANGELES – Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa said Thursday he was blindsided by President Bush’s announcement of new details on a purported 2002 hijacking plot aimed at a downtown skyscraper, and described communication with the White House as “nonexistent.”

“I’m amazed that the president would make this (announcement) on national TV and not inform us of these details through the appropriate channels,” the mayor told The Associated Press. “I don’t expect a call from the president — but somebody.”
yahoo.com

9/11 Special – Dutch Television Documentary
“Was 9/11 more than just an attack? Could the Bush administration have had anything to gain from the attack? Two prominent European politicians, Michael Meacher and Andreas von Bülow, express their serious doubts about the official version of the 9/11 story.”
Two former Government Ministers have grave doubts about what Americans call “the war on terrorism”

Michael Meacher – MP – Former UK Government Minister. “The war on terror is bogus”

Andreas Von Bulow, Former German Secretary Of Defense “The official story is so inadequate and far fetched that there must be a different one”

…On its two-month, 7,000-mile journey around Italy, it has been booed and jeered. Attempts have even been made to block its path, wrestle it from torchbearers and extinguish it.

Since it arrived from Athens on December 8, it has become the focus of protest by anti-globalisation groups, those angry at a planned high-speed train link, and people bitter about the games’ commercialisation. What should have been a symbol of celebration has become a sign of controversy. Even by Italian standards, with a strong anarchic tradition, the furore has been unusual.
guardian.co.uk