Sunday, July 31, 2005
From Newsweek:
[...] In a memo forwarded to a senior FBI lawyer on Nov. 27, 2002, a supervisory special agent from the bureau's behavioral analysis unit offered a legal analysis of interrogation techniques that had been approved by Pentagon officials for use against a high-value Qaeda detainee. After objecting to techniques such as exploiting "phobias" like "the fear of dogs" or dripping water "to induce the misperception of drowning," the agent discussed a plan to send the detainee to Jordan, Egypt or an unspecified third country for interrogation. "In as much as the intent of this category is to utilize, outside the U.S., interrogation techniques which would violate [U.S. law] if committed in the U.S., it is a per se violation of the U.S. Torture Statute," the agent wrote. "Discussing any plan which includes this category could be seen as a con-spiracy to violate [the Torture Statute]" and "would inculpate" everyone involved.[...]
Full Newsweek article here.
For further info on "extraordinary rendition" read Wikipedia here, where the following was found:
The UN Convention against Torture (UNCAT) Article 3 states:
- 1. No State Party shall expel, return ("refouler") or extradite a person to another State where there are substantial grounds for believing that he would be in danger of being subjected to torture.
- 2. For the purpose of determining whether there are such grounds, the competent authorities shall take into account all relevant considerations including, where applicable, the existence in the State concerned of a consistent pattern of gross, flagrant or mass violations of human rights.
Any state that is a signatory of the UNCAT and passes an individual to another state where there are substantial grounds for believing that he would be in danger of being subjected to torture would be in breach of their treaty obligations, which most Western governments would be reluctant to do.
THE PLAME AFFAIR
Heart of darkness
By John Steinberg | RAW STORY COLUMNIST
[...] Post-Enlightenment folks tend to think of knowledge as an empirical thing: knowledge is the product of evidence that comports with a theory or world view. As such, we seek data, and when the data are inconclusive or inconsistent with expectation, we admit that we don’t know.
That, I submit, is not what George Bush means when he says he knows something. He knew Karl Rove was innocent in the same way he knew that there were WMDs in Iraq, and that Osama got birthday cards from Saddam. More to the point, he knew it the way he knew God wanted him to be president.
In other words, he knows Rove is blameless in the way he knows his religious beliefs are true—based not upon a survey of facts, evidence and expertise, but upon an inventory of only the desolate, monochromatic landscape of his own interior.
Bush knows Rove is innocent because that is what Bush’s heart tells him; his brain is incapable of grasping the resulting circularity. This kind of knowledge, so widely and deeply embraced by his supporters, was the basis for Bush’s elevation to the White House. It explains his intransigent stance on Social Security, on John Bolton, and virtually everything else he has wrought since; the light of reason is not allowed to reach the dark place where Bush holds his beliefs.
Read the whole article here.
RELIGIOUS MIGHT
The Church of Bush
By John Steinberg | RAW STORY COLUMNIST
Bush conflates religion and politics not because he wants the religious to see him as one of them. He does so because he knows that if they treat politics as a form of religion, he becomes their God.
Read the whole article here.
Saturday, July 30, 2005
Elaine Pagels's Beyond Belief: The Secret Gospel of Thomas (recently translated into Italian, Il vangelo segreto di Tommaso, tr. it. C. Lazzari, Mondadori, 16,50).
From Publishers Weekly (included in Amazon.com):
"Reading these gospels closely, she shows that Thomas offered readers a message of spiritual enlightenment. Rather than promoting Jesus as the only light of the world, Thomas taught individuals that 'there is a light within each person, and it lights up the whole universe. If it does not shine, there is darkness.' As she eloquently and provocatively argues, the author of John wrote his gospel as a refutation of Thomas, portraying the disciple Thomas as a fool when he doubts Jesus, and Jesus as the only true light of the world. Pagels goes on to demonstrate that the early Christian writer Irenaeus promoted John as the true gospel while he excluded Thomas, and a host of other early gospels, from the list of those texts that he considered authoritative. His list became the basis for the New Testament canon when it was fixed in 357."
Resources on the Gospel of Thomas are available in the net. Here, for instance.
I have checked this resource, which was recommended in the previous link, to read some passages of the Gospel of Thomas
These some passages:
1 [2]. Jesus says: "Let him who seeks cease not to seek until he finds: when he finds he will be astonished; and when he is astonished he will wonder, and will reign over the universe!"
It is obvious that the above passage is in strong conflict with the idea that the truth emerges from tradition or from the interpretation of certain Christian denominations. Truth is, rather, something attained through personal search.
2 [3]. Jesus says: "If those who seek to attract you say to you: 'See, the Kingdom is in heaven!' then the birds of heaven will be there before you. If they say to you: 'It is in the sea!' then the fish will be there before you. But the kingdom is within you and it is outside of you!" 3 [3].
"When you know yourselves, then you will be known, and you will know that it is you who are the sons of the living Father. But if you do not know yourselves, then you will be in a state of poverty, and it is you <you will be> the poverty!"
"The kingdom is within you." Truth is something to be found in ourselves, thus not something inherited and passively accepted.
61 [56]. Jesus says: "He who has known the world has fallen into a corpse; and he who has fallen into a corpse, the world is not worthy of him!"
I believe the most obvious interpretations (distance from the material world, awareness of transience and finitude) of the above passage are wrong.
The corpse is the world as a complex of dead sediments of values and visions of the past. They, being the past, are not animated by the actuality of one's being. In this sense they are dead.
Interestingly the passage says "whoever has known". Now, the process of knowing passes through the culturally/historically-determined perceptive schemes one grows into. That becomes the "world" for the person who "knows" the world. But exactly that "world known" is a corpse if one relinquishes the animating principle found in one's own self.
One could compare this passage to passages 1 and 2 above, and 55 ("60 [55]. Jesus says: "He who does not hate his father and mother cannot be my disciple;[...]"
[Interesting information on the Gospel of Thomas can be found on Wikipedia, here]
Friday, July 29, 2005
Bush's renaissance: Oscar Wilde and the election
by D.A. Blyler
Wednesday, July 27, 2005
Wow, Blair is a person with ideals (Cherie, not Tony)
Why has England not got Ms. Cherie Blair as prime minister instead of her husband?
QC (senior barrister) and a leading lawyer for human rights in England, Ms. Cherie Blair really appears to have ideals, if ideals are still worth something in a world where a supposed "Labour" politician like Tony Blair sheepishly follows the diktats of George W. Bush, misleading his own people - just like George W. Bush - bending ideals under a muscular and mendacious realpolitik, failing to see the whole picture, and starting an illegal war based on false pretenses.
But read this excerpt of an account of Ms. Cherie Blair's recent speech, published on the New Scotsman (stress is mine):
[...] she [Ms. Cherie Blair] called for the judiciary to stand up to the "hurly-burly of majoritarian politics" in the war on terror.
Judges, she said, should resist political pressure over the conviction of suspected extremists and uphold human rights legislation.
She spoke as Mr Blair was making the opposite case, recounting how judges had thwarted his attempts to throw out extremists and complaining that "we still have not woken up to what this thing is about".
Whereas Mr Blair was striking consensus with Michael Howard and Charles Kennedy in Downing Street over new terror laws, his wife was becoming a voice of opposition as she gave a lecture in Malaysia.
She stressed she did not want to make light of the bomb blasts in London or the challenges being faced by British police and intelligence services.
But she added: "At the same time, it is all too easy for us to respond to such terror in a way which undermines commitment to our most deeply held values and convictions and which cheapens our right to call ourselves a civilised nation."
An independent judiciary, she said, had "the important task of reviewing executive action against the benchmark of human rights".
She made clear that the pressure to convict on the proposed new laws of inciting or glorifying terrorism should be guarded by regard for British civil liberties.
"In our troubled times where terrorism, division and suspicion of others are the order of the day, this role for judges is perhaps more vital than ever before," she told 1,000 lawyers, diplomats and academics in Kuala Lumpur. Mrs Blair - a QC and one of Britain's leading human rights lawyers - is known to be on the left of her husband politically, and has frequently made statements which seem to contradict his policy. She caused a furore three years ago when she seemed to sympathise with Palestinian suicide bombers on the day that one had struck a Jerusalem bus killing 40 people. "As long as young people feel they have got no hope but to blow themselves up, you are never going to make progress," she said then.
[...]
We need more people with ideas like Cherie Blair's in politics. Tony can stay at home.
Read the whole article here.
Tuesday, July 26, 2005
Monday, July 25, 2005
In democracy, the source of the worst evils and disasters in leadership is not a single madman in power but the dull loyalty of masses of people supporting him, turning their eyes away and condoning each and every fault of his.
When you have a president who lies, manipulates, covers up, sends people to an unnecessary war (while, be that said incidentally, he and his closest friends are chickenhawks) thus contributing to the increase of terrorism in the whole world, protects friends even when they act unlawfully, helps the richest to become richer and the poor to become poorer, attacks the fundamental rights of people, confuses religion with national laws, all meanwhile maintaining a pious and devout facade, you know right away that something is seriously wrong.
At that point, one would expect that any decent citizen should not keep watching TV and stuffing himself with hamburgers and french fries as if nothing is happening. One would expect that any decent citizen would start to speak up. To give up the comfortable, cowardly, delusion that those who have power are always moral and just. To raise his head from the grass on which he's meekly browsing, and look around and do something.
And one would expect that these citizens, if they are journalists, would massively speak up from the pages of their papers, or let their voice be heard in news broadcasts, expressing perplexity, outrage, pointing out at scandals.
What others signs or disasters do they wait for before raising a single eyebrown?
Is all the above too much to expect from the supposed lighthouse of democracy in the world?
Sunday, July 24, 2005
Let's face it. The world is much, much worse since the grotesquely called 'Coalition of the Willing' decided to invade Iraq. Most people in the world knew this would be the outcome, and serious analysts with no neocon agenda and soft spots for Dubya knew it too.
Yet, the ideology of war and destruction followed its course, starting an unnecessary, illegal war based on cold-blooded false pretences (see the Downing Street Memo) and complacent rethoric of ethical leadership. A war that has caused tens of thousands of deaths, and keep taking its deadly toll each day. In Europe, too, we have seen what Blair's and Bush's "ethical leadership" has led us to: bombings in Spain, London, Turkey, Egypt.
Even some British and Israeli thinktanks consider the Iraqi war an error which has increased terrorism in Iraq and in the world, providing a formidable means of propaganda for the recruitment of terrorists. And the Chicago Sun Times, quoting Paul Rogers, a professor of peace studies at England's Bradford University, has published today an article titled: "Iraq has been an absolute gift to al-Qaida".''[Al-Qaida] seems to have no difficulty in getting more and more recruits.'', stated Professor Rogers.
And according to a recent poll two thirds of Britons think London bombings are linked to Blair's decision to invade Iraq, despite Blair claims otherwise.
Of course Blair, and even Bush, would not admit that their irresponsible policies have made the situation worse, and they keep spreading propaganda which a certain portion of the respective citizens gulp down blithely. But this is exactly the situation we are in. Bush has said that the war on terror would be very, very long. But surely his and Blair's policies are contributing to this and are transforming some countries in Palestine-look-alikes.
Even those who have supported them in good faith, have now the responsibility of requiring truth and intelligent leadership, which cannot be swapped with cheap rhetoric, propaganda and obtuse display of muscles. Bush and Blair have failed.
Facts speak clearly, and they are not pretty at all.
After attacks in Spain, London, Turkey and Egypt it appears clear that not only has the war on Iraq caused the "palestinization" of that country, but of Europe as well. And this had been predicted by many analysts before the war, but was ignored by those who - driven by frantic belligerence - started a unilateral, illegal war, based on false pretences.
Yesterday it emerged (read here) that an innocent man, 27-year-old Jean Charles de Menezes, was shot dead in London for no reason by the British police, probably because of an unseasonable coat, dark skin, and a mix of other circumstances which led police to think that he may be a terrorist. This, too, makes one think of Palestine. The tension is so high, that one should watch what one wears, even, lest one should be killed by police officers, if one escapes terrorist attacks!
As another blogger has justly noted, we are going through barbarian times. And the barbarism is not on one side only. The sooner we all realize this, the better.
Saturday, July 23, 2005
Excerpt:
Read the whole article here.
So it appears to me that in this second mandate, Mr. George W. Bush's record is coming out more clearly than ever. One characterized by mendacity (the graver one leading to the Iraqi war, see Downing Street Memo), cover-ups, inconsistencies, flip-flops, in general behaviours that are not in the interest of his own country but are only concerned with maintaining power for him and his proteges and cliques of friends.
LA TIMES SPLASHES WORD 'PERJURY' WITH REGARD TO ROVE LEAK CASE; WASH. POST MOVES IN PAGE ONE
Excerpt:
Read the whole article here.
Friday, July 22, 2005
One of the best articles I have read in recent times appeared on the Guardian today, written by Polly Toynbee.
The topics touched do not regard England only, but the whole world, considering the theocratic frenzy which one can perceive not only in some fundamentalistic arab countries, but also in some Western countries, United States being at the forefront. The article explains the connections between "extreme superstition" and "extreme acts". But all religions, in that they claim to exclusively possess the absolute truth, are extreme. A renovated, unfaltering stress placed on the fundamental values of Enlightenment is necessary, starting from the school system, and spread at every level of our society. Religion and state must maintain clear boundaries.
You can read it here.
Excerpt:
All religions are prone to it, given the right circumstances. How could those who preach the absolute revealed truth of every word of a primitive book not be prone to insanity? There have been sects of killer Christians and indeed the whole of Christendom has been at times bent on wiping out heathens. Jewish zealots in their settlements crazily claim legal rights to land from the Old Testament. Some African Pentecostal churches harbour sects of torturing exorcism and child abuse. Muslims have a very long tradition of jihadist slaughter. Sikhs rose up to stop a play that exposed deformities of abuse within their temples. Buddhism too has its sinister wing. See how far-right evangelicals have kidnapped US politics and warped its secular, liberal founding traditions. Intense belief, incantations, secrecy and all-male rituals breed perversions and danger, abusing women and children and infecting young men with frenzy, no matter what the name of the faith.
Enlightenment values are in peril not because these mad beliefs are really growing but because too many rational people seek to appease and understand unreason. Extreme superstition breeds extreme action. Those who believe they alone know the only way, truth and life will always feel justified in doing anything in its name. You would, wouldn't you, if you alone had the magic answer to everything? If religions teach that life after death is better then it is hardly surprising that some crazed followers will actually believe it. [...]
Read the whole article here.
According to Alexander Lowen ("Narcissism, the Denial of the True Self") the degree of incongruity between the image of the self (ego) and the self itself is directly proportional to the severity of mental disturbances, the higher degree being represented by schizophrenia, in which some individuals may even believe they are Jesus Christ, Napoleon and so on.
In narcissistic disorders the incongruity is lower than in schizophrenia and but still present, here too a dissociation is present between self (body, feelings, drives) and image of the self (ego).
In my opinion the individuals who feel they have received a "call from God" or even claim that God speaks directly to them, might oftentimes be characterized by a narcissistic disorder, sometimes with psychotic traits. Interestingly, many of these people appear to have a disturbed approach to the corporeal world and their own body, and this fits Freud's definition of the narcissistic disorder: a condition in which the subject withdraws the libido from the obiects of the world and invests it in the ego. Lowen believes that in narcissism the libido is withdrawn from the self (the body and id) and invested in the ego, but as the world is experienced through the body, he considers his definition equivalent to that of Freud.
Of course one may also add that the propensity to rituals, precious vestments, self-satisfaction with their own status of "chosen" ones, theatrical solemnity on the magnificent stage of a church could also be signs of a narcissistic condition. I also suspect that if we were to inquire into the family history of many priests we would find frequent cases of conflicts between parents (even if not necessarily acted out explicitly), forms of veiled emotional seduction from the mother, and oedipal fixations. Much of the religious content of Catholic religion that clergy finds attractive appears to be compatible with a such a background (diffidence towards sex, repression, misogyny, de facto despisement of real women, exaltation of a decorporealized, non-sexual, ever virgin mother of Christ). Will a research of this type ever be made?
As the manifestations typical of religious exaltation (particularly in the clergy) are cleverly structured and socially accepted, and can find correspondences with an historical repository of similar contrivances and allucinations, such manifestations don't raise much alarm.
Yet, from another point of view, considering the pathological dissociation between corporeal world and ego, or self (body) and ego, which it encourages, religion is an ongoing factor of mental disturbance and raises many issues from a pedagogical and educational point of view. Not to mention the fact that paraphilia (abnormal sexual behaviour) is very frequent in people with a disturbed sense of the self, which also should raise alarm.
upbringing & education, religion & mental illness, catholic hypocrisy
Wednesday, July 20, 2005
The capacity of humans to pursue objectives and embrace visions against their own interest and their very nature, to the extent of sickness, dissociation, alienation, does not cease to be a source of surprise to me.
So much are humans prone to celebrate their consciousness, that is a mere capacity of a bodily organ not dissimilar in its specialization from the trunk of an elephant or the antennas of an insect (all magnificent means deviced by evolution as a strategy for survival) and so scared that life should reach an end, that they elaborate and maintain fantasies of being part of a special plan, of being the favourite offspring of a creator, and of being destined to an eternal life. But the price for this is denying life itself and rejecting its joys.
Insofar as the manifestations of life are also a reminder of their finitude, humans chose to reject them to pursue a delusion of transcendence. As life become rarified in forms of dissociated devotion or even mysticism, they feel that part of themselves is already experiencing the award of eternity. Real life, and its real joys, are rejected in order to feel worthy of a fabricated after-life and its fabricated bliss. All this appears nothing but a form of socially accepted psychosis.
And what's worse, a form of psychosis which, in the case of modern monotheistic religions, feeds the arrogance of possessing the absolute truth, thus giving way to intolerance, and spreading the disease of the hate of life and of dissociation from the self and the tangible world..
I found an interesting essay which touches the topic of the hate of life found in religions.
Life Haters
by David N. Campbell
H.L. Mencken provided a famous description of a puritan-“Someone who is desperately afraid that someone, somewhere, may be happy and is determined to prevent it.” The major religions of our time seem to thrive on unhappiness, wallowing in guilt and sin, focusing on a better, more perfect world in the future. Anything that is pleasurable or gives joy is suspect while most are obsessed with death and much suffering. In fact, pain and suffering are celebrated. (Read the rest here).
Founded in 1921, in Hellerau, a suburb of Dresden, but by 1923 located in England and developed by A. S. Neill, the Summerhill School's method does not advocate a superficial laissez-faire in education, but centers the educational process in the child's natural and self-regulated urgency to learn and explore the world, thus engaging the learning process with the child's emotional and intellectual drives, without coercions.
As A. S. Neill states (found in the School's Web site):
"I am only just realising the absolute freedom of my scheme of Education. I see that all outside compulsion is wrong, that inner compulsion is the only value. And if Mary or David wants to laze about, lazing about is the one thing necessary for their personalities at the moment. Every moment of a healthy child's life is a working moment. A child has no time to sit down and laze. Lazing is abnormal, it is a recovery, and therefore it is necessary when it exists."
A. S. Neill's method enhances the awareness children have of themselves and the capacity to pursue their own objectives, rather than complying with the expectations of their environment.
Again, in Neill's words: "The function of the child is to live his own life – not the life that his anxious parents think he should live, nor a life according to the purpose of the educator who thinks he knows best."
Interestingly, in the Summerhill School pupils have equal power as the adults in making decisions that regard the school. Decisions made by votes.
And isn't this the actual purpose any education should have? To encourage maturity, autonomy, creativity, capacity to make autonomous choices and express oneself? Too often upbringing and education end up encouraging immaturity, dissociation, passivity and fear by extolling obedience, seen as a value in itself, and compliance with the prescriptions of adults.
Too often a "good child" is the child who represses his creativity and feelings to please the adults. And this, in turn, contributes to the perpetuation of the vicious circle of power, psychological violence and intolerance in our society, favours all sorts of psychological and developmental disturbances, and also has a negative effect on learning itself, perceived as "work", "obligation", negation of the self.
From the school's Web site:
"I don't feel disadvantaged, in fact I feel advantaged, because I know how to think for myself and work thing sout for myself." - Jesse, a pupil
"I have been relaxed, open minded. And I have found my personality here, so people can see who I am and not what grades I get." - Jake, a pupil
Monday, July 18, 2005
Tube bombs 'linked to Iraq conflict'
· Thinktank says war boosts al-Qaida
· Blair dismisses connection
David Hencke, Westminster correspondent
Monday July 18, 2005
The Guardian
Britain's involvement in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan contributed to the terrorist attacks in London, a respected independent thinktank on foreign affairs, the Chatham House organisation, says today.
According to the body, which includes leading academics and former civil servants among its members, the key problem in the UK for preventing terrorism is that the country is "riding as a pillion passenger with the United States in the war against terror".
[...]
In the most politically sensitive finding, Chatham House, which used to be known as the Royal Institute of International Affairs, concludes there is "no doubt" the invasion of Iraq has "given a boost to the al-Qaida network" in "propaganda, recruitment and fundraising", while providing an ideal targeting and training area for terrorists. "Riding pillion with a powerful ally has proved costly in terms of British and US military lives, Iraqi lives, military expenditure and the damage caused to the counter-terrorism campaign."
This finding runs counter to the line from Downing Street, which has sought to detach Iraq from the London attacks.
[...]
Read the whole article here.
Sunday, July 17, 2005
Saturday, July 16, 2005
Pope Benedict XVI: "Watch out the subtle seductions of Harry Potter!"
Perhaps mindful and nostalgic of the 'glorious' tradition of the Inquisition, later called Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Joseph Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI, condemned Harry Potter books as "subtle seductions" in 2003, when he was still prefect of the Congregation.
He wrote to Gabriele Kuby, author of "Harry Potter - gut oder böse? (Harry Potter: Good or Evil?): "It is good that you enlighten us on the Harry Potter matter, for these are subtle seductions that are barely noticeable, and precisely because of that have a deep effect and corrupt the Christian faith in souls even before it could properly grow." (read here the whole article on this).
Of course we don't live anymore in the times in which the Roman Catholic Church placed Copernicus's De Revolutionibus Orbium Coelestium in the Index of Forbidden Books, because it had the audacity to claim that the earth is not still and revolves around the sun, or banned Galileo's books for the same reason. Ah! Those were times! Nowadays the widespread impudence of science only allows condemning less fundamental books and paying attention to Harry Potter! But at least the Roman Catholic Church's compulsion to condemn works of the human mind can find somewhat a release, if pathetic!
Surely any civil person in our society, with a bit of familiarity with modern psychology, will understand that the Roman Catholic Church cannot possibly accept that books like those of Harry Potter may subtly seduce and corrupt, and divert the attention of children from Christian tales of guilt, torture, scourging and sacrifice which they are fed with since birth, right?
I mean, the millenary strategy of control of the Church must be deployed undisturbed! Masses of people starve for a condition of subjugation, total obedience, humiliation and guilt and perhaps some occasional self-whipping, Opus Dei's style!
Friday, July 15, 2005
Excerpt:
The healthy individual has a natural, rather than a compulsive, morality. The former leads to health and order, the latter to neuroses, criminality, perversion, and chaos. From the view-point of a natural morality, many social mores are incomprehensible, for example, living with a mate one does not love merely because the law says one is married, or an insistence on faithfulness out of duty. Natural morals are concerned with different values: Sex is desired only with a partner one loves, promiscuity and perversion are uninteresting, pornography is distasteful. One is self -regulated. The orgasm, rather than being a cure for emotional ills, is an expression of health and enables one to maintain health. One who is not healthy cannot experience a true orgasm but, rather, what Reich termed a climax." 2 The latter does help reduce sexual tension but cannot eliminate it. If it could, everyone would attain health by sexual activity, as Reich's critics insist he claimed. This is obviously not the case.
Read the whole article here.
He who eats...
Thursday, July 14, 2005
An article by Robert Fisk, Middle East correspondent of the Intependent
The reality of this barbaric bombing
If we are fighting insurgency in Iraq, what makes us think insurgency won’t come to us?
By Robert Fisk - 08 July 2005
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/fisk/article297623.ece
http://www.selvesandothers.org/article10155.html
"If you bomb our cities," Osama bin Laden said in one of his recent video tapes, "we will bomb yours." There you go, as they say. It was crystal clear Britain would be a target ever since Tony Blair decided to join George Bush’s "war on terror" and his invasion of Iraq. We had, as they say, been warned. The G8 summit was obviously chosen, well in advance, as Attack Day.
And it’s no use Mr Blair telling us yesterday that "they will never succeed in destroying what we hold dear". "They" are not trying to destroy "what we hold dear". They are trying to get public opinion to force Blair to withdraw from Iraq, from his alliance with the United States, and from his adherence to Bush’s policies in the Middle East. The Spanish paid the price for their support for Bush - and Spain’s subsequent retreat from Iraq proved that the Madrid bombings achieved their objectives - while the Australians were made to suffer in Bali.
[Read the whole article here]
Friday, July 08, 2005
The struggle against terrorism cannot be won by military means
The G8 must seize the opportunity to address the wider issues at the root of such atrocities
From Repubblica:
Ma le armi non bastano
La guerra dei mondi (dialogo tra Scalfari e Baricco)
