Independent Progressive Thought

Privacy International, Stupid Security Contest Winners, April 2003. My writing abilities are grossly inadequate to do this site justice. Just go to it. The link for the Australian Govt. is out of date so try this . The link to the Moscow ID scam is also very interesting. It is noteworthy that all the criminals and terrorists of course have valid id while the poor people and foreigners who venture into this city are the ones who would not be able to get it. Not that we need this particular example to see why national ID cards are a bad idea.

posted by Nashib @ 6:31 PM

From May: A really disturbing interview from the Gush-Shalom archives. I had to reread it a couple of times to believe it and verify that I had undersood it correctly the first time around. I was not able to find it on the Yedio Ahoronot website since it is in Hebrew but I found lots of other links to the Gush-Shalom article on the web. And Gush-Shalom itself is an organization with integrity so I do not doubt the authenticity of this article.

posted by Nashib @ 9:56 AM

To all the conspiracy theorists that believe that the Iraq misadventure was about oil, Post-Saddam Iraq:Linchpin of a New Oil Order - by Michael Renner, FPIF Policy Report, January 2003 adds some very interesting facts to their case. I would argue that the article is very well written with little bias and clearly outlines that the positions taken by the opposing nations were not due to their altruism, rather their own interests in Iraqi oil. This is neither a surprise, nor a secret to most people.

There are also very interesting stats about the amount of oil under the control of various corporations and some insights about how this will be beneficial (immensely) for American oil corporations if they break up INOC (Iraq National Oil Company. It also talks about the implications for US maintaining its hegemonic status by controlling the pricing of oil if it has control over Iraqi oil. The US is not just looking for access to the resources, it is also looking for strategic control over them, which in turn allows it to exert great economic pressure on anyone that might dare to challenge it in any way.

posted by Nashib @ 10:08 PM

The extent of environmental damage and the pervasiveness of disregard and unawareness of it are both staggering and unforunate.
The Last Fish - by David Helvarg, Earth Island Journal, Spring 2003, Vol. 18, No. 1 draws our collective attention to the dismal state of the world's fisheries. This paragraph is particularly interesting. In 1998, seven papers published in Conservation Biology identified bottom dragging as the major cause of ecological damage to the world's sea floors. Each year trawl nets scour an area twice the size of the United States. It is emphasized twice for a reason. "An area twice the size of the US". That is not just enormous, it is beyond comprehension. This takes place every single year and the seafloor barely has a chance to recuperate before this cycle starts all over again !!!

posted by Nashib @ 10:46 PM