Kraut has the hammer and everything he sees is a nail!

Mr Krauthammer(Op-Ed commentator for the Washington Post) apparently really sees the world as "pro" and "anti" american. This color-blindness so politically convenient (don't think it's naive!) serves one purpose: callaborate with the Bush administration in creating a "big bad wolf" outside the US borders.

This is the best way to convince all Americans that it is time to "bomb the hell out of them".

Krauthammer has transformed from a vegetal to a canibal and the world outside the US are his victims.

I suggest he changes his name to Krauthummer, that will undoubtedly be more suited to his positions and will from the start give his readers a notion of his true credibility: none!

Tomorrow's Threat (washingtonpost.com): "The great democratic crusade undertaken by this administration is going far better than most observers will admit. That's the good news. The bad news is a development more troubling than most observers recognize: signs of the emergence, for the first time since the fall of the Soviet empire, of an anti-American bloc anchored by Great Powers."

Bulletin: No W.M.D. Found

This is a piece of news that does not seem to be very high in the radar of the "free" press:

The New York Times > Opinion > Editorial: Bulletin: No W.M.D. Found: "he world little noted, but at some point late last year the American search for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq ended.

We will, however, long remember the doomsday warnings from the Bush administration about mushroom clouds and sinister aluminum tubes; the breathless reports from TV correspondents when the invasion began, speculating on when the 'smoking gun' would be unearthed; our own failures to deconstruct all the spin and faulty intelligence."

Some news outlets did report them, but this is such a monumental piece of news that it is amazing that not ALL main news outlets reported it as a major news.

After all it was because of this that we went into Iraq! Now that we know that GW lied to us (even though still about 40% of Americans believe that Iraq did have weapons of mass destruction when the US went it).

What this finally proofs is that containment was working, as the NYTimes editorial puts it: "The fact that nothing was found does not absolutely, positively prove that there wasn't something there once, something that was disassembled and trucked over the border to Syria or buried in yet another Iraqi rose garden. But it's not the sort of possibility you'd want to fight a war over. What all our loss and pain and expense in the Iraqi invasion has actually proved is that the weapons inspections worked, that international sanctions - deeply, deeply messy as they turned out to be - worked, and that in the case of Saddam Hussein, the United Nations worked. Whatever the Hussein regime once had is gone because the international community insisted. It was all destroyed a decade ago, under world pressure.

This is not a lesson that many people in power in Washington are prepared to carry away, but it is what the national adventure in the reckless doctrine of preventive warfare has to teach us."

I hope that this is a lesson that all of us will understand and follow in the future.

Agribusiness hijacks agricultures thanks to patents

Monsanto produces a seed that is supposed to be used only for one harvest. The first harvest comes, and the farmers use the fertile seeds of the plants they harvested. Then comes monsanto and steels their work away from them. Fantasy? No, reality:

: "Agribusiness giant Monsanto has sued more than 100 U.S. farmers, and its 'seed police' have investigated thousands of others, for what the company terms illegal use of its patented genetically engineered seeds, and activists charge is 'corporate extortion'. "

According to Joe Mendelson, legal director for Centre for Food Safety (CFS) "Monsanto's business plan for GE crops depends on suing farmers". This is far beyond a scandal this is a proof of how the patents as they are set in law today are harmful for businesses (farmers) and consumers, not better. We need a better patent system that protects also customers and users not just the producers which in a overwhelming number of situations is a big corporation, not "the little guy!"

"In the well-known case of Canadian farmer Percy Schmeiser, pollen from a neighbour's GE canola fields and seeds that blew off trucks on their way to a processing plant ended up contaminating his fields with Monsanto's genetics.

The trial court ruled that no matter how the GE plants got there, Schmeiser had infringed on Monsanto's legal rights when he harvested and sold his crop. After a six-year legal battle, Canada's Supreme Court ruled that while Schmeiser had technically infringed on Monsanto's patent, he did not have to pay any penalties.

Schmeiser, who spoke at last year's World Social Forum in India, says it cost 400,000 dollars to defend himself. "

Who pays that? You pay when you go to the supermarket to buy your soy products you will have to pay for all the legal actions that are pursued against farmers. In the end we all pay for Monsanto's successfull lawsuits against farmers.

Ugly Truths About Guantanamo (washingtonpost.com)

Ugly Truths About Guantanamo (washingtonpost.com): "The International Committee of the Red Cross has complained that some of what has been done at Guantanamo -- Guantanamo, not Abu Ghraib -- was 'tantamount to torture.' The American Civil Liberties Union has complained, but that you would expect. So, though, have the FBI and military lawyers, former and current."

It is also at Guantanamo that the awful face of torture is showing it's face.
The nomination of Alberto Gonzales for Attorney General of the US shows how high the knowledge and advocacy of torture is in the US Administration.
As Richard Cohen writes in the Washington Post: "Gonzales found the Geneva Conventions themselves "obsolete." Such legal brilliance does not long go unrewarded. He has been nominated to become attorney general."

The US cannot claim moral highground and at the same time use the techniques that itself criticized in such regimes as the Soviet Union, Communist China or even Cuba!

Added to this are the plans by the CIA to commit terror-suspects to life imprisonment even if they have not been tried in a court of law (Seattle Times, Washington Post).

It is outrageous to see the a country like the US do exactly the opposite of what it defends publicly, and it requires a strong condemnation from all sides of the policital spectrum!

A line for Jobs and Growth

Joseph Stiglitz: This can't go on forever - so it won't: "Europe, for its part, is finally beginning to recognise the problems with its macro-economic institutions, particularly a stability pact that restricts the use of fiscal policy and a central bank that focuses only on inflation, not on jobs or growth."

As Joseph Stiglitz (of Nobel fame) so well put it, Europe's problems with unemployment and economic growth is in part (how big part?) due to the restricted focus of Europe's Central Bank on inflation, which deprives Europe of an effective fical policy for growth. The Stability Pact must be revised, Europe needs growth, but it cannot continue to be restricted by what the former President of the Comission called a "stupid" treaty.

Maybe this is the "sign" that Durão Barroso - the current President of the Comission - had been waiting and a clear chance for him to make his term historical, by enabling Europe to regain the fiscal flexibility that it needs to combat recessions such as the one we saw in 1999-2003 and may be seeing again.

The Stability Pact must be changed. It is up to Europe's citizens to make their voices heard in their local elections so that this message does not go unnoticed in Brussels.