Some sites do not fit neatly into one
category.
CHANGING THE WORLD
Politics, society, ecology, economics, history,
etc.....How can individuals be fully healthy
without social and economic change? How can this
happen without some political organising? And without
people knowing what is really going on? "Holistic"
means more than an individual, their therapist, and
the remedies they can purchase. The drug-and-surgery
model of medicine, for example, is partly sustained by
powerful multinational drug companies who work the
capitalist system and know how to lobby governments.
This is only an "easy" example...See also my NEWS & VIEWS page, page on
Adult Education course "CHANGING
OURSELVES, CHANGING OUR WORLD", and COURSES page for "Talking
Politics" course.
- NEWS, COMMENT, MISCELLANEOUS ARTICLES
-
ORGANISATIONS AND CAMPAIGNS
- POLITICAL HISTORY
- VARIOUS
NEWS, COMMENT,
MISCELLANEOUS ARTICLES
Bottled
Water; Pouring Resources Down the Drain "The
global consumption of bottled water reached 154
billion liters...in 2004, up 57 percent from the 98
billion liters consumed five years earlier. Even in
areas where tap water is safe to drink, demand for
bottled water is increasing—producing unnecessary
garbage and consuming vast quantities of energy.
Although in the industrial world bottled water is
often no healthier than tap water, it can cost up to
10,000 times more. At as much as $2.50 per liter ($10
per gallon), bottled water costs more than gasoline."
Article by Emily Arnold and Janet Larsen.
Bush,
China, Two Deficits, and the Ongoing Decline of U.S.
Hegemony July 2005 article by Paul Street,
analysing the economic ties and tensions between the
USA and China, the decline of the US economy, and its
relationship to the invasion of Iraq.
Common
Dreams "Breaking news and views for the
progressive community" - US based.
Deep Black
Lies "In-depth reporting of crime and
corruption in high places". Control of current USA
nuclear weapons programme, what happened to all the
gold the Nazis and Japanese looted in WW2, CIA and
drug trafficking, new weapons, Operation Gladio, US
POW's captured in Vietnam, Bilderberg group and
other influential "think-tanks", Remote Behavioral
Influence Technology (mind control experiments),
Rhodes scholars.
The
Emperor's New Clothes Thought-provoking,
though annoyingly nit-picking at times. Lots on
Israel and former Yugoslavia, including U.S.
sponsorship of terror in the latter.
EnergyBulletin
News and articles on every aspect.
From
The Wilderness Mike Ruppert's excellent site.
What's wrong with official story on Sept. 11 2001,
US plans for war in Colombia, CIA, USA politicians
and the drugs trade, peak oil, history of the Bush
family....Mirror site at http://www.copvcia.com
Globalinfo.org
"Daily news service of the developing world" - news
on site, also offers free news feed to your website.
Indymedia
UK "network of individuals,
independent and alternative media activists and
organisations, offering grassroots, non-corporate,
non-commercial coverage of important social
and political issues".
John Pilger
Journalist, usually has the deep background to world
events. John
Pilger Reveals the American Plan tells
how the US government manipulated the attacks of
September 11 2001 to further pre-existing aims
including attacking Iraq. See also my News
page.
Lobster
UK-based journal of parapolitics, intelligence and
State Research - excellent.
Meditations
On Collapse review by Richard Heinberg of
Jared Diamond's Collapse: How Societies Choose to
Fail or Succeed, Jane Jacob's Dark Age Ahead, and
William Engdahl's A Century of War: Anglo-American
Oil Politics and the New World Order.
Narco-Dollars
for Beginners How the Money Works in the
Illicit Drug Trade. 2001 must-read article by
Catherine Austin Fitts. What happens to the huge
amounts of money paid for illegal drugs? How much is
"laundered" by being passed through legitimate
businesses, and how much does this skew the economy?
What effect does it have on "democratic" politics.
We probably can't have a serious understanding of
the current political realities without
understanding some of this. The article is posted on
the website of the excellent Narco News
Bulletin - "reporting on the drug war and
democracy from Latin America".
Peak
Oil and the Transformation of Finance A talk
delivered by Chris Sanders at the Pio Manzú Centre
International Conference, Rimini – October 28-30,
2005. Looks at the financial implications of
declining oil production. Includes overview of how
the USA has benefitted financially since WWII, and
how badly it is placed now as regards its debt and
balance of payments. Concludes that "some globalists
argue that we have an opportunity, that it is a
sensible thing to make things 12,000 miles away in
China for sale in the United States ......This in
fact does not prove anything of the sort, and is
akin to arguing that to solve a problem we must
create a bigger one. Higher fuel prices in fact
argue for moving production closer to consumption,
for shifting agriculture away from an industrial
model of primary utility to the chemical and
agribusiness industries.....These arguments are
frequently couched in terms of free markets and free
trade, but in fact they are based on quite the
opposite. Free markets have been abandoned for all
intents and purposes in favour of managed trade
based on massive and historically unprecedented
manipulation of exchange rates, which is what has
allowed the United States to build such a huge
foreign debt in the first place. This is at bottom a
political matter, not an economic or scientific one.
The present attempt to prop up the status quo by war
is doomed to fail to achieve anything but to expose
the real weakness of the states at the centre of the
system, as the military failure of the United States
in Iraq and Afghanistan is proving daily."
Peakoil.com
is "published and maintained by private US citizens
in an effort to educate and promote awareness of
global hydrocarbon depletion" - i.e. the fact that
we are running out of oil.
Rense.com
Jeff Rense has a US radio show. Lots of good
stuff here, e.g. on Henry Kissinger, 9/11/2001, war
in Iraq.
Seven
steps to green your office
Why Britain Is Going To War
Well-researched article by John Smith (on separate
page on this site) written in March 2003. Essential
reading for background - UK involvement in Iraq
since the 1920's including bombing Kurdish villages,
CIA involvement in the 1963 coup and with Saddam
Hussein, the economic interests involved, the
forging of the UK-USA "special relationship"
....Disclaimer; I do not share John's Marxist
perspective on some matters of interpretation.
You can also download the
article in pdf format.
ZNet
"A community for people committed to social change".
Includes articles by Noam Chomsky, John Pilger,
Robert Fisk and many more.
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ORGANISATIONS AND CAMPAIGNS
Amnesty
International
Baku
Ceyhan Campaign BP wants taxpayer's money to
finance a huge new oil pipeline from the Caspian Sea,
through Azerbaijan, Georgia and Turkey, to the
Mediterranean. The Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline would
cause serious human rights abuses, and would rob local
people of their land and livelihoods.
Britain-Vietnam
Friendship Society The BVFS works to raise
awareness and funds for the Vietnamese people,
especially those suffering from the effects of Agent
Orange. If a non-Western country had done what the US
did with Agent Orange it would be called chemical
warfare, and the perpetrators would be called war
criminals - have I read that there are certain
countries that Henry Kissinger cannot visit for fear
of arrest?
Corporate
Watch "is a small independent not-for-profit
research and publishing group which undertakes
research on the social and environmental impact of
large corporations, particularly multinationals. We
aim to expose the mechanisms by which corporations
function and the detrimental effects they have on
society and the environment as an inevitable result of
their current legal structure". Their articles are in
more user-friendly language than that blurb! Tesco,
London Olympic Games bid, Iraq war profiteering, the
European Directive on Services, Microsoft....
Friends
Of The Earth England, Wales, N.Ireland
Green Party
(England and Wales) Homepage
Medical
Foundation for the Care of Victims of Torture.
Sheffield
Friends Of The Earth
Sheffield
Green Party which also organises the Sheffield
Green Fair.
Trade
Justice Movement
POLITICAL HISTORY For
less obviously "political" links, see HISTORY
The
First New Dealer Review by Murray N. Rothbard
of "Herbert Hoover: A Public Life", by David Burner,
first published in 1979. Shows Hoover as precursor
of the corporate state established under Roosevelt
and leading to the "military-industrial complex"
which has run America since World War 2.
The
Great War Retold review by Ralph Raico of "The
Western Front: Battle Ground and Home Front in the
First World War" by Hunt Tooley. Looks at the roots
of World War I, the interaction between the war on
the ground and domestic policies, the growth of
state power which remained after the war, and more.
The
Hampton Roads Peace Conference During the War
Between the States Argues that there is clear
evidence that what we in the UK normally call the
American Civil War, was in no way fought in order to
free the slaves, but rather to protect the economic
interest of the North. Quotes Robert E. Lee re the
"consolidation of the states into one vast republic,
sure to be aggressive abroad and despotic at home."
I.e. this was an important stage in the growth of
the dominating US government, and, eventually, the
American Empire.
How Did
Iraq and the United States Become Enemies?
History News Network article by Prof. Buzzanco.
The
Largest Covert Operation in CIA History review
by Chalmers Johnson of "Charlie Wilson's War" by
George Crile, about the US funding and arming of
Islamic fundamentalist moujahedeen in Afghanistan -
approved by President Carter on July 3, 1979, six
months before the Soviet invasion.
The
negative return economy: a discourse on America’s
black budget "The United States government has
operated a secret budgeting and spending program for
decades outside the framework of the American
Constitution... The turn of the 19th and 20th
centuries saw the consolidation of American industry
and banking under the control of a restrictive
cartel that for all practical purposes assumed
control of the economy. The great magnates of
American industry and finance in the late nineteenth
century were superb practitioners of covert
operations. Witness to this fact are the
institutions set up during the twentieth century
through which their descendants maintain control.
This paper is a summary of the structure of the
American political economy which fits the facts
better than the official model...." Article at Sanders
Research Associates.
Not
So Fast, Sen. Lott Eric Margolis' 1998 article
advises against action to overthrow Saddam Hussein,
and lists many previous US interventions - Nasser,
Saddam, Sadat and even Ghaddafi were all helped to
power by the CIA, though some of them then had the
cheek not to act in US interests.
Regime
Change: How the CIA put Saddam's Party in Power,
1963 "the CIA not only engineered the putsch
but also supplied the list of people to be
eliminated once power was secured."
A
Rich Man's War and a Poor Man's Fight review
by George C. Leef of book by Jeanette Keith, showing
that there was deep opposition among the Amercian
pulbic to US involvement in World War 1. In
response, the Wilson administration passed the
Sedition Act to make it illegal for people to
denounce the war.
Victorian
Political History: An Overview
When Democracy Failed;
The Warnings Of History Excellent article by
Thom Hartmann (on separate page on this site) on
chilling parallels - e.g. terrorism as a
justification for war and draconian national
security legislation - between now and 70 years ago.
VARIOUS
911Truth.org
is "a campaign to educate the public about the Sept.
11th coverup and inspire popular pressure to
overturn the "incompetence theory" and expose the
truth surrounding the events of 9/11 before the
November 2004 election; namely, that elements within
the U.S. government must have been complicit, or
worse, for the attacks to happen the way they did".
Anomalous evidence
.....Building 7 of the WTC, rubbled without even
being hit ....A pattern of secrecy, denial, and
retribution for those in the FBI, CIA, and
administration who warned about the pending
attacks....Unusual patterns of debris, making it
appear that Flight 93 was shot down, despite
official government reports....Insider stock trades
made millions off selling American and United short,
trade and were not fully investigated...Advance
warnings to key politicians and business leaders not
to fly that day...The quick exit of the extended Bin
Laden family from the country with full governmental
protection.....the Pakistan ISI wired $100,000 to
Mohammed Atta, one of the orchestrators, around the
time ISI chief Gen. Mahmoud met American political
leaders days before the attack......
Anti-Apathy
"Because waking up is hard to do".
Bibliography:
Military Use of Depleted Uranium
The
Corporation website for the film of the same
name, which I highly recommend. - graphic examples
of businesses ruining the environment, paying low
wages to workers in poor countries who make goods
which then sell for much more in rich countries,
suppressing unfavourable news, etc. Also some bits
on how people fight back. Website includes details
of where the film is showing, and a good links page
to other relevant activist sites.
EcoCities.Net
Index of over a thousand eco-friendly web sites plus
resources.
Global Rich
List How rich are you? Enter your annual
income into the box and hit ‘show me the money’. "We
gauge how rich we are by looking upwards at those
who have more than us. This makes us feel poor".
This site helps help people understand, in real
terms, where they stand globally, and realise that
most of us (who can use the net) are in the
privileged minority."
Iraq
Body Count Counts civilian deaths. There was a
similar project for the war in Afghanistan - no
doubt you read about it in your daily newspaper.....
Jihadica
Documenting the global jihad. "A clearinghouse
for materials related to militant, transnational
Sunni Islamism, commonly known as
Jihadism."
The
Political Compass Take the test and find where
you are - not just on the inadequate left-right
spectrum, which puts Stalin and Gandhi in the same
bracket, but on a more comprehensive scale.
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HISTORY For more
"political" history links see POLITICAL HISTORY
The
Electronic Text Corpus of Sumerian Literature
(ETCSL). Use incredible modern technology to read
letters and documents over 4000 years old! Based at
Oxford University. Over 350 literary works
composed in the Sumerian language in ancient
Mesopotamia (modern Iraq) during the late third and
early second millennia BCE. Sumerian texts in
transliteration, English prose translations and
bibliographical information for each composition.
Stalinism,
The Folk Revival And Bob Dylan
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PHILOSOPHY & RELIGION
Do-It-Yourself
Deity The Philosopher's Magazine has assembled
put together a computer-modelling virtual
environment in which to test the plausibility of
different conceptions of God. You are invited to
select from a list the attributes which you believe
God must have. Metaphysical engineers will then
model this conception of God to check out its
plausibility.
Flame
Out mainly concerned with combatting religious
homophobia, but also quite a lot on the other
dangers of militant fundamentalist Islam, pages on
fraudulent, hypocritical or abusing gurus, and a
"good guru guide". Unfortunately descends to tabloid
name-calling and abuse in its "Enemies of the
People" section.
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