Top Scoops: Comment & Opinion Digest Oct. 12-16

Monday, 16 October 2006, 2:14 pm
Article: Alastair Thompson

SCOOP COMMENT & OPINION:
Mexico: Julie Webb-Pullman Reports From Oaxaca On Mexico's Dirty War
United States: Why It's So Hard To Make Good Things Happen
Israel/Palestine: Will Starvation Achieve Israel's Palestinian Policy
Iraq: Bringing Iraq's 655,000 Casualties Back To The White House
North Korea: Some Things You Didn't Lean About The Korean War On M*A*S*H
Terror: Toni Solo Reports An Outbreak Of Civil Rights Illogic At Labour's UK Party Conf.
MORE SCOOP COMMENT AND OPINION:

Mexico: Julie Webb-Pullman Reports From Oaxaca On Mexico's Dirty War

- Yesterday in Oaxaca, delegates to the APPO National and International Forum were outraged when news came that one of their members had just died, after being shot in the head by police in the early hours of that morning. See... Webb-Pullman: Oaxaca - Another Day, Another Death [1] & Julie Webb-Pullman: Adios Ruiz, Bienvenidos AEPO [2] MORE NEWS FROM MEXICO:

[1] - http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0610/S00231.htm
[2] - http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0610/S00173.htm
[3] - http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0610/S00221.htm
[4] - http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0610/S00188.htm

United States: Why It's So Hard To Make Good Things Happen

- This is the part of history I don't like. Not the part where people don't know what's happening to them nor the part where they try to do something about it. There's plenty to do in both those parts. No, it's the part where people know there's something wrong but nobody knows what to do and how to do it and so they just sit around or go through the same old motions just as vulnerable as when they didn't know what was going on only now they're also mad and frustrated and confused and nothing happens even though everyone wants it to. See…Sam Smith: Running Out Of Change [1]

[1] - http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0610/S00168.htm

Israel/Palestine: Will Starvation Achieve Israel's Palestinian Policy

- IS IT possible to force a whole people to submit to foreign occupation by starving it? That is, certainly, an interesting question. So interesting, indeed, that the governments of Israel and the United States, in close cooperation with Europe, are now engaged in a rigorous scientific experiment in order to obtain a definitive answer. The laboratory for the experiment is the Gaza Strip, and the guinea pigs are the million and a quarter Palestinians living there. See… Uri Avnery: The Great Experiment [1] MORE COMMENT ON THE HOLY LAND:

[1] - http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0610/S00226.htm
[2] - http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0610/S00166.htm
[3] - http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0610/S00203.htm
[4] - http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0610/S00206.htm
[5] - http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0610/S00200.htm
[6] - http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0610/S00170.htm

Iraq: Bringing Iraq's 655,000 Casualties Back To The White House

- Two years ago, a team of epidemiologists at the John Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Heath in Baltimore published a study in the Lancet estimating that the US invasion and occupation of Iraq had led to approximately one hundred thousand excess deaths. While the study caused a storm of outrage among supporters of the war, its methodology and conclusions were generally regarded as robust and repeatable. The authors of the study have now done exactly that, repeating their sampling with a greater number of clusters. Their midpoint estimate for the number of excess deaths is now 655,000 . See... No Right Turn: Pyramid Of Skulls [1] MORE ON THE IRAQ CASUALTY CALCULATIONS:

[1] - http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0610/S00192.htm
[2] - http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0610/S00191.htm
[3] - http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0610/S00217.htm
[4] - http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0610/S00225.htm
[5] - http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0610/S00204.htm

North Korea: Some Things You Didn't Lean About The Korean War On M*A*S*H

- North Korea lost thirty percent of its population as a result of US led bombings in the 1950s. US military sources confirm that 20 percent of north koreas' population was killed off over a three period of intensive bombings. See... Brian S. Willson: Korea and the "Axis of Evil" [1] MORE NORTH KOREA COMMENT:

[1] - http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0610/S00212.htm
[2] - http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0610/S00190.htm
[3] - http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0610/S00189.htm
[4] - http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0610/S00187.htm
[5] - http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0610/S00172.htm
[6] - http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0610/S00171.htm
[7] - http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0610/S00232.htm

Terror: Toni Solo Reports An Outbreak Of Civil Rights Illogic At Labour's UK Party Conf.

- At the recent Labour Party conference in Britain, Tony Blair led a one minute standing ovation for Home Secretary John Reid for a speech in which Reid declared "And let's be clear. It cannot be right that the rights of individual suspected terrorist be placed above the rights, life and limb of the British people. It's wrong. Full stop. No ifs, no buts. It's just plain wrong." This is the same logic he inherited from his predecessor Charles Clarke which led to the killing of the innocent Brazilian "terrorist suspect" Charles de Menezes and the subsequent return to duty of the police officers who shot him dead. An officer responsible for the botched operation was recently promoted. See... T.Solo: Globalization, Terror, Virtual Colonialism [1]

[1] - http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0610/S00208.htm

MORE SCOOP COMMENT AND OPINION:

[1] - http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0610/S00229.htm
[2] - http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0610/S00228.htm
[3] - http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0610/S00193.htm
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[9] - http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0610/S00194.htm
[10] - http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0610/S00186.htm
[11] - http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0610/S00220.htm
[12] - http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0610/S00219.htm
[13] - http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0610/S00218.htm
[14] - http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0610/S00216.htm
[15] - http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0610/S00205.htm
[16] - http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0610/S00215.htm
[17] - http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0610/S00214.htm
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[19] - http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0610/S00202.htm
[20] - http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0610/S00201.htm
[21] - http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0610/S00195.htm
[22] - http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0610/S00185.htm
[23] - http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0610/S00167.htm
[24] - http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0610/S00165.htm
[25] - http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0610/S00160.htm
[26] - http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0610/S00158.htm

ENDS

© Scoop Media

Alastair Thompson

Scoop Publisher

Alastair Thompson is the co-founder of Scoop. He is of Scottish and Irish extraction and from Wellington, New Zealand. Alastair has 24 years experience in the media, at the Dominion, National Business Review, North & South magazine, Straight Furrow newspaper and online since 1997. He is the winner of several journalism awards for business and investigative work.

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