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The real reason Obama is not making much progress

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0800

The Independent - By Johann Hari - Nov. 20 (Opinion) - So far, Obama has tried to co-opt the corporations into his agenda by ensuring they will profit from any changes, but this inevitably waters down the proposals, often to the point of uselessness. The Cap and Trade legislation before Congress, for example, will barely limit carbon emissions at all because it has been gutted to please the polluters.

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World on course for catastrophic 6 degree C rise, reveal scientists

Wed, 18 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0800

The Independent - By Steve Connor, Michael McCarthy - Nov. 18 (News Report) - The world is now firmly on course for the worst-case scenario in terms of climate change, with average global temperatures rising by up to 6C by the end of the century, leading scientists said yesterday. Such a rise – which would be much higher nearer the poles – would have cataclysmic and irreversible consequences for the Earth, making large parts of the planet uninhabitable and threatening the basis of human civilisation.

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Toxic munitions 'may be cause' of baby deaths and deformities in Fallujah

Mon, 16 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0800

The Independent - By David Randall - Nov. 16 (News Report) - Evidence was growing this weekend that babies born in the Iraqi city of Fallujah – scene in 2004 of one of the few set-piece battles of the invasion – are exhibiting high rates of mortality and birth defects.

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Renouncing Islamism: To the brink and back again

Mon, 16 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0800

The Independent - By Johann Hari - Nov. 16 (Opinion) - In the mosques across the city, I hear a fringe of young men talk dreamily of flocking to Afghanistan to "resist". Yet this whisper never has an immigrant accent. It shares my pronunciations, my cultural references, and my national anthem. Beneath the beards and the burqas, there is an English voice.

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Accept the facts – and end this futile 'war on drugs'

Tue, 10 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0800

The Independent - By Johann Hari - Nov. 10 (Opinion) - The prohibitionists are – from the best intentions and the highest motives – unleashing a catastrophe. Human beings have been finding ways to get stoned or high since we lived in caves. In our attempt to end this natural impulse, we have created a problem worse than drug use itself.

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Britain rules out climate treaty at summit

Fri, 06 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0800

The Independent - By Michael McCarthy - Nov. 06 (News Report) - Although there are various stumbling blocks, there is no doubt that the continued lack of a serious American offer on cutting its greenhouse gas emissions and providing climate finance for the developing nations – the bill which might provide them is stuck in the US Senate – is the principle obstacle to progress. "Copenhagen is one of the most important meetings in human history. But the politicians seem determined to blow it," said Joss Garman, climate campaigner for Greenpeace.

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We broke the law, admits CIA agent convicted of rendition

Fri, 06 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0800

The Independent - By David Usborne - Nov. 06 (News Report) - In an interview earlier this year with an Italian newspaper, Mr Lady was candid about the seizure of the cleric. "Of course it was an illegal operation," the newspaper quoted him. "But that's our job. We're at war against terrorism".

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America is performing its familiar role of propping up a dictator

Wed, 04 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0800

rawa.org - By Robert Fisk - Nov. 04 (Opinion) - it's part of a dreary pattern. US forces were participating in a civil war in Vietnam while claiming they were supporting democracy and the sovereignty of the country. In Lebanon in 1982, they claimed to be supporting the "democratically" elected President Amin Gemayel and took the Christian Maronite side in the civil war. And now, after Disneyworld elections, they are on the Karzai-government side against the Pashtun villagers of southern Afghanistan among whom the Taliban live.

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Oscar-winning director: why I'm leaving Scientology

Tue, 27 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

The Independent - By Guy Adams - Oct. 27 (News Report) - Haggis, who wrote Crash, Million Dollar Baby, and the last two James Bond films also registered his anger at the church's alleged "disconnection" policy, complaining that it encouraged his wife to live estranged from her parents. His letter was sent to Scientology's official spokesman, Tommy Davis, in August. But it leaked to the Hollywood press this weekend, bringing further tricky publicity to the already-embattled organisation.

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Caught in the crossfire of war against the Taliban

Fri, 23 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

The Independent - Oct. 23 (News Report) - Gul Hassan is incandescent with rage. As the Pakistan military mounted its most ambitious anti-Taliban offensive yet, the farmer and his family were not ready. "Bombs were falling all around us," he recalls, gesturing animatedly. "We were very scared. We didn't know what was going to happen to us."

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The three fallacies that have driven the war in Afghanistan

Wed, 21 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

The Independent - By Johann Hari - Oct. 21 (Opinion) - A bloody escalation in the war is more likely to fuel jihadism than thwart it. If Obama is serious about undermining this vile fanatical movement, it would be much wiser to take the hundreds of billions he is currently squandering on chasing after a hundred fighters in the Afghan mountains and redeploy it. Spend it instead on beefing up policing and intelligence, and on building a network of schools across Pakistan and other flash-points in the Muslim world, so parents there have an alternative to the fanatical madrassahs that churn out bin Laden-fodder. The American people will be far safer if the world sees them building schools for Muslim kids instead of dropping bombs on them.

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Pressure piles on Karzai as Afghan waiting game drags on

Mon, 19 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

The Independent - By Julius Cavendish - Oct. 19 (News Report) - Yet even hardened cynics say they have been surprised by the level of electoral fraud. Angry and disenchanted, they say a result – any result – would at least let people know what is happening and enable them to get on with their lives. A report by Oxfam said that corruption and incompetence at all levels of government have "fuelled frustrations and undermined the legitimacy of the government in the eyes of many Afghans". Under Mr Karzai, security has worsened, opium production has boomed and initial progress on women's rights has been largely eroded.

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From North Carolina, a model of how to transform education

Fri, 16 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

The Independent - By Johann Hari - Oct. 16 (News Analysis) - In small numbers, in an ordered environment, these poor children can quickly be brought up to the level of the rest, and indeed exceed them in many cases. But when they form the majority of a school's pupils, the teachers can't cope, discipline breaks down, and learning stops. A school for poor children soon becomes a poor school.

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Decline of a tribe: and then there were five

Mon, 12 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

The Independent - By The Huffington Post News Editors - Oct. 12 (News Report) - They are the last survivors: all that's left of a once-vibrant civilisation which created its own religion and language, and gave special names to everything from the creatures of the rainforest to the stars of the night sky. Just five people represent the entire remaining population of the Akuntsu, an ancient Amazonian tribe which a generation ago boasted several hundred members, but has been destroyed by a tragic mixture of hostility and neglect.

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We must stop the 'vulture funds' that feed on the world's poor

Fri, 18 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0700

The Independent - By Johann Hari - Sep. 18 (Opinion) - Would you ever march up to a destitute African who is shivering with Aids and demand he "pay back" tens of thousands of pounds he didn't borrow – with interest? I only ask because this is in effect happening, here, in British and American courts, time after time. Some of the richest people in the world are making profit margins of 500 per cent by shaking money out of the poorest people in the world – for debt they did not incur.

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Republicans, religion and the triumph of unreason

Wed, 19 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0700

The Independent - By Johann Hari - Aug. 19 (Opinion) - This tendency to simply deny inconvenient facts and invent a fantasy world isn't new; it's only becoming more heightened. It ran through the Bush years like a dash of bourbon in water. When it became clear that Saddam Hussein had no weapons of mass destruction, the US right simply claimed they had been shipped to Syria. When the scientific evidence for man-made global warming became unanswerable, they claimed – as one Republican congressman put it – that it was "the greatest hoax in human history", and that all the world's climatologists were "liars". The American media then presents itself as an umpire between "the rival sides", as if they both had evidence behind them.

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Millions Of Afghan Women Will Be Denied Vote Due To Female Staff Shortage

Mon, 17 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0700

The Independent - By Jerome Starkey, Kim Sengupta - Aug. 17 (News Report) - Millions of Afghan women will be denied their chance to vote in presidential elections this week because there aren't enough female officials to staff the women-only polling stations. A desperate shortage of female staff is threatening to undermine the legitimacy of the elections, which are the pinnacle of western-led efforts to build a peaceful democracy. Strict cultural norms mean women can’t vote in male-run stations. Women’s activists said the Independent Election Commission (IEC), which is organising the polls, still needs to recruit 13,000 women before Thursday’s elections.

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No quick fix when it comes to training the Afghan army

Mon, 17 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0700

The Independent - By Kim Sengupta - Aug. 17 (Opinion) - The training of the Afghan security forces is a key element in the West's exit strategy from Afghanistan and there is considerable focus on whether this is actually being achieved

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The brutal truth about America’s healthcare

Sat, 15 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0700

The Independent - Aug. 15 (Special Report) - They came in their thousands, queuing through the night to secure one of the coveted wristbands offering entry into a strange parallel universe where medical care is a free and basic right and not an expensive luxury. Some of these Americans had walked

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UK output continues to decline as recession ends in France and Germany

Thu, 13 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0700

The Independent - Aug. 13 (Editorial) - David Buik of BGC Partners said Germany and France would recover more quickly because of their prowess in exporting - contrasting with the UK's emphasis on services and banking. "If one ignores manufacturing output and industrial production ... financial chickens come home to roost," he said.

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Mr Obama fights back

Thu, 13 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0700

The Independent - Aug. 13 (Opinion) - Mr Obama is fighting back doughtily, as he must. It would be tragic if the reform agenda of a President whose election showed America at its open-hearted best should be derailed so soon by arguments that epitomise America at its selfish worst.

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Wish you weren't here: The devastating effects of the new colonialists

Sat, 08 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0700

The Independent - Aug. 08 (Special Report) - A new breed of colonialism is rampaging across the world, with rich nations buying up the natural resources of developing countries that can ill afford to sell. Some staggering deals have already been done, says Paul Vallely, but angry locals are now trying to stop the landgrabs.

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Lying about Iraq made me quit, press officer claims

Thu, 06 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0700

The Independent - By Kim Sengupta - Aug. 06 (News) - Having to peddle "government lies" about the safety of soldiers in Iraq led to a Ministry of Defence press officer suffering post-traumatic stress disorder, an employment tribunal will hear.

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Are wind farms a health risk? US scientist identifies 'wind turbine syndrome'

Sun, 02 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0700

The Independent - By Margareta Pagano - Aug. 02 (News Report) - Living too close to wind turbines can cause heart disease, tinnitus, vertigo, panic attacks, migraines and sleep deprivation, according to groundbreaking research to be published later this year by an American doctor. Dr Nina Pierpont, a leading New York paediatrician, has been studying the symptoms displayed by people living near wind turbines in the US, the UK, Italy, Ireland and Canada for more than five years. Her findings have led her to confirm what she has identified as a new health risk, wind turbine syndrome (WTS). This is the disruption or abnormal stimulation of the inner ear's vestibular system by turbine infrasound and low-frequency noise, the most distinctive feature of which is a group of symptoms which she calls visceral vibratory vestibular disturbance, or VVVD. They cause problems ranging from internal pulsation, quivering, nervousness, fear, a compulsion to flee, chest tightness and tachycardia – increased heart rate. Turbine noise can also trigger nightmares and other disorders in children as well as harm cognitive development in the young, she claims. However, Dr Pierpont also makes it clear that not all people living close to turbines are susceptible.

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The insanity and enduring racism of the American right

Thu, 30 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0700

The Independent - By Matthew Norman - Jul. 30 (Opinion) - As we gloomily maintain the deathbed vigil for a Government whose end cannot come soon enough, it is the opposite end of the life-cycle that fixates US politics. Fittingly enough, on the eve of the nine-month anniversary of Barack Obama's election,

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