Bin Laden makes nuclear threat

OSAMA BIN LADEN claims today that he has nuclear weapons and is ready to use them.

“We have chemical and nuclear weapons as a deterrent and if America used them against us we reserve the right to use them,” two Pakistani newspapers quote him as saying.
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Al-Qaeda nukes may have reached US shores

Pakistani and American investigators converge that Osama bin Laden’s Al Qaeda network may have successfully transported several nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons of mass destruction to the United States, The Frontier Post learnt Friday.
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Globalisation alert

September 11 and another beginning of history

On rare occasions, a student in my classes on the Global Economy, troubled by my analysis of imperialism, will challenge me: "Why are you here if you dislike the United States so much?"

I explain that this is the most rational thing for me to do. I ended up in United States after I had tried living in a number of countries on four continents. I tried living in Palestine, but I was expelled in 1948 with 800,000 other Palestinians. I moved to Korea, but had to leave because of the Korean War. My next destination was the democratic Iran of Mosaddeq, but that democracy was overthrown by the CIA in 1953. Then, I tried the Congo, Chile, Nicaragua, Guatemala, but each time, these countries were destabilised by the CIA. It took me a while to figure out that the only country where I would be safe from the CIA is the United States. Sadly, after September 11, I am not sure that this is true anymore.
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This global capitalist system follows a powerful logic. It is a logic that creates deepening economic, social and military inequalities. The capitalists in a handful of core states - based in the most advanced capitalist countries - use their economic power and military might to create and dominate world markets; they do this by weakening, controlling, or colonising the weaker states. This ensures that capital, technology and skills accumulate in the core countries, while the countries at the periphery provide mostly cheap labour and cheap resources.
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In concluding, I wish to invite all Americans - the most highly educated people anywhere in the world - to reflect on the conditions that forced them, more than 200 years ago, to rebel against the legal and established authority of Britain. This is how The Declaration of Independence justified this rebellion:

"… when a long Train of Abuses and Usurpation, pursuing invariably the same Object, evinces a Design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their Right, it is their Duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future Security. Such has been the patient Sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the Necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government."

Do you suppose that the oppressed peoples of the world today have the same right, the same duty, to follow the same line of reasoning, and carry it to the same conclusion - their own freedom?
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thanks to BookNotes

And how might the advanced capitalist countries control the weaker states? Remember the WTO?

WTO chiefs brush developing countries aside

WTO Declaration, Slap in Africa's Face

Trading card alert

AMERICAN CRUSADE 2001
TRADING CARDS

World affairs today can sure be confusing!

President Bush tried his bestest to simplify the picture as Good vs. Evil, but it's still a jumble! Who knew all those crazy Dorkistan countries even existed?! Now The Infinite Jest rides to the rescue with a set of educational trading cards.
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thanks to BookNotes

Merry Prankster alert

Author Kesey in critical condition

Novelist Ken Kesey was in critical condition Thursday in the intensive care unit at Sacred Heart Medical Center after surgery two weeks ago to remove a tumor from his liver.
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thanks to MetaFilter