mostly nuggets

blessed britons

Robin Cook's first trip abroad included Indonesia, where he shook hands warmly with Suharto...
[He] knew of course. Amnesty filled cabinets with evidence of Suharto's grisly record. Milosevic and Saddam Hussein were wimps by comparison. Shortly before Cook flew in, an exhaustive investigation by the foreign affairs committee of the Australian parliament concluded that Suharto's troops had caused the deaths of "at least" 200,000 East Timorese, a third of the population. In New Labour's first year in office, Britain was the biggest weapons supplier to Indonesia.

— John Pilger

Spoils of a Massacre

mad world

It was a case of getting seriously unjust desserts for one Plane Stupid activist last week. On Sunday 8th, cycling along a cycle path close to Heathrow in West London, she was randomly stopped and searched by police for no apparent reason. Although not carrying anything apart from a recipe for avocado ice cream and a cycle map, she was arrested under Section 58 of the Terrorism Act 2000 and held, along with another campaigner, for over thirty hours before being bailed on charges of conspiracy to cause a public nuisance. Must have been the threat of green ice cream.

— Schnews

Issue 598

the cuban difference

Submitted by antarchi on August 11, 2007 - 00:36.

In Cuba, life expectancy is 6 years longer than the rest of the continent. Under-five mortality is 4 times below the average. If Latin America could show the same results as Cuba, 250,000 children's lives could be saved every year. There are 5.7 million working children in Latin America. For the whole continent, there are 50 million street children. None of these situations are to be found in Cuba, where all children go to school.