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.

mad world

On 25 October 2005, [Milan] Rai was arrested opposite Downing Street with vegan chef Maya Evans, after the pair read out the names of Iraqis and British service personnel who had been killed in Iraq since the 2003 invasion. Mr Rai was subsequently convicted of organising an "unauthorised" demonstration within 1km of Parliament, fined £350 and ordered to pay £150 in costs.

In May 2007 the pair were convicted again, this time for organising and participating in an "unauthorised" demonstration within 1km of Parliament, namely the "No More Fallujahs" weekend of nonviolent resistance marking the 2nd anniversary of the US/UK onslaught on the Iraqi city of Fallujah. At least 550 women and children are believed to have been killed during the latter attack, during which US forces used white phosphorus - a substance that burns down to the bone on contact with human flesh - as a weapon.

— From Justice not Vengeance

new york diners and the irrawady delta

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Submitted by antarchi on June 7, 2008 - 20:20.

it seems safe to estimate that the entire disposable wealth of the Irrawaddy Delta before the storm, that of its 3.5 million residents, could have been less than that of one table-full of diners at New York's Four Seasons Grill Room...

Working with figures from Forbes magazine, the IMF, and the UNDP, it's possible to estimate that there are between three hundred and a thousand individuals whose accumulated wealth is so vast that any one of them alone could pay each person in the Irrawaddy Delta for a year, and in the case of the richest, like Warren Buffett, could do it for six decades running and still have billions left.

— Allan Nairn

, in Drawing your last breath hungry (June 2008)