Recent News & Opinion

"In just five years, Bush has challenged more than 750 new laws, by far a record for any president, while becoming the first president since Thomas Jefferson to stay so long in office without issuing a veto." [more]

"Gennady Yefstafiyev, a former general in Russia's Foreign Intelligence Service, wrote: 'The US's long term goals in Iran are obvious: to engineer the downfall of the current regime; to establish control over Iran's oil and gas; and to use its territory as the shortest route for the transportation of hydrocarbons under US control from the regions of Central Asia and the Caspian Sea bypassing Russia and China. This is not to mention Iran's intrinsic military and strategic significance.'" [more]

"Nothing is therefore more important than a revision of the concept of security as the basic principle of state politics. European and American politicians finally have to consider the catastrophic consequences of uncritical use of this figure of thought." [more]

"Taken together Virilio's grey ecology and 'hyper-vigilance regarding immediate perception' constitute a bold reaffirmation not only the life of the planet, but our own lives, our memories, the anima of our souls; everything that distinguishes us from mere automata." [more]

"Democracy thus inscribing itself in polls and consensus necessarily arouses the philosopher’s critical suspicions. For philosophy, since Plato, means breaking with opinion polls. Philosophy is supposed to scrutinize everything that is spontaneously considered as 'normal.'" [more]

Thus, it is simply not true that voting is considered to be an expression of the freedom of opinion. For in reality it is subject to what I call the principle of the homogeneous: candidacy is available to anyone, but to be elected to a place pre-coded for potential power you have to conform to a certain norm. [more]

There is a growing conviction among members of the United States military, and in the international community, that President Bush’s ultimate goal in the nuclear confrontation with Iran is regime change. [more]

"Marcos has said the rebels will embark on a cross-country, pre-election tour aimed at uniting workers, students and activists around a leftwing agenda. The new phase of Zapatista action 'is not to draw lines, is not to promote the armed fight in another state', Marcos said. He added: 'It is to go and ask the people what they think and how their problems are being resolved.'" [more]

"I looked at IMC sites based in cities where I knew there were actions, and found nothing. Eventually, I found what I was looking for—on the BBC. The experience, unfortunately, is not uncommon. Each time I try and find news among the Indymedia drivel, I ask myself the same question: What happens when—in our attempts not to hate the media but to be it—we end up hating the media we’ve become?" [more]

"Now, suddenly, in June 2005, the Zapatistas proclaimed a red alert, calling all their communities to leave their villages and come into the forest for a massive "consultation" of the base. The reason? They said they could no longer afford simply to wait indefinitely as the Mexican state ignored the promises they had made a decade earlier in the truce agreements. ... The Zapatistas declared that they had ended the first phase of their struggle, and that it was time to move on to a second stage, one that would be political and not military." [more]

"The Eco-village was the epicenter of brilliant tactical coordination. This was a result of months of reconnaissance work and a chaotic yet functional plan of blockading that provided both fluidity and agility. As soon as a report would come in that one blockade was breaking or being threatened by the police, the transportation team would have vehicles ready to take people to the location and reinforce the blockade." [more]

"Horizontalism is not an ideology, however, it is a relationship — a way of relating to one another in a directly democratic way while at the same time creating through the process of discovery. What has resulted is the creation of an amazing complex of movements, all linked." [more]

"northern Arabized minority groups led by Bashir may junk the peace accord and attempt a power grab. In fact, some Islamic fundamentalists have issued fatwas against anyone renting places or giving support to the SPLAs in the capital city." [more]

"The Minutemen left California as a failure, drawing few people to their project while encountering strong resistance from a broad coalition of opposition." [more]

"Once you sign a plea you cannot appeal it. I was threatened with 20 years in prison under an additional terrorist enhancement if I didn't take a plea, and I didn't have the financial resources to acquire the appropriate legal council for trial. I was railroaded." [more]

"'Every single thing the U.S. did led to civil war,' says Christian Parenti, author of 'The Freedom,' his account of occupied Iraq. 'The failure of reconstruction, the firing of the army, the blatant theft of Iraqi oil money, the use of the Badr Brigade, the use of Peshmerga, the use of death squads, the use of indiscriminate detention and torture, the destruction of Falluja and other towns in Al Anbar province,' explains Parenti, created a raging insurgency and sparked civil war. [more]

"When former military liberation movements come to power, the very 'command character' that ensured success against the enemy tends to become the structural flaw which impedes their building of the democratic institutions required by civil society ... The much-celebrated attainment of formal peace with the north and, maybe eventually, independence for the south, should not be equated with liberation, and certainly not with the creation of lasting democracy." [more]

"U.S. broadcast media are failing to provide even minimal coverage of the ongoing crisis — some say genocide — in Darfur, Sudan, according to a new report, which concludes that media fixation with celebrity, as well as the Iraq war, is crowding out news of important events that deserve global attention 10 years after the genocide in Rwanda." [more]

Three seemingly unrelated recent events highlight the imperial nature of the Bush administration's foreign policy: U.S. F-16 sales to Pakistan, the creation of an office in the State Department to plan for future U.S military interventions in developing nations and the indefinite detention in Guantanamo prison of a German man held on the basis of secret evidence that even U.S. intelligence disputes... [more]

And the recent suggestions of the presidential commission on intelligence make the 9/11 commission's appetite for recommendations look restrained. The presidential commission went on a federal feeding frenzy and recommended stuffing the intelligence community with many new offices and organizations. [more]

"Under the Bush administration, the federal government has aggressively used a well-established tool of public relations: the prepackaged, ready-to-serve news report that major corporations have long distributed to TV stations to pitch everything from headache remedies to auto insurance. Many were subsequently broadcast on local stations across the country without any acknowledgement of the government's role in their production. [more]

"The Pentagon is now convinced that air strikes on Syria have become necessary to overthrow the Assad regime, liberate Lebanon and stop support of insurgents waging a guerrilla war against American forces in Iraq as well as Palestinian militants against Israel, the U.S.-sponsored Al Hurra TV network says." [more]

"But ad rates are set by circulation figures: As circulation drops, so too will the amount papers can charge advertisers. / The result can be a vicious cycle. As advertising declines, newsrooms find it more difficult to afford overseas bureaus, extensive national operations and other editorial additions that help produce an authoritative daily report. As they cut back, they risk sending readers elsewhere for news, leading to further circulation declines and lower ad rates." [more]

"The Israel Defense Forces recently began to distribute 'resident' stickers to West Bank settlers to be affixed to their cars' windshields. The stickers are intended to allow settlers to drive quickly through army checkpoints along the Green Line." [more]

"Or ratchet it way up and consider the possibility that, the next time he goes in for surgery to replace his current ICD, Vice President Dick Cheney upgrades to an implanted device that automatically transmits data to his cardiologist and permits the physician to remotely tweak the Veep’s ticker." [more]

"The Bush administration has told a federally funded conference on LGBT suicide to remove the words 'gay,' 'lesbian,' 'bisexual' and 'transgender' from its material. [...] 'It is incredible, the venom from these people,' said spokesperson Mark Weber who added that the name change was 'only a suggestion'. / But, when pressed by the Post about how strong a suggestion it was, Weber replied: 'Well, they do need to consider their funding source.'" [more]

"Two stories posted in the last week on the CNN website, one on nukes in Iran last Wednesday, and another on nukes in North Korea on Saturday, both use the same aerial photograph of the same purported nuclear power plant. [...] A different news organization has published a story using a different photo of the same alleged nuclear facility that CNN used in both it's North Korea and Iran stories! That story was also about... North Korea! A detailed update later ..." [more]

"Small teams, each composed of about 10 U.S. servicemembers, will be attached to Iraqi units at the battalion level and above, the officer said today, speaking on background. [...] Such tactics are nothing new. Special operations forces have used similar approaches for decades. What makes the situation in Iraq different, according to the officer, is that conventional troops, such as infantry or artillery soldiers, will serve as advisers." [more]

"Details of the tsunami bomb, known as Project Seal, are contained in 53-year-old documents released by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade. / Papers stamped 'top secret' show the US and British military were eager for Seal to be developed in the post-war years too." [more]

"I heard that 15,000 US troops invaded Fallujah while planes dropped 500-pound bombs on ‘insurgent targets’. I heard they destroyed the Nazzal Emergency Hospital in the centre of the city, killing 20 doctors. I heard they occupied Fallujah General Hospital, which the military had called a ‘centre of propaganda’ for reporting civilian casualties. I heard that they confiscated all mobile phones and refused to allow doctors and ambulances to go out and help the wounded. I heard they bombed the power plant to black out the city, and that the water was shut off. I heard that every house and shop had a large red X spray-painted on the door to indicate that it had been searched." [more]

"The public anger has dented Mr. Putin's ratings and rattled his government ministers, who responded slowly and confusedly to the first wave of protests over pensions before retreating in part on changes that the Kremlin had pushed through a pliant Parliament last summer. Mr. Putin's appointees have attributed the demonstrations to a disgruntled few, incited by agitators, but the protests show little sign of dissipating. A coalition of political, social, environmental and labor organizations has called new rallies across the country for Saturday, including two in Moscow." [more]

"In the Senate hearings, lawmakers grilled Gonzales on whether it is legally permissible for U.S. personnel to engage in 'cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment' of noncitizens detained outside of the United States. Gonzales replied that 'aliens interrogated by the United States outside the United States enjoy no substantive rights' under the U.S. Constitution or the Convention Against Torture, a treaty ratified by the Senate in 1994 that bans all interrogation methods that cause severe pain or discomfort." [more]

"The Bush administration has turned Guantánamo into a place that is devoid of due process and the rule of law. It's a place where human beings can be imprisoned for life without being charged or tried, without ever seeing a lawyer, and without having their cases reviewed by a court. Congress and the courts should be uprooting this evil practice, but freedom and justice in the United States are on a post-9/11 downhill slide." [more]

"Sharon's interest in Rice, who is 46 and single, was first reported Friday by Israel's mass-circulation newspaper Yedioth Aharonoth. According to the article, Sharon told journalists and executives of Israel's Channel 2 News last Tuesday, 'I have to confess, it was hard for me to concentrate in the conversation with Condoleezza Rice because she has very nice legs.'" [more]

"'The biggest surprise was that 76 percent of people who had a medical-related bankruptcy had health insurance when they first got sick,' said Dr. Steffie Woolhandler, a doctor at Cambridge Hospital and one of the authors. 'That's really new. No one has asked that before.'" [more]

"Former Rep. George Nethercutt, R-Wash., and former Deputy Interior Secretary Steven Griles are joining a lobbying firm headed by a former top White House energy adviser." [more]

"There is no social entity called Iraq that benefited from some self-sacrifice it suffered for its own greater good, like a patient who voluntarily endures some pain to be better off than before. There were only individual human beings living in Iraq before the war, with their individual lives. Sacrificing the lives of some of them for the benefit of others killed them and benefited the others. Nothing more. Each of those Iraqis killed in the war was a separate person, and the unfinished life each of them lost was the only life he or she had, or would ever have. They clearly are not better off now that Saddam is gone from power." [more]

"Then, one day, some focus group showed that people, particularly older people, react negatively to any connection between Social Security and the word private. For some reason, people like the sound of 'personal accounts' better than they do 'private accounts.' / So the Republicans, with their fabulous ability to march in lockstep, all about-faced and started referring to the privatization of Social Security as 'personal accounts.' This is the new political correctness." [more]

"In October 2004, Indonesia held its second democratic elections after four decades of authoritarian government. The president, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyonoa, is a retired general who had attended the U.S. Army's Command and General Staff College. Wolfowitz said this is a positive sign because Yudhoyono understands the role of the military in a democracy. / Recent reforms in the country's military and close cooperation since the Dec. 26 tsunami could lead to building military-to-military ties with the United States –- or, as Wolfowitz put it, 'Defense Department to Defense Department.'" [more]

An eyewitness report from the 2004 Presidential Inauguration protests in Washington, D.C. [more]

"Without a resolution of the fighting in Darfur, peace in Sudan is only partial. Despite this, Secretary of State Colin Powell has signaled Washington's intention to relax sanctions and allow U.S. companies to take advantage of Sudan's oil wealth." [more]

"Hundreds of Pakistanis staged rallies against President Pervez Musharraf in a day of protests after he reneged on his pledge to quit as army chief." [more]

"The deal, three years in the making, gives the southern rebels seats in the government and guarantees them revenue from the country's oil wealth to spur development. It also integrates the militaries and grants the southern region a chance to opt for self-determination after six years. ... The accord does not cover the conflict in Darfur." [more]

"Rather than extremist foreign fighters battling to the death, the marines are mostly finding local men from Falluja who are fighting to defend their city from what they view as an illegitimate occupier." [more]

"For instance, one PSYOPS officer worked in CNN's satellite division. According to Intelligence Newsletter, rear admiral Thomas Steffens, a psychological warfare expert in the Special Operations Command, recently told a PSYOPS conference that the military needed to find ways to 'gain control' over commercial news satellites to help bring down an 'informational cone of silence' over regions where special operations were taking place." [more]

"The United States, having broken Iraq, is not in the process of fixing it. It is merely continuing to break the country and its people by other means, using not only F-16s and Bradleys, but now the less flashy weaponry of WTO and IMF conditions, followed by elections designed to transfer as little power to Iraqis as possible." [more]

"A revolutionary antiwar movement should be well aware of its ability to create a real state of exception, that is an exception to the exception of global civil war." [more]

Interview with Yemeni Judge Humud al-Hattar, "chairman of the committee for religious dialogue with Al-Qa'ida supporters in Yemen," by Mahmud Ma'ruf, in Sanaa; date not given: "Chairman of the Committee for Religious Dialogue With Al-Qa'ida Supporters in Yemen Humud al-Hattar Tells Al-Quds al-Arabi: Violence Is Due to Restricting Freedom of Islamists and the Positions Toward Arab Issues, Especially Palestine" [more]

Telephone interview with extreme right-wing activist No'am Federman by Anat Davidov. [more]

"Taking a look at the new Bush administration composition in the ministries and institutions that are affiliated to the White House reveals that powerful and influential neo-conservative leaders that earlier were busy in America's research and study centers such as the American Enterprise, the Heritage Institute, the Near East Political Institute, etc., devising and drawing up projects such as the "New American Century", the national security document, have been transferred from centers of producing ideas to centers of decision-making." [more]

Leonard Asper, president and chief executive officer of CanWest, said, "We are pleased that this acquisition is moving forward as planned and are excited about working with our new partners in Israel in building on a great global newspaper brand. One of our first priorities will be to bring CanWest MediaWorks' expertise to bear in improving the profile and circulation in North America of the Jerusalem Post." [more]

"The Treasury Department lists the Jewish Legion and the Voice of Judea as Kahanist aliases and prohibits U.S. citizens from transactions with them. The group's Web site invites volunteers to Israel for a paramilitary training program in West Bank Jewish settlements." [more]

"Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's plan is 20 years old or more. He believes the Palestinian problem can be solved by a Palestinian enclave in Gaza and three or four enclaves in the West Bank that will leave Israel in control of half of the West Bank." [more]

"The Palestinian nonviolent movement is as old as the Palestinian liberation movement itself. As far back as the 1930s, Palestinians engaged in nonviolent protests and demonstrations against the British Mandate authorities. This form of protest peaked with the breakout of the 1987 intifada." [more]

"We are planning three parallel operations: The first operation is called Operation Double (Mivtza Makhpil) in which each family in the Qatif Bloc will join up with a family from outside the Bloc. Their relatives or friends will take up permanent residence here already in the first stage." [more]

"The Judea and Samaria Police is investigating the Gedud Ha'ivri (the Jewish Brigade), a militant right-wing group based in the West Bank settlement of Kfar Tapuach, for setting up unauthorized roadblocks in which its members randomly select Palestinian vehicles for inspection." [more]

"Messianic Jews believe the destruction of the mosque and construction of the temple would expedite the appearance of a Jewish Messiah, or redeemer, who would rule the world from Jerusalem and bring about salvation for the Jewish people." [more]

"In all parts of the world many scholars and those who want the world to be saved from the evil of America wished for Bush to be re-elected and for America to remain in the hands of his bullying friends in order to push America closer to ruination." [more]

"The deals were agreed as three Polish soldiers were killed in Iraq Wednesday and four injured when their Sokol helicopter made an emergency landing south of Baghdad." [more]

"Nine Coalitions and 81 Political Entities Presented Lists of Their Candidates For National Assembly. Four Political Entities Withdrew, and Three Entities Changed Their Status and Joined Existing Coalitions" [more]

"Hoshyar Zibari and Barham Salih will keep their posts after elections." [more]

Summary of Iraqi domestic press from December 27, 2004 to December 19, 2004. [more]

Interview with interim Iraqi Prime Minister Dr Iyad Allawi by Raja Talab and Ghayth al-Tarawinah; place, date not given: "Allawi: The Prophet's Family Is an Element Unifying the Sunnis, Shiites, Arabs, and Kurds" [more]

"If we study the recent propaganda war waged by Iran's enemies, we will see that it demonstrates their renewed use of old tricks that America has used for the past 25 years. Iran is very familiar with these tricks. However, as to why such accusations are raised at this time, it must be clearly connected with America's defeat in Iraq and the failure of the White House to force Iran to accept the unconditional surrender of its nuclear program." [more]

"The failure of the controlled electronic media--outlets reaching the largest audience in Pakistan--to publicize the commander's statement on the unsuccessful effort to locate Bin Ladin or other Al-Qa'ida leaders contrasts with the airing those remarks received by Pakistan's private electronic and print media." [more]

"It is believed that the United States receives such defective information from Afghanistan's opportunist warlords, Indian secret agencies, or from Pakistani experts who never visited Kabul or Kandahar but who are earning dollars by writing imaginary stories about the Taliban and Al-Qa'ida. " [more]

In a characteristically unwitting way, President George W. Bush himself stumbled upon a resolution of the seeming paradox when he told Time magazine’s interviewer last summer that the war had proved to be a “catastrophic success.” By that oxymoron, he sought to convey the idea that in the invasion the U.S. military forces had overcome the enemy unexpectedly quickly, “being so successful, so fast, that an enemy that should have surrendered or been done in, escaped and lived to fight another day.” [more]

"During the last three years, this holocaust has not only spread wider but also been given a general acceptability, to such an extent that now it seems to be a matter of routine even when several hundred Muslims are slaughtered in a single day." [more]

" With the Truman Doctrine and the declaration of support for the governments of the world against the destructive actions of the Communists, this expansionism increased. The Eisenhower Doctrine was a continuation, strengthening, and completion of the past expansionism. With the Kennedy and Nixon Doctrines, the military treaties, nuclear weapons, intercontinental missiles, and suppression of independence-seeking and freedom movements became widespread, while arms competition with the Soviet Union was approaching its height. Parallel to such expansionism, the concept of U.S. national security, or in other words, the interpretation of the Americans of their own national security and interests, became more expansive." [more]

The only way to find and eliminate Iranian nuclear weapons using military action would be to launch a full-scale invasion of Iran. If the Bush administration even began to contemplate this course of action, however, the U.S. military would probably be near open revolt. Invading Iran would likely make the bloody quagmire in Iraq look like a picnic. [more]

The Missile Defense Agency has spent $80 billion since 1985 and has very little to show for it. Over the next five years, the U.S. government will dump another $50 billion into missile defense programs. Yet rogue states probably will be able to come up with cheap countermeasures to foil costly defensive systems. [more]

"The FBI complained that military interrogators have gone far beyond the restrictions of the Geneva Conventions prohibiting torture and have followed an apparently new executive order from President Bush that permits the use of dogs and other techniques to harass prisoners." [more]

"Today, as in the years leading up to the Russian and French revolutions, the eruptions of ‘68, and the fall of the Soviet Empire, the economic and political pressures are building up to boiling point." [more]

"The 'war on terrorism' the United States is babbling about can never coexist with genuine democracy. In the places where the United States wages the 'war on terrorism,' the democratic freedom and rights of the people are repressed and obliterated and the sovereignty of countries and nations is violated without any exception." [more]

"It seems that the other side supporting Abbas is trying at the same time to carry out a harsh and violent pressure campaign on anyone they can apply pressure on within the wings of the Al-Aqsa Brigades, in order to fragment the determination of the firm and controlling group that support Al-Barghuthi. This also explains the emergence of media expressions about differing stances within the Brigades every now and then." [more]

"Comrade Izzat Ibrahim al-Duri, deputy secretary general of the Iraq Command of the Ba'th Party, head of the Higher Jihad Committee, and commander of the armed resistance in sisterly Iraq, has addressed a message full of nationalist, jihadist, and religious spirit to all men of resistance and jihad in the land of the two rivers." [more]

Mr Fabius has taken a calculated risk that, if it pays off, would utterly reverse the French Socialist party's current hierarchy. Unfortunately, for many Europeans both inside and outside France, his strategy amounts to little more than playing with the future functioning of the EU for his own personal political advantage. [more]

First, the US is, and will remain for some time to come, the world's only superpower. This status is usually accompanied by currency supremacy. [more]

For four years, Palestinian victims were almost anonymous to most members of the Israeli public. Now the preoccupation with these victims, and with the ethical questions involved in the army's blame for their killing, has become an almost daily question. [more]

While Russia and the West fight for the soul of Ukraine, the domestic political storm that followed the election has abated, for now. It has been agreed that a re-run of the second round will take place on December 26th, following a ruling last week by Ukraine’s Supreme Court. [more]

An estimated US$30-50 billion in "hot money," or speculative short-term foreign investments, may have entered China this year. Much of that would have been prompted by speculation that the currency will be revaluated. [more]

Officials, as well as most of the Palestinian public, have few doubts that Israel will seek and find another pretext to avoid engaging in any process that might bring an end in sight to 37 years of military occupation of the West Bank, Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem [more]

The meeting comes in the wake of downward pressure on oil prices which in ten days have lost 17 per cent of their value, the largest collapse in prices since the start of the Iraq war. US light crude eventually settled down $1.52 at $41.46 a barrel, the first time it has broken the $42 floor since late August. [more]

If Israel is genuinely willing to move in the direction of peace, argues the diplomat, then Arab countries will move in the direction of normalisation. He added that several Arab capitals are receiving messages that with the death of Arafat -- who was snubbed by Sharon and Bush -- Washington is willing to pressure Israel to pick up the Middle East peace file. [more]

Aljazeera reports that member states have decided to maintain the existing official output ceiling of 27 million barrels per day, although they are currently producing about 1.1 million barrels more than that figure. [more]

Sentenced to three years in prison, Staff Sergeant Johnny Horne was also demoted to the rank of private, ordered to forfeit all pay and handed a dishonourable discharge at a court martial in the Iraqi capital, the army said. [more]

December 6, 2004, marked the centennial of one of the landmark statements in U.S. foreign policy: Theodore Roosevelt’s so-called “Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine.” It was here, and not in the post-9/11 speeches of George W. Bush, that we first heard the rationalization for a pre-emptive imperialism coming from the White House. [more]

"The Council's current relationship with Mr. Kissinger," Maxwell wrote in his resignation letter to Hoge, "evidently comes at the cost of suppressing debate about his actions as a public figure. This I want no part of." [more]

The Federal Court (Bundesgerichtshof) in Karlsruhe is obliged to accept the case filed by the American-based Center for Consitutional Rights (CCR) [against Rumsfeld], a legal group renowned for their spirited defense of the Guantanamo-detainees and representation of soldiers victimized by "stop-loss" policies, because of a law passed in 2002 in Germany stipluating that War Crimes can be tried in Germany regardless of whether the case involves a German citizen or resident. Whether Rumsfeld will be able to weather this and other storms may have less to do with the letter of law, however, than with the strength of his persona. [more]

A U.S. human rights group filed war crime charges against U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and other senior U.S. officials and military officers early this week, saying they were responsible for the torture and humiliation of Iraqi prisoners by U.S. soldiers at Abu Ghraib. [more]

Imagine you could write cheques that were accepted as payment but never cashed. That is what it amounts to. If you had been granted that ability, you might take care to hang on to it. America is taking no such care, and may come to regret it. [more]

Long-awaited proposals on reforming the United Nations have been unveiled. Backers hope they will rejuvenate the world body. But they come at a time when the UN is under fire—especially from Americans, many of whom think it is irrelevant and corrupt [more]

Labor does not need the security portfolio to demand that the pullout from the northern West Bank not end with the evacuation of only four settlements, as Sharon wishes it to be, or to demand that the separation fence route, the roadblocks and closures do not rupture the life fabric of tens of thousands of residents in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. [more]

The officer, identified by the army only as Captain R, was charged this week with illegal use of his weapon, conduct unbecoming an officer and other relatively minor infractions after emptying all 10 bullets from his gun's magazine into Iman al-Hams when she walked into a "security area" on the edge of Rafah refugee camp last month. [more]

Mr Bush will remain in office till 2008 and General Musharraf would like to be still president when the next general elections are held in Pakistan in 2007. A lot will doubtless happen in Pakistan before that but for any Pakistani leader to rule in Pakistan external support is traditionally a crucial factor. [more]

Occupation is the opposite of democracy, for it is a way of deciding, through military force, the future and laws of the country. Occupation undermines Iraq's right to independence, sovereignty, and self-determination, a right upheld by international laws and defended by the resolve of our people. [more]

This "war of posters and banners", as one Iraqi politician puts it, is about the only visible sign that this is a country which is due to go to the polls less than eight weeks from now. The Iraqi electorate, who are still trying to come to terms with a ruthless US military machine working flat out to destroy what remains of ordinary life in the name of fighting "insurgents", are simply irrelevant to pre- election campaigning activities. [more]

"There is no talk about a truce now at all," Mahmud Al-Zahhar, a top Hamas leader, said on Sunday. [more]

The planned election will change the political composition of Iraq to suit the interests of the occupation authorities. The change will also lead to ethnic, sectarian and religious divisions that the Iraqi state and people had succeeded to avoid. [more]

With more than 90 people killed in the last three days in a spike of unrest despite the end of US-led assaults on rebel cities south and west of Baghdad, Sunni Muslim Iraqis also stepped up calls to delay January's landmark polls. [more]

Unfortunately, Iraq is then likely to descend into chaos and civil war. So despite Bush administration boasting of killing 1,200 guerrillas in Falluja, the future of Iraq looks grim indeed. [more]

"Six days on and still they chant, still they march, still they seek to overturn the election result that cheated them. The crowds and the momentum are on their side, but nothing in Ukraine is that simple." [more]

"Last Thursday morning, Natalia Dimitruk, an interpreter for the deaf on the Ukraine's official state UT-1 television, disregarded the anchor's report on Prime Minister Viktor F. Yanukovich's 'victory' and, in her small inset on the screen, began to sign something else altogether." [more]

"While the gains of the orange-bedecked 'chestnut revolution' are Ukraine's, the campaign is an American creation, a sophisticated and brilliantly conceived exercise in western branding and mass marketing that, in four countries in four years, has been used to try to salvage rigged elections and topple unsavoury regimes." [more]

"A senior Western diplomat in Kiev, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the political situation, portrayed the Ukrainian leadership as being at an impasse, stung by public and diplomatic reaction, and unsure of how to react to the growing protests." [more]

"Many Ukrainians, disenchanted after a decade under the scandal-ridden outgoing presidency of Leonid Kuchma, have drawn courage from the Georgian example. Some protesters have called for a Chestnut Revolution — after Kiev's renowned chestnut trees — in emulation of the Rose Revolution and Velvet Revolution that forced out the Czech communists in 1989." [more]

There are things that settlers have been doing lately to the army that if they were done by Palestinians would be defined as violence, and even as terrorism. [more]

Washington, in other words, is relying on a soft landing for the dollar. History shows, however, that there is a better than even chance of this process ending in a full-scale crisis, as it did in the mid 1980s, when the weakness of the dollar culminated in the stock market crash of 1987. [more]

Countries such as France which opposed the invasion argue that the presence of US and other international forces contributes towards the violence, and a timetable should be set for them to leave. [more]

State investigators in Baden-Württemberg said they have been closely watching developments in the Netherlands, but that there was no evidence of similar ethnic tensions in the region. [more]

"We are all encouraged. We reaffirmed our determination to work with the Palestinian leadership to support the election" for a successor to Arafat, UN chief Kofi Annan told reporters. [more]

Iraq and neighbours Iran, Jordan, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Syria and Turkey signed off on the document in a closed-door meeting Monday, with the Egyptian hosts turning down any last-minute amendments. The text was put to the rest of the delegates Tuesday for approval. [more]

Germany's finance minister has said that he and his US counterpart have reached an agreement under which Iraq's creditors would write off up to 80% of the war-ravaged country's debt. [more]

Roughly three out of every ten of the ballots cast by voters on November 2 will vanish into direct-recording-electronic (DRE) computers the moment they are cast. These votes cannot be recounted independently of the computers because there will be no voter-marked ballots to recount. [more]

The President himself—at one time he not only had declined an invitation to answer the Commission’s questions but had opposed the Commission’s creation—praised the work as “very constructive,” and he and the Vice President commenced citing it in speeches; so did John Kerry. By mid-August, 630,000 copies, priced to move at $10, had been sold. [more]

And then he quoted an Arabic expression that went something like this: Either I live and make my friends feel happy, or I die and make my enemies feel bad. [more]

The purpose of the Falluja campaign was to pacify the strategic Sunni triangle in time for the elections planned for January. By ridding Falluja of foreign fighters and hard-core Saddamists, the Pentagon believed it could blunt the insurgency by denying it a key staging center. It also believed it could help the Allawi government lure disgruntled Sunnis back into the political process. On the basis of what we've seen so far, the campaign has failed on both counts. [more]

Any U.S.-brokered Israeli settlement reached with Abbas and Qurei would lack widespread legitimacy among Palestinians and would thus be only a paper agreement. [more]

"In a departure from protocol, the International Committee of the Red Cross urged all warring parties to comply with international humanitarian law and let aid workers carry out their duties. The damning indictment by one of the world’s most respected humanitarian aid organisations comes as a US official warned it would be difficult to hold elections in January unless the situation improved." [more]

Many intelligence personnel have leaked embarrassing—and accurate—information to the media about the Bush administration’s missteps in Iraq. Now it’s payback time from the White House. [more]

What is less understood is that all of the great empires in history have been characterized by a decline of reason and an increase in super-naturalist faith, combined with a belief in the empire with the emperor holding God’s “mandate” on earth. [more]

"Sources say White House has ordered new chief to eliminate officers who were disloyal to Bush." [more]

"Like so many conflicts in West Africa, the one in Ivory Coast is in large part a contest for the country's most valuable asset: the land on which cocoa is grown. Making it particularly entrenched are issues that were never fully resolved at independence: Who is a citizen of Ivory Coast, who can rule, who can own land?" [more]

"'I decided to swim ... but I changed my mind after seeing U.S. helicopters firing on and killing people who tried to cross the river.' He watched horrified as a family of five was shot dead as they tried to cross. Then, he 'helped bury a man by the river bank, with my own hands.'" [more]

But, as it turns out, wanting a US empire and benefiting from one are markedly different things. This is something not well appreciated in many of the recent books analyzing the American Empire... [more]

A study published on October 29th in the Lancet, a British medical journal, suggests the death toll is quite a lot higher than the newspaper reports suggest. The centre of its estimated range of death tolls—the most probable number according to the data collected and the statistics used—is almost 100,000. [more]

"A United Nations team has begun investigating allegations of genocide against the Sudanese Government as ethnic-minority rebels accuse the army and its militia allies of destroying the evidence of mass graves in Darfur." [more]

"Last week, the Nyala relocations prompted a chorus of international condemnation, with the United States accusing Khartoum of violating UN principles concerning internally displaced people and UN security council resolutions on Darfur." [more]

Mr Annan is reported to have said in his letters that: “The threat or actual use of force not only risks deepening the sense of alienation of certain communities, but would also reinforce perceptions among the Iraqi population of a continued military occupation.” [more]

"The first assault on Fallujah was a military failure. This time, the resistance is stronger, better-armed, and better-organized; to 'win,' the U.S. military will have to pull out all the stops." [more]

"What I believe is ... likely to be done to Falluja will be a war crime and crime against humanity, morally indefensible by any civilized standard or for that matter, by the Statute of the International Criminal Court (to which, conveniently, neither the US nor Iraqi Government adheres)." [more]

Probably even worse than the lives lost in vain in the Iraq War is the modern imperial presidency’s ability, using the excessive media coverage accorded to it, to sell the public on an unnecessarily broad “war on terror,” including the aggressive invasion of a sovereign country. [more]

"The air strikes reduced the Nazzal hospital, run by a Saudi Arabian Islamic charity, to rubble. Hospital officials quoted by Reuters news agency say all the contents were ruined." [more]

"Rape in war, if committed by combatants, is both a grave human rights violation and a war crime. Yet it has long been mischaracterized as a private crime, the ignoble act of wayward soldiers. Worse still, it has been accepted precisely because it is so common." [more]

"There's a repulsive asymmetry of war here: not the much remarked upon asymmetry of the few thousand insurgents holed up in Falluja vastly outnumbered by the US, but the asymmetry of information. In an age of instant communication, we will have to wait months, if not years, to hear of what happens inside Falluja in the next few days." [more]

"Tuesday's attack on civilians was just one of many, and anti-government rebel groups are growing more violent and numerous. From Bosnia to Sierra Leone, the world has a painful history of putting peacekeepers into situations where there is no peace to be kept. Darfur may be one more." [more]

"The word on the street that the resistance was mostly out of Falluja prior to this battle is verified by the Iraqi Minister of Defense himself. The fire had begun to spread long before the current onslaught of Falluja." [more]

"Doctors said people brought in at least 15 dead civilians at the main clinic in Falluja on Monday. By Tuesday, there were no clinics open, residents said, and no way to count casualties." [more]

Many Americans, like the citizens of dominant nations of the past, believe that their way of life is superior and should be shared with other peoples—often at gunpoint. [more]

"Many of the arguments wedding the war in Iraq with a strategy for neoliberal expansion are not readily convincing. They risk reading causality into tangential relationships. And, in their drive to connect, they overlook important disjunctures between the Bush administration’s foreign policy and the policy preferred by many business elites." [more]

"The most important tools being used by the Bush administration to maintain varying degrees of economic and political control in Iraq are the 100 Orders enacted by L. Paul Bremer, III, head of the now defunct Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) before his departure. ... Bremer also ensured the implementation of the Orders by stacking every Ministry with U.S.-appointed authorities with five-year terms—well into the period of the new, elected government." [more]

With all of the attention on Iraq and Afghanistan, with elections much in the news in those nations as well as in the United States, it is easy to lose sight of the U.S.’s long-term policies as recently projected by the Bush Administration and American military planners. [more]

Over the years, according to the New York Times, the U.S. government has spent a whopping $130 billion on missile defense but still has no genuinely effective system to fulfill Ronald Reagan’s Star Wars fantasy. The desire on the right to deify Reagan and preserve his legacy has made support for missile defense a litmus test issue—even though it has little to do with national security. [more]

But a complex set of political challenges appears to have all but assured that an even earlier end to Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's current government is a matter of when, not if. [more]

In a confused, post-modern, deconstructed world, the settlement movement spokesmen offer the ultimate temptation to the confused Israeli looking for an answer to the question of why there's no end to the cycle of violence and what, if any, should be the price of the peace (or at least the quiet). [more]

For all the talk of the rapid reconstruction of Iraq, this is the central dilemma facing Hajim al-Hassani, the man now in charge of Iraq's industry. Most of the industries he oversees are hugely inefficient and over-staffed, but sacking thousands of workers would only worsen the already dangerous security crisis. [more]

Mr Baker's Carlyle Group is in a consortium secretly proposing to try to collect $27bn (£15bn) on behalf of Kuwait, one of Iraq's biggest creditors, by using high-level political influence. It claims Mr Baker will not benefit personally, but the consortium could make millions in fees, retainers and commission as a result. [more]

We learn as children that there is no free lunch, that you don’t get something from nothing, that what goes up must come down, and so on. The scientific version of these verities is only slightly more complex. As James Prescott Joule discovered in the nineteenth century, there is only so much energy... [more]

The free market will no doubt come to Iraq, but the neoconservative dream of transforming the country into a free-market utopia has already died, a casualty of a greater dream—a second term for George W. Bush. [more]

With counting due to begin on Wednesday, several rivals of frontrunner President Hamid Karzai have abandoned a boycott of Saturday's poll over what they had said were fraud and irregularities. [more]

Nicholas Burns said NATO defense ministers meeting here were likely to instruct the alliance military leadership to report back in February on how to bring NATO and US military operations under a single NATO command. [more]

The British government formally withdrew one of the key arguments it had used for invading Iraq, as it faced demands in parliament for a "full apology" on how it presented the case for war. [more]

[The] comments come a day after Kofi Annan, UN secretary general, said that Iraqi elections cannot be held if the country's current instability persists. [more]

Mr Annan said that the invasion was not sanctioned by the UN security council or in accordance with the UN's founding charter. [more]

The most complete attempt yet to identify some of the estimated 15,000 Iraqi civilians killed since the US-led invasion in March last year was unveiled in Chicago today. [more]

So even oil, the most defensible of the potential unstated reasons for invading Iraq, doesn’t turn out to be very defensible at all. Could 1,000 Americans have died in vain? [more]

In sum, although savage attacks against civilians should never be condoned, the harsh reality is that Russia, Israel, and the United States must expect further attempts by Islamist terrorists to attack their soil until the underlying cause of the terrorism is removed. [more]

"Iraq has reinstated the death penalty for murderers and those threatening national security, according to a US-appointed, interim Iraqi government spokesman." [more]

"Abu-Jandal is educated and open-minded. He has the power of persuasion. The security and military sense that he trained on while in Al-Qa'ida in Afghanistan still dominates him. He had a key role in the organization and was trusted by Usama Bin Ladin." [more]

"While Col. Tubb regularly releases a synopsis of the President’s annual physical, details of the President’s health and any drugs or treatment he may receive are not public record and are guarded zealously by the secretive cadre of aides that surround the President." [more]

"(The force) is evolving into a mission to maintain peace... with probable logistical support from the United States," Thiam explained. [more]

A fundamental question was whether the human rights convention "applies to the forces of a European state outside the territory of the council of Europe". A second such question was whether the Human Rights Act, which incorporated the convention into UK domestic law, could only be enforced in the territory of the UK, and not in Iraq. [more]

But there have also been disturbing reports of the US military using aid as a political weapon, which has further contributed to undermine the neutrality of the NGOs. [more]

Unlike 1800, the people are given no meaningful choice. Senator John Kerry, the President’s only real challenger, voted in favor of the PATRIOT Act and authored some of its provisions. According to the Kerry campaign, the problem is not with the PATRIOT Act itself, but with those enforcing it... [more]

Meanwhile, the US homeland security secretary, Tom Ridge, denied claims that the Bush administration was choreographing security warnings for reasons of political expediency, as some Democrats have claimed. [more]

So there is plenty of room for suspecting that the system has been politicized, especially in the wake of Attorney General Ashcroft’s recent manipulation of terrorist threats for political gain and John Kerry’s unexpected challenge to President Bush’s record on security issues at the Democratic National Convention. [more]

"We say that had the nation sharpened its swords, stood on its feet, gathered its armies, and moved toward Washington to seek revenge, and had the slaying (of Berg) incident followed all the above, deflecting the winds and scattering the armies, then matters would have taken another course. But where is my nation? Can my nation not see what is happening to Muslims in Iraq, Palestine, Afghanistan, Indonesia, the Chechen Republic, and others?" [more]

"The world will help Zimbabweans, but they must first help themselves. And helping themselves must mean going far beyond tame protests 1,000km away from Harare." [more]

"In most key areas—Iraq, the 'war on drugs,' Israel/Palestine, free trade, corporate taxes—[Kerry] will be just as bad. The main difference will be that as Kerry pursues these brutal policies, he will come off as intelligent, sane and blissfully dull. That's why I've joined the Anybody But Bush camp: Only with a bore like Kerry at the helm will we finally be able to put an end to the presidential pathologizing and focus on the issues again." [more]

"Before the US attack against Iraq, and the collapse of Saddam, Muqtada al-Sadr's political clout and the number of his supporters were unknown to the Americans." [more]

"The communist resistance fighter said that it is comical to call them terrorists. He said that this is a war of independence. He said, "Just like what Mustafa Kemal Ataturk did". By now, I firmly believed that they were resistance fighters. He introduced his friends, who are fighting together in the Al-Fallujah region, with their professions: Architect, computer engineer, officer, and medical student." [more]

"Statement by Muhammad Bin-Abdallah al-Mas'ari, secretary general and spokesman of the Saudi Committee in Defense of Legal Rights" [more]

"There isn't a single fundamentalist movement with real existence on the ground and a site on the Internet that has not sided with al-Qa'ida and its leader Usama Bin Ladin." [more]

"While Pakistanis swiftly condemned the terrorists' tactics, they said they saw Iraq as an American problem, not a Pakistani one. They also gave credence to the idea that unfair American acts in Iraq, beginning with the invasion, have led people there to adopt terrorism, a view sharply rejected by Washington." [more]

"More than 110 people were killed and dozens injured in suicide bombings and clashes on Wednesday as Iraq's interim government ended its first month in office amid deepening violence and hostage crisis." [more]

A spokesperson "despaired that military campaigns were employing 'hearts and minds' strategies more and more often, making it difficult for aid workers to maintain their aura of all-important impartiality. If armies are handing out food assistance and medical equipment, it becomes harder for locals to tell the aid workers from the occupiers." [more]

"Kerry is trying to appeal to voters who still support Bush's policy in Iraq; at the same time, dispensing the moonshine that the Europeans, at the magic words 'President Kerry,' will send their troops to Iraq so they can be blown up by car bombs just like ours, he is also trying to appeal to the plurality who want out soon. This is called having it both ways, as the Republicans will go broke explaining to undecided voters." [more]

Food aid advocates and U.S. senators have said that a line of text in the proposed World Trade Organization's Doha Round trade agreement, which could potentially be approved this week, is threatening international in-kind food aid programs. [more]

But I have more than a suspicion that the U.S.-led coalition didn't want the United Nations to get credit for its rehabilitation of schools and hospitals, for purifying 11 million liters of water or providing seeds and fertilizer for this year's crops, among other accomplishments. To Western media organizations, these efforts have seemed to be invisible. [more]

[There] may be instances arising in the future where persons are wrongfully detained in places unknown to those who would apply for habeas corpus in their behalf [so a U.S. court can determine if they're legally held]. . . . These dangers may seem unreal in the United States. But the experience of less fortunate countries should serve as a warning . . . — Ahrens v. Clark, U.S. Supreme Court, 1948, Justice Wiley Blount Rutledge dissenting [more]

Last Thursday [...] the House quietly passed a renewed appropriation that keeps open the U.S.'s most infamous torture-teaching institution, known as the School of the Americas (SOA), where the illegal physical and psychological abuse of prisoners of the kind the world condemned at Abu Ghraib and worse has been routinely taught for years. [more]

Officials have warned that failure to secure a compromise by Friday could set back efforts to pry open multi-billion dollar agriculture markets, especially for poor countries, by years. [more]

Their transfer had been requested by the French anti-terrorism prosecutor Jean-Louis Bruguiere, who has been investigating the men since November 2002 on possible terrorism charges, and was approved after France gave guarantees that they will face judicial proceedings. [more]

Qorei's announcement, which came 10 days after he tendered his resignation, followed extensive mediation efforts by MPs who said they had secured an agreement by Arafat to implement reforms and crack down on corruption. [more]

His online friendship with other Stargate fans across the globe was portrayed as an international conspiracy against the MPAA. And perhaps most disturbing of all, it was later revealed that the FBI invoked a provision of the USA Patriot Act to obtain financial records from his ISP. [more]

In his statement upon release of the commission’s report, Thomas Kean, the commission’s chairman, incorrectly opined that the terrorists hate America and its policies. Even al Qaeda does not hate America per se... [more]

"In a report to be released Monday, Amnesty International said the sexual attacks in Darfur amounted to war crimes and crimes against humanity. But it said it did not have sufficient evidence to show that the Janjaweed, as the government-backed militias are known, have carried out genocide in Darfur, as some critics of Sudan's government maintain." [more]

"Two rebel groups — the Justice and Equality Movement and the Sudan Liberation Army — took up arms against the Sudanese government in February 2003, demanding a greater share of power and wealth in Africa's largest nation. Violence in Darfur has since made more than 1m homeless and killed an estimated 30,000 people." [more]

Several castes and communities still feel that they are not getting their share of power and government jobs as compared to tiny number of upper caste privileged groups. Similarly the minority communities like Muslims feel that they have been given a raw deal... [more]

To those who are sceptical of Kurdish intentions in Iraq, perhaps it should be emphasised that when we talk of federalism in Iraq, we do not necessarily mean to imply that the Iraqi Kurds have separatist tendencies. After all, the Kurds have already been quasi-independent from the central government in Baghdad for the past decade. [more]

"The prisoners were against the wall and we were standing in the courtyard when the Interior Minister said that he would like to kill them all on the spot. Allawi said that they deserved worse than death - but then he pulled the pistol from his belt and started shooting them." [more]

The Democrats on the committee foolishly bought into an agreement that will likely postpone a committee report on that more important issue until after the election. Yet voters would profit from information about whether the Bush administration pressured the intelligence community or exaggerated, twisted the truth or even lied about the Iraqi threat in its rush to justify war. [more]

Last December, the United Nations General Assembly voted to ask the UN’s International Court of Justice (ICJ) to rule on the legality of the barrier. On Friday July 9th, the court published its ruling, declaring the barrier illegal under international law, demanding the dismantlement of those parts that already encroach on the West Bank and calling for compensation for the many Palestinians whose rights have been “gravely” infringed by it. [more]

Israel is counting on the US to use its veto in the UN Security Council to block any Palestinian attempts to have the ruling enforced. [more]

"With protestors coming to New York and Boston for the conventions, might we see the first domestic use this summer? Gruenler hints: 'All I can say is there are cities you would recognize.' " [more]

"As the world's attention was turned to crises in the Middle East, a slaughter has raged for 17 months in Sudan's Darfur region. Arab gunmen on horses and camels, backed by bombers and helicopter gunships, have razed hundreds of black African villages, killed tens of thousands and driven more than one million from their homes." [more]

"This public pressure would be appropriate, even laudable, had it not been accompanied by an unseemly private insistence that the Pakistanis deliver these high-value targets (HVTs) before Americans go to the polls in November. The Bush administration denies it has geared the war on terrorism to the electoral calendar." [more]

Although the U.S. military believes that the “center of gravity” in the continuing Iraq War is the “hearts and minds” of the Iraqi people, the Iraqi insurgents believe, as did the North Vietnamese almost 40 years ago, that the center of gravity lies with the hearts and minds of the American people. [more]

"I agree that Bush should be kicked out of the White House ... but I don't believe that will be meaningful unless there emerges in the United States a significant anti-empire movement. ... This doesn't mean voters can't judge one particular empire-building politician more dangerous than another. It doesn't mean we shouldn't sometimes make strategic choices to vote for one over the other. It simply means we should make such choices with eyes open and no illusions." [more]

"A report prepared by the top CIA official handling the matter says Saddam Hussein was not responsible for the [Halabja] massacre, and indicates that it was the work of Iranians. Further, the Scott inquiry on the role of the British government has gathered evidence that following the massacre the United States in fact armed Saddam Hussein to counter the Iranians chemicals for chemicals." [more]

"In a report this week, the General Accounting Office said that 'contracts worth billions of dollars in Iraqi funds have not been independently reviewed.'It also questioned what control over U.S.-approved contracts would now exist with the handover of formal sovereignty to Iraqis." [more]

"Nothing from the package has been spent on construction, health care, sanitation and water projects. More money has been spent on administration than all projects related to education, human rights, democracy and governance." [more]

Iraqi Prime Minister Iyad Allawi is prepared to offer amnesty to the country's insurgents, even those who have attacked and killed U.S. forces, in a surprise bid to co-opt the resistance and demonstrate the appointed interim government's independence from the unpopular Americans. [more]

Two parallels between our Revolution and today’s insurgency in Iraq come to mind. One, based in myth, would lead its advocates to folly, while the other deserves serious consideration. [more]

"Clubs have started booking private parties for delegates anxious to ogle topless beauties after a day of watching fully clothed politicians boast about family values." [more]

"In a few key areas — electricity, the judicial system and overall security — the Iraq that America handed back to its residents Monday is worse off than before the war began last year, according to calculations in a new General Accounting Office report released Tuesday." [more]

"The Middle East Report concluded in 1998 that probably the greatest strategic move in the Clinton post-Cold War years is what could be called "The Ankara Pact" -- an alliance between the U.S., Turkey, and Israel that essentially circumvents and bottles up the Arab countries. Earlier in 1997, Turkish Prime Minister Yilmaz visited with Bill Clinton to ensure him that Turkey would attempt to improve its human rights record by slaughtering less Kurds, but also mentioned that if the US pushed too hard on that subject or if the US Congress adopted an Armenian Genocide Resolution, Turkey might award a billion dollar contract for attack helicopters to a Europe or maybe even Russia." [more]

Paul Bremer, the outgoing proconsul, patted himself and his Bush administration employers on the back by bragging that there was “no question the liberation of Iraq was a great and noble thing.” Unfortunately, Iraqis are not feeling so liberated and have not been fooled by the faux handover of governance. [more]

"Allawi will fight a different war to Washington's. The US refused to listen last year, when he counselled against disbanding Saddam's army, a move that sent 500,000 angry gunmen into the community and denied the country an army to fight them. ... Ominously, he is restructuring security and intelligence in the image of what Saddam had." [more]

"The Bush Administration directed the Marines to draft a detailed plan, called Operation Stuart, for the arrest and, if necessary, assassination of Sadr. But the operation was cancelled, the former intelligence official told me, after it became clear that Sadr had been 'tipped off' about the plan. Seven months later, after Sadr spent the winter building support for his movement, the American-led coalition shut down his newspaper, provoking a crisis that Sadr survived with his status enhanced, thus insuring that he will play a major, and unwelcome, role in the political and military machinations after June 30th." [more]

"The Bremer who waved from the steps of his departing C-130 did not only leave sovereignty, in the form of a terse two-paragraph letter, with the Iraqis. He left 160,000 foreign troops, a broken economy and a land beset by ruthless, reckless armed bands." [more]

"It is perhaps not strange then that Allawi, who built his exile organization with defecting Iraqi military officers, is already proclaiming the need to delay elections scheduled for January and impose martial law. On Monday Bush said coalition forces would support such a call for martial law, presumably enforced by U.S. troops." [more]

"The Party of European Socialists (PES) said the new chief of the European Union executive should not automatically be drawn from the ranks of the centre-right, which returned this month as the biggest bloc in the EU assembly." [more]

"In 1992, founder and presidential candidate Ross Perot received over 19 million votes. Four years later, Ross Perot received over 8 million votes. Today, the Reform Party USA has over 1 million active supporters...This year, with your help, Ralph Nader can win the office of the Presidency, since over 80 out of every 100 registered voters did not vote for Democratic or Republican candidates in the 2004 Primaries." [more]

"By nominating Cobb, the Greens have a candidate 'with zero name recognition,' said Dean Spiliotes, a fellow at the New Hampshire Institute of Politics. 'It may be a good exercise in building up the party on the local level, but it means the party will drop off the radar. It's a shock, but it is great news for Kerry.'" [more]

"They also demanded the United States stop undermining public confidence in generic anti-AIDS drugs, stop limiting access to condoms and reproductive choices through family planning, and give the promised $15 billion for AIDS prevention and treatment to the Global Fund." [more]

"According to documents posted on its own web site, the CPA's little-known Program Review Board (PRB) has quietly committed billions of dollars in Iraq's oil revenues to new contracts that critics say will enrich US and British corporations while limiting the amount of revenue Iraq's new interim government will have at its disposal when it assumes authority from the CPA on June 30." [more]

All of the Bush administration’s quibbling about the definition of the word “relationship” is as ridiculous as President Clinton’s hair-splitting over the definition of the word “is” during the Monica Lewinsky scandal. [more]

"A new book by an author going by the name Anonymous (a senior US intelligence official), contains an outright and strong condemnation of America's counter-terrorism policy [...] The book, due out in the first week of July, titled Imperial Hubris: Why the West is Losing the War on Terror, dismisses two of the most frequent boasts of the Bush administration: that bin Laden and al-Qaeda are 'on the run' and that the Iraq invasion has made America safer." [more]

"'While this information is critical to identify and mitigate vulnerabilities in the system, it can equally be employed by hostile actors to identify vulnerabilities for the purpose of exploiting them,' the DHS argued in an FCC filing this month. 'Depending on the disruption in question, the errant disclosure to an adversary of this information concerning even a single event may present a grave risk to the infrastructure.'" [more]

"A resolution granting a year's exemption had passed the council the past two years, but this year the attempt to renew it ran into difficulties because of the prisoner abuse scandal in Iraq and a strong statement of opposition from Secretary General Kofi Annan." [more]

"The public interest law firm's president hopes the court decision in Buonanno's case will embolden other Christian workers to challenge similar company policies that contradict their religious beliefs, whether those involve war, abortion, homosexuality, or other issues." [more]

"The article said militants wearing police uniforms and using police cars set up a fake checkpoint on al-Khadma Road near Imam Mohammed bin Saud University. / They pulled over Mr Johnson's, car anaesthetised him and carried him to another car, the article said." [more]

"'This incident has shown me first hand the indiscriminate violence faced by Palestinians on a daily basis,' Baroness Northover said./ 'If the Israeli Defense Forces are prepared to shoot at a delegation of parliamentarians under the supervision of the UN, one wonders what treatment ordinary Palestinians are given,' she said." [more]

"Karzai, who arrived back in Kabul on Friday, has promised to disarm the warlords, but as many as 100,000 militia fighters still control most of the country more than two years after the Taliban was routed." [more]

"There's still a big North-South gap in quantity of trade. Consider that the total foreign sales of auto giant DaimlerChrysler last year were 40 percent bigger than exports from the entire continent of Africa, according to the UN. Foreign sales of Japan's Honda cars were worth more than all of India's exports." [more]

"If Washington scrapped the subsidies, Brazil estimated, American cotton exports would fall 41 percent and production would drop 29 percent. That, in turn, would lead to a 12.6 percent increase in world cotton prices, helping struggling cotton farmers from Brazil to West Africa." [more]

"If that last paragraph meant nothing at all to you, look at it this way: the WRT54G with Sveasoft firmware is all you need to become your cul de sac's wireless ISP. Going further, if a bunch of your friends in town had similarly configured WRT54Gs, they could seamlessly work together and put out of business your local telephone company." [more]

"'Why do you think the Erez industrial estate is still attractive for 200 factories that have stayed put despite all the terrorist attacks?' asked Gabi Bar. 'The most important motive is the low wages paid to the workers: around 1,500 shekels ($332) as against 4,500 shekels ($995), which is the minimum wage in Israel. What is more, the employers don’t have to abide by Israeli labour laws.'" [more]

"For the first time, Europe gives a definition of terrorism underlining that it is any act that tends to terrorize the population and put at risk fundamental political, social and economic structures of the State." [more]

"The post of the EU counter-terrorism coordinator was created last March after the bloody terrorist attack in Madrid and Mr. De Vries' visit to Greece is held in view of the imminent EU Summit meeting in which he will present the first list of action measures." [more]

"Anti-virus experts have been warning for months that mobile phone viruses are set to multipy, given the increasingly diverse uses of mobile phones." [more]

"The United States launched many more failed airstrikes on a far broader array of senior Iraqi leaders during the early days of the war last year than has previously been acknowledged, and some caused significant civilian casualties, according to senior military and intelligence officials." [more]

"[Prime Minister] Iyad Allawi is the leader of the Iraqi National Accord, a group formed by Iraqi exiles, many former Baath Party members who had fled the country. / Born in 1945 to a prominent Shia Muslim merchant family, he trained as a neurologist. Mr Allawi is seen as being historically close to the US, particularly the CIA, although he has been critical of the US-led coalition in recent months." [more]

"'The detective told me if I did not medicate my son, I would be arrested for child abuse and neglect,'" Taylor said." [more]

"'Our daughter is adopted. Her DNA is different,'" Deirdre Sassaman said. 'We wouldn't have a sample without this program.'" [more]

"If Hendon had his way, the cameras would be eliminated altogether because, he said, they stigmatize neighborhoods as crime-ridden ghettos--now called 'blue-light districts'--and are an intrusion into privacy." [more]

"'It seems prejudiced to me,' said Abdul Bucky, 40, who works within sight of a camera at Deal Beauty Supply and General Merchandise in East Garfield Park. 'Why didn't they put them in all the neighborhoods?'" [more]

A memo dated October 9, 2003 on "Interrogation Rules of Engagement", which each military intelligence officer was obliged to sign, set out in detail the wide range of pressure tactics they could use - including stress positions and solitary confinement for more than 30 days. [more]

The body bags have been shipped in, locals are running scared, and foreigners are being arrested and deported. Organisers of this week's G8 Summit are taking no chances with security... [more]

Angry Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee called on Ashcroft to provide the document, saying leaked portions that have appeared in news reports suggest the Bush administration is reinterpreting U.S. law and the Geneva Conventions prohibiting torture. [more]

The Bush administration is trying to make Tenet a sacrificial lamb for its blundering into an Iraqi quagmire. But that ill-advised military adventure was actually championed by Vice President Dick Cheney, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz and their subordinates. [more]

"Saddam Husayn is not the leader of the minority or a group, with whom he is affiliated or who are affiliated with him. He is the leader of all the great Iraqi people -- Arabs and Kurds; Shiites and Sunnis; Muslims and non-Muslims. Saddam Husayn does not attribute this saying to himself. This is what was decided by the great Iraqi people themselves in free, public elections." [more]

"Your brothers from Jama'at al-Tawhid Wa Al-Jihad have attacked Abd-al-Jabbar Yusuf, the traitor and apostate general and the Interior Ministry undersecretary, who belongs to the Islamic Da'wah Party, while he was in front of his house getting ready to leave for work." [more]

"The banning of the hijab is consistent with all these crimes. It shows the scope of the Zionist-Crusade's moral and doctrinal hypocrisy and the extent of its savagery in its war against Islam and Muslims" [more]

"Every Muslim in Pakistan must strive to topple this agent government, which will continue to surrender to the Americans until it destroys Pakistan and helps the Indians control it." [more]

"For those who reject peace and want war, we are ready. As for those who want peace, we have given them a chance. Stop shedding our blood so as to preserve your blood." [more]

"On his tense relationship with Bremer and whether this is the beginning of a 'mutiny' by the Iraqis against the Coalition Authority, Chalabi says: 'My relations with Ambassador Bremer are good.' They may differ on some points, he clarifies, but there is no 'mutiny.'" [more]

"The Jordanian intelligence service lied twice: First, when it claimed that we were preparing to kill the people of Islam and innocent citizens. Second, when it claimed that it foiled a plot to defend the homeland and safeguard the blood of the people of Islam." [more]

"An Al-Qa'ida leader avoided confirming his organization's responsibility for last week's terrorist bombing which targeted traffic police headquarters in Riyadh and claimed the lives of innocent civilians and children." [more]

If, as war supporters claim, our goals in Iraq (now that we've lost the rationale of hunting down weapons of mass destruction) are stability and democracy, we are proceeding in exactly the wrong way. [more]

"Caution and liberation from the magic of media is also required so that we will not be mere viewers of catastrophes and events, but rather fight the enemy and make events. This is a decisive war, after which we will either rise and have pride or descend and be humiliated." [more]

"The torture is not limited to the Abu Ghurayb prison and other jails all over that afflicted homeland. The occupation itself has become the instrument of torture and major destruction that is directed against the Iraqi people, their achievements, and culture." [more]

"It is worth mentioning that the mujahidin were very concerned about the safety of the Muslims, distinguishing between them and the infidel Crusaders. They released the Muslims and sent them away from the scene of the fighting, as opposed to what the apostate government did when they opened indiscriminate fire in every direction without discrimination." [more]

"Some in Congress are taking up the insurers' cause. House Financial Services Committee Chairman Michael Oxley (R-Ohio) and two other senior panel members on April 23 wrote Treasury Secretary John Snow, urging him to extend the availability provision. They said, 'An extension will ensure that terrorism coverage is widely available while Treasury continues its good work and while private market solutions are still being developed.'" [more]

"For its part, the Federal Commission for Foreigners warned that the statistics could lead to “erroneous interpretations” because they gave the impression that suspects had actually committed the crimes of which they were accused." [more]

"Michael Moore's documentary, "Fahrenheit 9/11," will open in about 1,000 U.S. theaters June 25, and a trailer promoting the expedited release could hit the Internet by the end of this week." [more]

In the battles for the Sunni town of Falluja and the Shiite cities south of Baghdad, the Bush administration has essentially capitulated—hoping to reduce, until the U.S. election is over, images of fighting, mayhem and U.S. blood streaming to the American public. [more]

"So Mr. Sanchez, in late 2000, was sent back for another week in a grim detention center in Lower Manhattan, severed from his family and livelihood, because his fingerprints had been mistakenly placed on the official record of another man. / Remarkably, this was not the first time Mr. Sanchez had paid for that mistake. He had been arrested three times for Mr. Rosario's crimes, and ultimately spent a total of two months in custody and was threatened with deportation before the mistake was traced and resolved in 2002." [more]

In some cases, information that was controversial then, and seems questionable now, was insufficiently qualified or allowed to stand unchallenged. Looking back, we wish we had been more aggressive in re-examining the claims as new evidence emerged — or failed to emerge. [more]

People who get their news by skimming the front page, or by watching TV, must be feeling confused by the sudden change in Mr. Bush's character. For more than two years after 9/11, he was a straight shooter, all moral clarity and righteousness... [more]

Last week, my own further enquiries about the book revealed something even more alarming. Not only is it the bible of neocon headbangers, but it is also the bible on Arab behaviour for the US military. [more]

Friday, with 20 of its 23 members present, the Governing Council unanimously endorsed Allawi. There were no other candidates. [more]

Germany's landmark immigration law will not introduce a law-free zone in which foreigners suspected of ties to terrorist groups can be held without trial or legal representation. That is a good thing... [more]

The Germany chancellor has signaled that under certain conditions he would approve the resolution, which the United States presented to the United Nations Security Council on Monday. But he has also made clear that Germany would not send troops to the war-torn country even with the blessing of the UN... [more]

Despite widespread ill-feeling about the abuse of prisoners by American forces and allegations of mistreatment by British troops, coalition forces will be protected from any legal action. [more]

If today the U.S. government were to put itself on trial, on the same basis it employed to try the Nazis at Nuremberg, for actions taken in Afghanistan and Iraq in recent years, it might have to convict itself—if only for the sake of consistency. [more]

"Unlike early reports suggesting the abuses were failings by individual soldiers, Provance told the AP and other media outlets that interrogators at the prison viewed sleep deprivation, stripping inmates naked and threatening them with dogs as normal ways of dealing with 'the enemy.'" [more]

The president is somehow deluded that a fake turnover of power to a puppet interim government—to replace the widely discredited U.S.-picked Governing Council—will take the fire out of the guerrilla insurgency... [more]

"Baker's traumatic brain injury is outlined in a military document in his possession, which says the injury "was due to soldier playing role as a detainee who was uncooperative." [more]

"What Bush seemed to have in mind was applying his broad doctrine of pre-emption to interrogations: to get information that could help stop terrorist acts before they could be carried out. This was justified by what is known in counterterror circles as the 'ticking time bomb' theory—the idea that when faced with an imminent threat by a terrorist, almost any method is justified, even torture." [more]

Font, [his lawyer], told jurors the soldier believed that "because he had become a conscientious objector, he would not be required to serve in Iraq anymore." [more]

So what can the United States do to dampen the insurgency and avoid a potential civil war? Something that the Bush administration and the Washington foreign policy establishment have avoided like the plague: rapid U.S. troop withdrawal and genuine and complete self-determination for Iraqis... [more]

"In her role as dominatrix over Iraqi men England exposed the sexualization of national conquest. As a participant in the militarized construction of the masculine she inaugurated a brand new, frightening archetype: dominant-nation female as joyful agent of sexual, national, racial and religious humiliation. How’s that for liberation?" [more]

Colonel Erez "argued that Israel's decision to use ground troops, rather than simply bomb the neighborhood from the air, showed its concern for Palestinian civilians and 'maintaining our moral posture.' Several wounded Palestinians interviewed in the last 24 hours said they were shot by snipers when they stepped out into the street. Noting the curfew, Colonel Erez said, 'Someone who exits is obviously someone who is looking for trouble' and was therefore 'a legitimate target.' " [more]

"Iraqis interviewed on the videotape said revelers had fired volleys of gunfire into the air in a traditional wedding celebration before the attack took place. American troops have sometimes mistaken celebratory gunfire for hostile fire." [more]

"It is only through continuous struggle, which will lead to revolution, that we can today find true freedom. To create a world where equality and welfare will not be a dream, where the essence of progress will not be connected with the modern brutality of high technology. Instead, it will find its reward in the ability of society to guarantee equality in front of the law, and the power of each person to participate in the formulation of its social and financial role." [more]

"In the eyes of the Al-Qa'ida organization, the reason why the "Satan" can again tread on Arab soil is because the United Nations has failed to stop the United States." [more]

"Terrorism does not necessarily come from the Islamic world; it could come from anywhere. It could be championed by many other groups and could originate in all communities. Before fighting this phenomenon, we must understand why others resort to terrorism." [more]

"The latest allegations will be an unwelcome blow to Malaysia, which was also embroiled in a scandal over the nuclear black market earlier this year." [more]

"The tortures at Abu Ghraib have exposed to the world the utter moral bankruptcy of Bush's war. Far from being fought on behalf of Iraqi democracy, it is a war for U.S. supremacy in which racist dehumanization and brutalization of Arabs and Muslims play an absolutely central role." [more]

"On that day, the current war ceased to be a war on terror. It ceased to be a war for Israel's existence. On May 2, 2004, the war became a war of not-a-single-settlement. Not a single outpost. Until the last mobile home." [more]

"The roots of the Abu Ghraib prison scandal lie not in the criminal inclinations of a few Army reservists but in a decision, approved last year by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, to expand a highly secret operation, which had been focussed on the hunt for Al Qaeda, to the interrogation of prisoners in Iraq. Rumsfeld’s decision embittered the American intelligence community, damaged the effectiveness of élite combat units, and hurt America’s prospects in the war on terror." [more]

"'We have not attacked the shrine of Imam Ali. We continue to respect the Shrine of Imam Ali,' said Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt, military spokesman for the U.S.-led coalition./ 'If there’s a hole in the shrine, go ask Muqtada who put that hole in the shrine. ... I would put money on Muqtada’s forces having caused it,' he said." [more]

"Since the September 11 attacks in the United States, neo-conservatives who dominate policy making within the Bush administration have tended to view violence in the Middle East and Central Asia through the prism of what Roy termed the international jihadist struggle. This tendency encourages authoritarian practices in the two regions by effectively giving a green light to governments to engage in repression, while shunning needed economic and political reforms." [more]

"Last week, Bush decided to allow Cuban Americans to visit relatives in Cuba only once every three years and lowered their daily spending limit while on the island to $70 from $228." [more]

The High Court ruling coincided with a report from Amnesty International claiming British forces had shot and killed 37 Iraqi civilians when they were under no apparent threat. [more]

As for the members of Congress holding the hearings, they seemed more concerned about the release of the photos than with the barbaric behavior depicted in them. Would the behavior have been more acceptable if no photos or videos had been taken of it? Hardly. [more]

City Hall may want to declare Manhattan to be a no-free-speech zone for convention week, but critics have a right to gather in the same borough as the conventioneers they are protesting. [more]

"The Americans in the photographs are not enacting hatred; hatred can coexist with respect, however strained. What they display, instead, is contempt: their victims are merely objects." [more]

"The pictures of American soldiers humiliating Iraqi detainees are reminiscent of sadomasochistic porn — and we should not be surprised." [more]

"Although no principle stands higher in military doctrine than that the commander bears full responsibility for the actions of his subordinates, neither Bush nor Rumsfeld, the two top military commanders, has the decency to resign — not just on account of the prison disclosures, of course, but also on account of the plethora of actions by which they have abused their constitutional powers and brought everlasting shame upon the United States." [more]

"Security is hoped to emerge from reconstruction, but successful reconstruction itself depends on security. But the government's 'Doing Business in Iraq' presentation claims the scope of violent conflict in Iraq has been overstated. 'Watching BBC or CNN would make you believe that Iraq is a no-man's land,' one of the first slides in the presentation states. 'The situation in Baghdad is not what it appears in the news media.'" [more]

"Security officials estimate there are about 15,000 mercernaries now in Iraq from Canada, U.S., Britain, Australia and South Africa./ 'Everyone is getting a piece of the action,' Ram said." [more]

"US President George W. Bush said on Saturday the 'roadmap' 2005 target for a Palestinian state was unrealistic./ 'I readily concede the date has slipped some. I think the timetable of 2005 is not as realistic as it was two years ago,' Bush told the Egyptian semi-official daily Al-Ahram, adding that it 'may be hard' to achieve the 2005 target." [more]

"... as President Akhmad Kadyrov saluted troops parading past, the stadium was rocked by an explosion leaving a cloud of dust which cleared to reveal a jagged hole where the president and his entourage had been standing moments before." [more]

"The chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff said Thursday that the deadly insurgency that flared this month is 'a symptom of the success that we're having here in Iraq' and an effort to undermine the country's transition to self-government." [more]

"Unscrupulous agents (...) who smuggle Indian workers into Iraq appear to have found good business partners in the US forces, who need cheap labour." [more]

"'There was one CD going round our room with about 500 shots on it. Some were before and after pictures of beatings.'" [more]

"Job openings on CACI's Web site yesterday included 'interrogator' - two years of law enforcement experience and a top-secret clearance required - as well as other jobs that in an earlier era might have been limited to the CIA: 'senior counterintelligence agent' and 'senior intelligence analyst.' All the jobs are in Baghdad." [more]

In any unnecessary war, the leaders of the attacking side are morally responsible for all deaths in the enemy military: accidental killings of civilians (the military euphemism is “collateral damage”) as well as abuses by rogue elements of those same groups toward enemy prisoners... [more]

"The jury in New York supported Swiss Re’s claim that it had signed up to a policy which clearly defined the destruction of the twin towers as one event, rather than two." [more]

"'Tillman gave up millions of dollars,' Rall added. 'To that extent I think he's admirable, but the cause is not. ... He would have been a better person and a better husband if he took the $3.6 million and played football and left the poor and beleaguered people of Afghanistan and Iraq alone.'" [more]

"Arabs are angry when they see dead Iraqi infants with half their skulls blown away due to missile strikes. The Arab satellite channels convey this reality, they don't manufacture it. If Arabs are increasingly angry at the US - which they certainly are - this is almost totally due to the consequences of US military and political policies, not the reporting of these policies by Arab television." [more]

"One source said the Pentagon had 60 photographs from Abu Ghraib jail depicting instances of abuse more violent than those that had been released to the media./ 'The ones seen so far are the mild ones that people can live with,' the source said. One photo allegedly depicts an Iraqi teenage boy being raped by a private contractor hired by the US military." [more]

The war in Iraq shares parallels with both the Vietnam War a generation ago and the Spanish-American War a century earlier—massive civilian deaths and torture are characteristics of all three imperial interventions... The estimates of civilians killed in the Philippines range from 200,000 to a high of perhaps 600,000 — no one really knows... [more]

"'The Americans are dogs,' he says. 'They try to kill anybody who works in humanitarian aid. They attack any humanitarian aid worker, doctor, or ambulance to kill him.' Many more bodies continue to rot under buildings that collapsed under U.S. bombing, he says." [more]

"Practices such as lying to prisoners, intimidating them, screaming at them, stripping them, hiding their faces under hoods, and depriving them of toiletries and comforts are permissible to a degree if there is a valid reason, Ritz said./ But he drew the line at the sort of excesses allegedly committed by U.S. soldiers at Abu Ghraib prison near Baghdad, such as sodomizing prisoners with a broom and forcing them to simulate and commit sex acts." [more]

"During the ceremony it was also announced that plans to build additional housing in other Gaza Strip communities have been approved." [more]

"The picture [the Army report] draws of Abu Ghraib is one in which Army regulations and the Geneva conventions were routinely violated, and in which much of the day-to-day management of the prisoners was abdicated to Army military-intelligence units and civilian contract employees. Interrogating prisoners and getting intelligence, including by intimidation and torture, was the priority." [more]

"The British pictures show a hooded Iraqi aged between 18-20 on the floor of a military truck being brutalised. According to two squaddies who took part in the torture, but later blew the whistle, the Iraqi’s ordeal lasted eight hours and he was left with a broken jaw and missing teeth. He was bleeding and vomited when his captors threw him out of a speeding truck. No-one knows if he lived or died." [more]

"'This year, we found that press freedom globally had declined to a new low over the past two years. And this year was the second year of this trend that we saw. Overall, in terms of the global numbers, it looks like 5 percent less of the [world's] population has access to free media, while [the number of] people living in media environments that we classify as "not free"' has increased by 5 percent,' Karlekar said." [more]

"The US has announced it might declare shortly imposing sanctions on Syria, according to a decision approved with the aim to punish Damascus, which Washington accuses of supporting terrorism." [more]

"Six months before he faced a court martial, Frederick sent home a video diary of his trip across the country. Frederick, a reservist, said he was proud to serve in Iraq. He seemed particularly well-suited for the job at Abu Ghraib. He’s a corrections officer at a Virginia prison, whose warden described Frederick to us as 'one of the best.' The Army investigation confirms that soldiers at Abu Ghraib were not trained at all in Geneva Convention rules." [more]

"Passions boiled over on Monday as the protesters, many of them highland Aymara Indians, seized the town officials. Mayor Robles was dragged, tied to a post, beaten and left for dead beneath a bridge, according to local news reports. He later bled to death." [more]

"Many Iraqis have strongly criticized [the new flag], complaining that it does not sufficiently represent Iraqi civilization and its Arab majority, gives too much importance to the Kurdish minority, and that its pale blue color makes it look like Israel's flag." [more]

"It is clear that the American war crimes will not reach the International Court of Justice in The Hague. Today, America sets the world's moral standards. It alone decides who will be judged, who is a terrorist, what is legitimate resistance to occupation, who is a religious fanatic, and who is a legitimate target for assassination. That is how four Iraqi children, who laughed at the sight of a dead American soldier, merited being killed on the spot." [more]

"By simultaneously increasing despair and anger, Sharon is hoping to raise the stakes in this conflict. It is astonishing to think it, but Sharon has been restrained thus far. He has been held back by world opinion, the US and Israeli public opinion. But the hold of each of these over Sharon diminishes as Palestinian violence increases." [more]

As of today the United States military appears committed to an open-ended stay in a country where, with the exception of the Kurdish north, patience with the foreign occupation is running out, and violent opposition is spreading. Civil war and the breakup of Iraq are more likely outcomes than a successful transition to a pluralistic Western-style democracy. [more]

"When US troops are attacked with mortars in Baghdad, they use mortar-locating radar to find the firing point and then attack the general area with artillery, even though the area they are attacking may be in the middle of a densely populated residential area..." [more]

Part of the problem, a British officer said, is that Americans tend to see the Iraqis as “untermenschen,” the term for “sub-humans.” [more]

"Decision-making in the two financial bodies is far removed from the principle of one country-one vote./ The 46 sub-Saharan African countries, for example, have only two executive directors representing them at the World Bank and IMF, while eight northern nations have a single executive director each." [more]

"'Pre-emptive strikes will continue because they undeniably weaken terrorist organisations,' Yaalon told public radio in an interview marking Remembrance Day, which is observed each year to commemorate the country's fallen soldiers." [more]

"The DPRK [North Korea] made the remarks in a statement issued by the spokesman for the Panmunjom Mission of the Korean People's Army (KPA), saying the 'US decision to take even its small force out' of the JSA and the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) 'indicates that the US preparations for a preemptive attack upon the DPRK are under way at a final phase.'" [more]

"The terminals had failure rates of 24 per cent in Alameda County and 40 per cent in San Diego county. Incredibly, tests were only performed on ten to fifteen per cent of machines before they left the factory. Diebold president Bob Urosevich admitted that thousands of voters had been disenfranchised." [more]

"Rebel Shi'a cleric Muqtada al-Sadr said today that he could unleash suicide bombers if U.S. forces attacked the southern city of Al-Najaf, and called on the entire country to unite to expel Iraq's occupiers." [more]

"Training has begun on Integraph, a state-of-the-art police dispatch system that uses global positioning to track officers, looking similar to a live video game playing itself out on a real-time map of San Jose. The 2-year-old technology, set to debut in mid-June, is used by a handful of police agencies, including those in San Diego and Santa Rosa." [more]

"Mr Jensby, 59, becomes the first minister from a coalition nation to be forced from office over public concerns that the war was based on flawed intelligence. Denmark has about 500 troops in southern Iraq." [more]

"But accepting such a radar system could overstep the boundaries of the Japan-U.S. Security Treaty. The treaty states that Japan can house military-related facilities of the United States only for 'the defense of Japan and maintenance of peace and stability in the Far East.'/ The planned missile defense system is designed to protect Japan. But the radar system would in effect be solely for the defense of the United States." [more]

"The Polisario, backed by Algeria, has since 1976 been claiming independence of this territory despite the local populations' refusal to be separated from the Kingdom./ On Thursday, the Moroccan Government ruled out any negotiation on the independence of these Southern Moroccan provinces." [more]

The US administrator in Iraq, L. Paul Bremer, acknowledged Friday that mistakes had been made in the occupation of the country and invited former Iraqi army officers who served under ousted president Saddam Hussein to help establish a new national force. [more]

"The Bush Administration has no intention of allowing the kind of Iraqi self-rule and self-determination invoked by the president in his speeches over the last year and a half." [more]

"...the recent interview of Benny Morris in Haaretz has alarmed many Palestinians, who fear that it foreshadows official Israeli policy. Morris, the leading Israeli revisionist historian, showed from documentary evidence that Israel expelled hundreds of thousands of Palestinians in 1948 and that most of them did not (as Israel has alleged) leave voluntarily. He now justifies this 'ethnic cleansing' as necessary to the establishment of a Jewish state and predicts that it may be necessary again." [more]

"Bush and Zapatero held a telephone conversation on Monday. According to a White House spokesman, Bush cautioned Zapatero to avoid actions that might give 'false comfort to terrorists or enemies of freedom in Iraq.'" [more]

"The Palestinians blamed the United States for emboldening Israel to assassinate Rantisi by vetoing a Security Council resolution condemning last month's 'extrajudicial execution' of Hamas' founder." [more]

"Media reporting on the President's remarks amplified the administration's voice: When Bush stated that Americans were vulnerable to WMD in the hands of terrorists, the media effectively magnified those fears by prioritizing that news. Front-page and top-of-the-news stories led with the President's analysis. Where alternative perspectives were presented in the coverage, they tended to be buried. The net effect was both to disseminate as well as to validate the administration's message." [more]

"'There's only one path to safety, and that's the path of action,' Bush said. 'Congress must act with the Patriot Act. We must continue to stay on the offense when it comes to chasing these killers down and bring them to justice.'" [more]

"Defense counsel Norman Sepenuk also questioned the decision of the original trial chamber that killing 7,500 men and deporting Srebrenica`s 25,000 women and children was tantamount to genocide." [more]

"Iran said on Sunday that America’s iron-fisted policies and the lack of security undermined Iranian efforts to bring calm to Iraq and that it would no longer cooperate with Washington on those endeavors." [more]

"United Nations police in Kosovo are investigating a weekend shootout between Jordanian and US police units in the province which left two US woman officers and a Jordanian dead. There are fears that it was motivated by anti-Americanism." [more]

"All vehicles not belonging to the US military will be fired on according to US military command. The move over the weekend is likely to cause massive dislocation by preventing Iraqis using the highways north and south of Baghdad — the main economic lifelines of the country — where insurgents have launched frequent attacks. The main roads to Turkey, Jordan and Kuwait will be cut." [more]

"Americans love a good 'How To' book, and the Wall Street Journal has long touted this 446 page one, which details how 'from 1898 to 1934, the Marines fought a number of small wars, in the Philippines, Cuba, Honduras, China, Nicaragua and the Dominican Republic.'" [more]

"Few governments have expressed concern over the conditions under which the detainees are being held in Guantanamo, which rights watchdog Amnesty International described this week as 'a major human rights scandal that has widespread implications for the whole world.'" [more]

"'We've called it a humanitarian crisis,' State Department spokesman Adam Ereli told reporters on April 6. 'But I really hesitate to use the G-word at this point, not really having considered it in that light.'" [more]

"In my hands there is a message to remind you that justice is a duty towards those whom you love and those whom you do not. And people's rights will not be harmed if the opponent speaks out about them." [more]

"'There are no conditions or opportunities in Chechnya for such experiments,' Dudayev said today in an exclusive interview with ITAR-TASS. 'Virtually all petrochemical facilities in the republic have been totally ruined, and only the shells of the buildings are left. So the equipment needed for the purpose doesn't exist.'" [more]

"It's unclear whether Naimi's death is connected to Iran's efforts at mediating the standoff between U.S. forces and radical Shia cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, the man at the centre of recent violence in Najaf." [more]

"US President George W. Bush stopped short of accusing Hizbullah of having a direct link to Iraqi Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr and his Mahdi Army in his statement on the situation in Iraq, but his mention of the party comes amid increased speculation in the West over links between the two groups." [more]

"At least 80 foreign mercenaries — security guards recruited from the US, Europe and South Africa and working for American companies — have been killed in the past eight days. The occupation authorities have kept the figures secret." [more]

"The White House said the accurate figure for the Libyan mustard gas was 23.6 metric tons, or 26 short tons, not 50 tons. Moreover, the substance was found at different locations across Libya, not at a turkey farm. And observers did not find mustard gas on the farm at all, but rather unfilled chemical munitions, the White House acknowledged." [more]

"Negroponte, 64, has a reputation as a hardened diplomat who attracted considerable controversy as the US ambassador to Honduras in the early Eighties when he was instrumental in assisting the Contras overthrow a leftist regime in Nicaragua. He has always denied allegations that he turned a blind eye to human rights violations, including death squads, in the region in that period." [more]

"An Iraqi has died of his wounds after US troops beat him with truncheons because he refused to remove a picture of wanted Shiite Muslim leader Moqtada Sadr from his car, police said today." [more]

"'The terrorist cell apparently planned to obtain contaminated blood from some Palestinian hospitals but they had not passed the preliminary stage in their preparations,' a spokeswoman for the Shin Bet security service said." [more]

"Iraq's national security advisor, Muaffaq al-Rubaie, a Shiite, also accused both channels of inciting violence among the country's ethnic groups with their reporting and warned that they, and any other 'irresponsible' Arab media, could be banned from reporting from Iraq." [more]

"According to a high-ranking government official, between last October and early this year, when Korea was promoting the dispatch of troops for the reconstruction of Iraq, the United States clarified several times that such military aid would not necessary and instead requested combat troops." [more]

"The correct moral to draw from al-Qaeda's involvement in Afghanistan is not the danger of rogue states but the danger of failed ones where the collapse of the central government allowed a lightly armed but highly motivated group of fanatics to seize control. Rather than resolve the problem of Afghanistan's lack of effective authority, however, Bush simply treated a symptom and left the disease in place. Now, not only are Osama bin Laden and other top al-Qaeda leaders still at large, the possibility that they and their allies will gain control over a substantial portion of Afghan territory remains quite real." [more]

"As I reflect on lessons learnt from the Rwandan genocide, the most powerful one remains the reality that African lives do not matter to the leaders, and the majority of the citizens, of the world's most powerful nation and its European allies./ Their non-interventionist attitude is couched in references to lack of strategic interest. But the underlying reason is an entrenched racism that prevents them from reacting with the urgency and emotional commitment that has propelled them to intervene in less extensive acts of mass murder among their kinsmen in Europe." [more]

"Lockheed Martin Corp. will open an office dedicated to homeland security, in advance of the government’s award next month of a hotly chased, $10 billion contract to track the entry and exit of foreign visitors, the company said today." [more]

"Afghan President Hamid Karzai called on Sunday for more international money to help rebuild his war-ravaged country and admitted he was frustrated that Iraq was getting much more." [more]

"Iraqi casualties are being buried in soccer fields, where mourners cry 'martyr, martyr' as they're interred./ Most of the dead Iraqis were not fighters, al-Issawi told The Associated Press." [more]

"In the video, Abd al-Rahim sings against a backdrop of animated cartoons portraying Sharon as a bully whose acts backfire on him./ In one scene, he tries to bomb the world but the bomb explodes prematurely and tears his clothes off. Bush appears chopping up a cake and distributing the pieces among people, with a map of the Middle East in the background." [more]

"Demonstrator Abby Puls, 24, a Spanish interpreter at the Kent County Courthouse was singled out by undercover police officers and told she could be fired for 'choosing sides', she was also threatened with arrest for 'hindering and opposing' police if she identified any of them. Grand Rapids police chief Harry Dolan confirmed Puls's statement saying he feared for his officers' safety at peace demonstrations." [more]

"The Sudanese Government must immediately stop local militias from committing atrocities against the local population and must provide unrestricted access to humanitarian aid agencies. I condemn these atrocities, which are displacing hundreds of thousands of civilians, and I have expressed my views directly to President Bashir of Sudan." [more]

"Ohio is the 46th state to pass a law allowing residents to apply for a permits or licenses to not only own guns but to carry them concealed in most public places, said Kim Norris, spokeswoman for the Ohio Attorney General's Office. Carrying a gun in government buildings, in schools, day-care centers and some other public areas remains illegal." [more]

"The Stalinist state's official news agency accused Washington of 'driving the military situation on the Korean peninsula to the brink of a nuclear war' with plans for a pre-emptive strike on North Korea." [more]

"'We denounced the military operations carried out by the American forces [in Al-Fallujah] because in effect it is [inflicting] collective punishment on the residents of Al-Fallujah,' Pachachi said. 'We consider the action carried out by U.S. forces [in Al-Fallujah] illegal and totally unacceptable.'" [more]

"Shares in all sectors drew selling amid mounting security fears fueled by the kidnapping of the Japanese nationals by a terrorist group in Iraq, brokers said." [more]

"When the United States invaded Iraq a year ago, one of its chief concerns was preventing a civil war between Shiite Muslims, who make up a majority in the country, and Sunni Muslims, who held all the power under Saddam Hussein. Now the fear is that the growing uprising against the occupation is forging a new and previously unheard of level of cooperation between the two groups — and the common cause is killing Americans." [more]

"The Sunni-Shiite divide, already narrower in Iraq than in some parts of the Muslim world, is by all accounts shrinking each day that Iraqis agree their most immediate problem is the occupation. Many here say that, whatever value there was in deposing Saddam Hussein, the Americans have exhausted their goodwill and fueled suspicions by staying too long and producing too little progress." [more]

"Forces of ethnic Uzbek strongman General Abd al-Rashid Dostum invaded Faryab province on Wednesday, prompting the central government to dispatch national army troops there on Thursday in an attempt to restore order." [more]

"It's possible...that even a stable fly, or something as tiny as an aphid, could be used to distribute deadly pathogens over a wide geographical area in a surprisingly rapid and efficient manner. Bugs as delivery systems for weapons of mass terror." [more]

"...within hours, Brig-Gen Kimmitt’s stance was undermined by members of the Iraqi Governing Council, who said they had discussed a proposal to drop the prosecution of Sadr if he agreed to halt a Shiite uprising./ The council added that using more force against the cleric and his followers could lead to greater civilian casualties and bolster his support." [more]

"Warren explained that his days with the FBI make him certain that the Bureau doesn't really think the FCC will give them what they want in their petition. Instead, he believes the FBI is angling to make their case before Congress next year, when the sunset provisions on the Patriot Act go into effect. 'If Bush is reelected, Congress will be primed for this,' he said. 'Expectations for privacy are being lowered right now. They'll have law enforcement behind them, and with congressmen and senators up for reelection, they'll feel pressured to have this in place to make up for what they'll lose when the sunset provisions go into effect.'" [more]

"The fighting erupted when a rocket-propelled grenade fired from the mosque hit a US military vehicle Wednesday, US Lt. Col. Brennan Byrne said./ US Marines fired a rocket and dropped a 225-kg, laser-guided bomb on the mosque. Part of a wall surrounding the mosque was destroyed, witnesses said." [more]

"The London raids were the start of a week of concerted police sweeps throughout Europe. Cops in Italy, Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany, as well as Turkey, launched similar 'antiterror' raids, arresting a total of 63 people, most of them Turks. The pretext was 'minimizing a terror threat ahead of June’s NATO summit in Istanbul, Turkey' and 'increased international security cooperation before the Summer Olympics in Athens, Greece,' according to an April 2 Associated Press dispatch. Police claimed those arrested had 'ties' to a banned Turkish organization, the Revolutionary People’s Liberation Army/Front." [more]

"The intelligence officers at Fort Meade rely on a sophisticated suite of supercomputers and telecommunications equipment to analyze millions of messages and phone calls each day, looking for certain keywords or traffic patterns." [more]

"'[A] terrorist, massive, casualty-producing event somewhere in the Western world -- it may be in the United States of America -- [would cause] our population to question our own Constitution and to begin to militarize our country in order to avoid a repeat of another mass, casualty-producing event,' says General Tommy Franks." [more]

"Iraqi police in the city visited mosques dropping off leaflets in Arabic from the US military, telling residents that there was a daily 7pm to 6am curfew. They ordered them not to congregate in groups or carry weapons, even if they were licensed. They instructed people that if US forces enter their homes, they should gather in one room and, if they want to talk to the troops, to have their hands up." [more]

"Senator Richard Lugar, of Bush's own Republican Party, told a weekend U.S. television news show that 'I would have thought there would be a more comprehensive plan.... The fact is that we don't know what we are going to do' in Iraq." [more]

"The new exercises will use a series of exercise activities of increasing complexity, and simulate a terrorist attack using weapons of mass destruction in Connecticut and New Jersey, the Homeland Security Department said. The specific scenarios for the exercises are still being developed." [more]

"The Saudis have steadily infiltrated American educational institutions, using vast infusions of money to turn the American educational system against US support for Israel and in favor of the Saudi vision of a global Muslim state in which not only Jews but Christians and all infidels will have subordinate status to the followers of the 'true faith.' At the same time they look to affect American policy in the Middle East and public opinion in the US in a way to aid their Wahhabist goals." [more]

"The ABC letter said Spain had until April 4 to end its support for the United States and withdraw its troops from Iraq and Afghanistan./ 'If these demands are not met, we will declare war on you and ... convert your country into an inferno and your blood will flow like rivers,' the letter said." [more]

"In interviews with the Maariv, Yediot Aharonot and Haaretz dailies, Sharon defended the plan, saying it serves Israel’s interest, not that of the Palestinians. 'The Palestinians understand that this plan is to a large extent the end of their dreams, a very heavy blow to them,' he told Haaretz." [more]

"The Queen has warned Britain and France that they cannot afford to be divided while facing threats to their security./ Her state visit, which began in Paris, follows a series of tensions between the two countries, most recently over the war in Iraq." [more]

"Most of the 'erased' are fellow former Yugoslavs, whom many Slovenes regard as poor Balkan cousins who failed to show sufficient loyalty to independent Slovenia. Supporters of the law and opponents of the referendum called the 4 April vote a victory for xenophobia and injustice." [more]

"...Tamil Tiger rebels today warned they would renew their fight to win their demands if the new government denied them autonomy./ The rebel Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) said their overwhelming sweep of the island's north and east in Friday's general election was a 'major victory' and an endorsement of their nationalist struggle." [more]

"The resulting machine, dubbed FlashMob, would have needed to perform a rigorous benchmark calculation called Linpack at a rate of at least 403 billion flops (floating point operations per second) to be ranked as one of the top 500 supercomputers. But FlashMob only reached a relatively modest peak performance of 180 billion flops." [more]

"A protest march on a Spanish coalition base near the holy city of Najaf ended in violence in which a coalition soldier from El Salvador and one from the US were killed along with about 20 Iraqis. Many more were injured." [more]

"'Effectively he [Moqtada al-Sadr] is attempting to establish his authority in the place of the legitimate authority. We will not tolerate this,' Bremer said. 'We will reassert the law and order which the Iraqi people expect.'" [more]

"On each side thousands of citizens greeted the people leading the demonstration with applause and irrintzis (long yells). They later joined the march bearing Basque flags, flags of Navarre and posters saying Autodeterminazioa orain (Self-determination now). The Askapena organisation carried its own banner saying 'No to occupation; peoples’ self-determination! Long live the peoples’ resistance!' and in this group many flags of Palestine and Iraq could be seen among the Basque ones." [more]

"Turkish Ambassador to the United States Faruk Logoglu has reacted to U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell who described Turkey as an Islamic Republic, and stressed, 'Turkey is a democratic and secular republic.'" [more]

"I can't advocate a news blackout on these issues; the term 'marketplace of ideas' is engraved on each cell in my body. But I'd like the marketplace to be a real one: complex, thoughtful, diverse. And right now, the coverage is being increasingly circumscribed by the agenda of conservative groups bent on shutting conversation down, quelling dissent and the free exchange of ideas--while they simultaneously and hypocritically claim that their moves are based on the twin pillars of free speech and fairness. It's a clever argument the local media seem to have swallowed hook, line and sinker." [more]

"Cries of 'bias' aren't limited to public universities. The same week that Crystall's e-mail hit the press, conservative students at Duke published an ad in their campus newspaper taking university leaders to task for the lack of 'intellectual diversity' on campus. As evidence, students cited the percentages of registered Democrats and Republicans among deans and on the faculty in eight departments to show how GOP members are almost nonexistent." [more]

"Donor countries pledged a total of $8.2 billion in aid over the next three years to Afghanistan on the first day of the conference on Wednesday. The country is set to receive $4.4 billion of the sum by March 20, 2005. The World Bank estimated that Afghanistan would need $27.5 billion over the next seven years for reconstruction." [more]

"The plaintiffs also alleged that Chevron Nigeria's management was involved in the detention and torture of protest leader Bola Oyinbo, and that a helicopter flown by Chevron pilots and vehicles supplied by Chevron Nigeria transported government forces that opened fire on two villages, killing several people." [more]

"Fighting in Darfur broke out more than a year ago, when rebels attacked government targets, saying black Africans were being oppressed in favour of Arabs. Mr Egeland described it as one of the world`s worst humanitarian crises." [more]

"The theology of the powers was in the spotlight today with the claim that "Spiritual forces” may have caused a projector to break down during one of the free screenings of The Passion Of The Christ laid on by a group of churches." [more]

"Unfortunately, many palms are unsustainably harvested. Peasant workers often harvest the entire plant, leading to the over-harvesting of the species, the potential destruction of rain forests, and the depletion of many bird species that migrate to these regions in the winter." [more]

"NATO more and more ressembles a terrorist organization with every day that passes. Its arbitrary decisions on who is guilty of war crimes never takes into consideration the fact that this organization itself was responsible for hundreds of civilian deaths during the Kosovo campaign and in Afghanistan." [more]

"Marcus maintains that the World Bank is ignoring, or is possibly unaware of, the fact that the very PA universities they will be strengthening all have official student branches of Hamas (called Al-Kutlah Al-Islamiyah) and Islamic Jihad (called Al-Jama'ah Al-Islamiyah), both terrorist organizations found on the U.S. and E.U. terrorist lists." [more]

"This led to another CNN anchor, Kyra Phillips, showing the video later in the day reporting the footage of the boy was simply a joke. / 'We're told that the kid was there at that event, but not necessarily standing behind the president,' Phillips explained, repeating the report by Kagan earlier on CNN." [more]

"The only stone, it seems, the bureau hasn't been willing to turn over is its own investigation into the Oklahoma City bombing. Presumably, that's because the 1995 terrorist attack was the exclusive work of homegrown extremists Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols. Or was it?" [more]

"Fred Jerome reveals that the 1,800-page document prepared about Einstein by the FBI shows that the agency even bugged his secretary's nephew's house." [more]

"Canadians are now among the few travellers in the world exempt from a controversial Bush administration program that requires visitors to be fingerprinted and photographed when entering the United States." [more]

"A North Canton, Ohio-based company that is one of the largest U.S. voting machine manufacturers and an aggressive peddler of its electronic voting machines, Diebold fails any reasonable test of qualifications for involvement with the voting process. Its CEO has worked as a major fundraiser for President George Bush. Computer experts revealed serious flaws in its voting technology and activists showed how careless it was with confidential information. In response, it threatened lawsuits against activists who published company documents on the Internet showing its failures." [more]

"What 3,500 Korean soldiers will do in this area, a year after the end of the regular war, has become unclear. The area wasn't beat up during the war, so there isn't much to reconstruct, and major construction projects aren't the job of gun-carrying soldiers." [more]

"Mugabe's atrocities are not limited to inflicting egregious pain on individuals. The ICC should be able to hold him accountable also for committing 'other inhumane acts' under the statute. This would include the systematic and widespread policy of using food as an economic weapon. Interviews with a number of Zimbabweans reveal a nefarious government policy of manipulating the supply and distribution of international and government food aid. If a Zimbabwean does not possess a registration card from Mugabe's ruling party, then he or she cannot register for this life-sustaining grain." [more]

"Following the assassination of Hamas leader Sheikh Ahmed Yassin last week, Israeli Defense Forces Chief of Staff Moshe Ya'alon said that the responses of Arafat and Hezbollah leader Sheikh Ahmed Nasrallah showed that 'they understand that this is approaching them.'" [more]

"'No one threw stones (before the police action),' Waqf director Adnan Husseini told Reuters. 'They (police) started doing this every Friday to scare elderly worshippers as younger ones are already banned. This is flagrant violation of freedom of worship.'" [more]

"Palestinian President Yasir Arafat watched a preview of the film at his West Bank headquarters earlier this month. Aides said he found the film 'moving.'" [more]

"And it's not just the foreigners - South Africans, who know they are breaking their country's laws on mercenary activity; skilled Gurkhas and Fijians who can't resist the dollars; or the Chileans who trained under General Pinochet - who are involved./ Beneath all of that is a dubious layer of Iraqi-run security - hundreds of local firms that have the capacity to become clan-based militias if, as some expect, security worsens after the June 30 hand-back of sovereignty to an Iraqi administration." [more]

"'I don’t think this is going to be resolved with the current regime,' Gilinsky said. 'What we need to do is wait them out and hem them in as best we can and use other ways to soften them up and have the juices of capitalism maybe corrode their spirit,' he added." [more]

"The Uzbek government has been systematically persecuting Muslims for more than five years, jailing roughly 7,000 believers for engaging in non-state-sanctioned forms of religious expression. Some reports suggest the current Uzbek arrest spree is merely an extension of the ongoing crackdown on Islam, with Muslims being indiscriminately arrested. According to one British Broadcasting Corp. report March 31, one woman asserted that four of her sons were taken into custody because they share the same name as an militant who was captured March 30." [more]

"Jubilant residents yanked the bodies of four American contractors working for the US-led coalition out of their burning cars yesterday, dragged the charred corpses through the streets, and hung two of them from the bridge spanning the Euphrates River." [more]

"Video surveillance is a key component of BEP security. Both the Fort Worth and Washington facilities have recently begun upgrading from analog to digital video surveillance systems and have chosen Loronix Video Solutions from Verint for the process. Benefitting from decades of experience with surveillance, BEP officials have crafted methods to use the new digital systems for far more than just security." [more]

"Traditionally, when organizations want to secure 802.11b-based wireless networks, the only solution available to them is virtual private networking. But VPNs can be cumbersome to deploy and difficult to manage. And when, like DMLSS, the organization uses handheld devices to connect to the wireless network, VPN technology can be especially difficult to use." [more]

"Utah is the 11th state to withdraw from the federal pilot program for either privacy or financial reasons, according to the New York-based American Civil Liberties Union. Connecticut, Florida, Michigan, Ohio and Pennsylvania are still participating. / The other states that have withdrawn from Matrix are Alabama, California, Georgia, Oregon, Louisiana, New York, Oregon, South Carolina Texas and Wisconsin, the ACLU said." [more]

"The American Civil Liberties Union issued a condemnation Thursday of St. Bernard Parish Sheriff Jack Stephens' plan to seek Homeland security grants to install cameras at the parish line to photograph motorists' faces and license plates as they come and go." [more]

"Monroe Community College in Rochester, N.Y., for example, has recently opened the Homeland Security Management Institute, run by a retired Army colonel who was a commander at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba." [more]

"'If you take the entire complement of people who are under arms in the private security industry, it's larger than people who are in the armed forces of the country, and this is worrisome,' says Security Minister Charles Nqakula." [more]

"'On the contrary, it's the irrational fear of the "undesirable other" that has always been -- and continues to be -- the greatest threat to American national unity.'" [more]

"Air Force acquisitions chief Marvin Sambur told Knight Ridder last week that the Air Force worked closely with Boeing on the program, to the exclusion of rival tanker manufacturer Airbus, because legislation required it to./ The e-mails and other documents show that the Air Force helped make sure that the legislation was written in such a way that Boeing would be favored, and collaborated with Boeing on the company's behalf." [more]

"To date, the possibility of the US attacking Iraq to protect Israel has been only timidly raised by some intellectuals and writers, with few public acknowledgements from sources close to the administration. Analysts who reviewed Zelikow's statements said that they are concrete evidence of one factor in the rationale for going to war, which has been hushed up." [more]

"The United Jewish Communities, which is spearheading the effort to garner federal funds for high-risk non-profit organizations, is touting a plan to give the federal dollars directly to contractors, who would perform security upgrades at Jewish and other vulnerable sites. / 'By having the flow of money go from the federal government to the contractor, there no longer will be church-state concerns,' said Charles Konigsberg, vice president for public policy at UJC..." [more]

"After many American threats to arrest Muqtada in the past, the American occupying forces accused al-Hawza of fomenting violence against them and closed its offices for 60 days, padlocking and chaining the doors, handing the editor a letter signed by US civilian administrator L Paul Bremer, explaining that the newspaper had violated a ban on fomenting violence." [more]

"The government has claimed that Islamic radicals, with international terrorist connections, are behind the violence. Radical groups operating in Uzbekistan, including Hizb-ut-Tahrir, have not claimed responsibility. Scattered bits of information coming to light raise questions about an international terrorist connection, lending credence to the notion that the violence is a popular reaction to government repression." [more]

"'Nobody is forced to work overtime,' she said. 'It's just that sometime the supervisors tell us to put in extra time in an impolite, menacing way.' Overtime pay was theoretically time-and-a-half, but in practice this had little effect on their overall take-home pay, she said." [more]

"The Government believes it may have found a way to damage Mark Latham and it's going to try to step it up again in the debate this afternoon. But both independent Meg Lees and Democrats leader Andrew Bartlett believe that the Government's planned Iraq debate is nothing more than a political exercise." [more]

"It still remains unclear what charges Saddam will face and where the trial will take place, but Verges is already preparing the groundwork. He says he plans to highlight America's role in the nerve gas attacks in Kurdish villages in northern Iraq in the 1980s during the trial, emphasizing the fact that the U.S. sold the deadly chemicals to Iraq during President Ronald Reagan's term." [more]

How income inequality in the United States is showing up in basic health statistics. [more]

Richard Clarke and the lessons of Iraq. [more]

"The independent An-Nahar in Lebanon said the United States wanted the summit to fail in order to ensure that its own initiative would have no competition./ 'American pressure undermined the summit,' it charged, since Washington was 'indisposed by an Arab document on reforms since it wants to impose its "Greater Middle East" initiaitive.'" [more]

"Many observers, however, say what the alliance mainly wants from its new members are soldiers for peacekeeping missions and sparsely populated areas for training exercises." [more]

"According to unofficial information, at least five people were killed in the Uzbek capital in the two blasts, up to 30 blast victims were brought to the first Tashkent city hospital. A female suicide bomber set off an explosive device fixed on her body at the Chorsu marketplace near the entrance to the three-story shop Detski Mir ('Children’s World'). There were luckily few visitors in the morning." [more]

"The hearings have highlighted serious gaps between Dr Rice's statements about what the White House did before September 11 and evidence from Mr Clarke that is backed by classified White House documents. In particular, Dr Rice's claim that a White House plan to 'destroy' al-Qaeda was radically different from president Bill Clinton's plan has been brought into question." [more]

"Kamerhe and Interior Minister Theophile Mbemba both refused to comment on diplomats' accounts of the attack, which they said was linked to the recent discovery of an arms cache buried in Kinshasa./ During the fight, authorities seized six rocket-propelled grenades, two mortar launchers, 30 grenades, 75 AK-47 assault rifles and thousands of rounds of various ammunition, the army said." [more]

Undercover city officers were sent to monitor anti-war meetings and rallies when opposition to the war in Iraq began to mount last year, the police chief confirms. [more]

"Some exercises Kerry could try, according to Peabody, are to imagine he is talking in a church, then imagine he is talking to someone over the noise of a subway car, then to an audience of children, then to an ailing patient. Kerry should also do breathing exercises to "uncover parts of the voice that may be unfamiliar or covered by habit," Roth said. In giving a speech, she added, he needs to be willing to go "off the page" in the manner of Clinton or Martin Luther King Jr., adjusting to the audience." [more]

"Team chief Col. Virgil Patterson said one in four soldiers surveyed reported moderate or severe emotional, alcohol or family problems. More than half reported low or very low morale and almost three-quarters reported low or very low unit morale." [more]

"The United States must improve its defenses, but there really is only one option: to take the fight to the enemy, he said. 'We are breaking up cells and disrupting plots. We're staying on offense, tracking al Qaeda around the world,' he said." [more]

"The scale of the ruling coalition's losses makes it likely President Jacques Chirac will next week reshuffle Raffarin's two-year-old government, reducing the number of ministers and bringing more professional politicians into the cabinet, said academics such as Laurent Dubois of the Paris Institut d'Etudes Politiques." [more]

"In a further bid to quell such concerns, Mr. Erdogan did not field any female candidates, who wear the Islamic style headscarf in Sunday's polls. And in a gesture to non-Muslim Turks, the AKP ran three ethnic Armenians for smaller municipal districts in Istanbul." [more]

"The two leaders are currently in Brussels for European Union (EU) summit. / Turkey-EU relations and Cyprus issues were primarily discussed at the meeting." [more]

"'We know for sure this is a fabricated story from A to Z. Would you believe that a 13 or 14-year old would agree to blow up himself in return for a hundred shekels which he would receive after his death?'" [more]

"After a few more slides, there was a shot of Bush looking under furniture in the Oval Office. 'Nope,' Bush said. 'No weapons over there.' More laughter. Then another picture of Bush searching in his office: 'Maybe under here.' Laughter again." [more]

"'Transformation has no end state -- it is a continual process,' Curran told the subcommittee. '… The goal is to continually strive to spiral mature capabilities into the current force so that over time our Army more closely resembles the vision of the Future Force.'" [more]

'US ambassador to Uganda, Mr Jimmy Kolker, has said there are no parallels between LRA and Al Qaeda terrorist organisations. He was responding to a question in an interview with Irin that donors are urging the government to talk to Kony, yet America can’t do the same with Al Qaeda because that would amount to ‘appeasing terrorists’." [more]

"So the future of US-India ties will depend largely on the election results. RSS-supported economists believe that the world has entered the era of economic warfare with the developed nations and that by kowtowing to the US, India is merely prolonging its status as a developing country. This is also the view of India's president, missile scientist Dr Abdul Kalam, whom the RSS sponsored for the post of the president, even though he is a Muslim. The ideas expressed in his books - about economic warfare - are very popular in the country." [more]

"'They are not content with building the huge sinister wall around the West Bank; they want to build a wall around every Palestinian town, village and hamlet. They are learning from the Nazis and the Russians.'" [more]

"Although the complete Land Warrior System -- a modular, integrated fighting system that includes everything an infantry soldier wears or carries on the battlefield -- is not due to be fielded until 2007, troops in the field already benefit from several of its components." [more]

"Israel has prohibited vehicles belonging to the United Nations and other humanitarian agencies from crossing the Erez checkpoint into Gaza for the last three weeks, the statement said, and staff must go through on foot. Food shipments through Karni, the only commercial crossing point in Gaza, have also been obstructed." [more]

"Does it really make sense that two European Union member countries hold a veto power on the Security Council while the Third World (outside of China) is completely unrepresented? The EU does not have a common foreign policy and it will not have one in the foreseeable future, but this is no reason to continue to provide a preference to France and Britain." [more]

"Thus, although the culture industry undeniably speculates on the conscious and unconscious state of the millions towards which it is directed, the masses are not primary, but secondary, they are an object of calculation; an appendage of the machinery. The customer is not king, as the culture industry would have us believe, not its subject but its object." [more]

"Whatever the sum involved, it vanished from the UN-administered Iraq Oil For Food programme, and unlike last year's petty looting, those at the centre of suspicion aren't lowly bureaucrats but a tight cluster of high-up insiders centred on the office, family and inner circle of Secretary-General Kofi Annan himself." [more]

"'The United States stands alone in opposing these safe, inexpensive and WHO-certified generic medicines,' Csete said. 'The Bush administration should dispel all accusations that it is protecting the interests of brand-name drug companies, and instead it should endorse and purchase these cheaper drugs, which would maximize the return on its investment in fighting AIDS.'" [more]

"Today's military is fighting the first war of the 21st century, a war that began on September 11th, 2001, when enemies struck the United States and murdered thousands of our fellow citizens. That day changed everything. In the space of a few hours, we saw the violence and the grief that terrorists can inflict. And we had a glimpse of the even greater harm they wish to do to us. The terrorists hate our country, they hate our freedom, they hate everything we stand for in the world. They seek even deadlier weapons and they would use them against us if they could." [more]

"Shell was in a hurry to complete a favourable deal with Libya before the US government lifts its trade sanctions on Libya. US oil companies are believed to gain a major role in the Libyan oil and gas industry, in particular in the production of crude oil. While US sanctions are still in place, Washington has given US companies a green light to start negotiating future Libyan deals and the first US oil company, Occidental, is already present in Libya." [more]

"The impact that terrorism has on society is determined by the authorities under target and how they deal with the threat, rather than by the terrorists' outrages." [more]

"Another commentator, Rahimullah Yusufzai, a leading Pakistani journalist and expert on Afghan affairs, said many members of the clan had left the tribal area to seek work in the Gulf states and the Middle East making them relatively well off." [more]

"A conservative party in Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi's coalition government presented legislation Wednesday to limit the building of new mosques, calling them 'political places' used to spread hatred for the West." [more]

"What's more, the executives and Clear Channel's political action committee gave 77% of their $334,501 in federal contributions to Republicans. That's a bigger share than any other entertainment company, says the non-partisan Center for Responsive Politics." [more]

"Just over a week into the protest, and strikers are already being threatened by the paramilitary Autodefensas Unidas de Colombia, which issued a statement to 'declare war on the individuals that we have already identified as the leaders of the organisation. They must leave . . . or they will become a military target and we will finish them off. Anti-subversive justice will carry out justice.'" [more]

"The jamming concept originated in Israel in the early '90s and is currently used by U.S. troops in Iraq. The United States has tested an air-dropped cell-phone jammer, WolfPack, that can knock out all cell-phone traffic in a combat zone." [more]

"The Bush/Cheney campaign Wednesday unleashed its most famous Democratic booster — Georgia Sen. Zell Miller — to make the case presidential foe John Kerry's policies are inconsistent with some of history's most popular Democratic presidents." [more]

"...since the 1980s, the sources of most urban anxiety have not been terrorists, but stigmatised ethnic and racial minorities, immigrants, criminals, drug-users and the poor. Following the US model, in which surveillance and punishment are the preferred methods of social regulation, European cities have expanded their police forces and toughened penalties, resulting in dramatically increased rates of incarceration across the Continent. New anxieties will accelerate this trend, but with a twist: Arabs and North Africans will be subjected to heightened ethnic or racial profiling, and citizens will begin monitoring each other more aggressively." [more]

"Mark Lance, associate professor of justice and peace at Georgetown University in Washington, DC, argues that two recent major attacks on important international leaders make a mockery of the international legal system. 'The elected president of Haiti was driven from office, and the spiritual leader of Hamas, along with 10 civilian bystanders, was executed,' he told IPS." [more]

"Before last week's Mosul attack, some of the new Christian arrivals volunteered that they were handing out Christian tracts and seeking converts. Now they are quick to claim themselves to be non-proselytising humanitarian workers or evangelists who confine their activities to the Christian community." [more]

"Mr Latham said the attacks were 'ludicrous' and he would not back down. He repeated that the 850 troops in and around Iraq would be withdrawn when power was handed to an Iraqi administration - scheduled for June 30 - even if it requested they remain." [more]

"Nor is it just in Iraq that American troops are now facing Fourth Generation war. They have their hands full of it in Afghanistan, in Pakistan (by proxy), in Haiti, and in Kosovo. So long as America continues on the strategic offensive, intervening all over the world, the list will grow. In each case, the root problem will be the same: the disintegration of the local state. And in each case, the attempt to recreate a state by sending in American armed forces will fail." [more]

"Pastor Soares is the second person to die at a screening of the film. Peggy Law Scott, an American woman in her 50s, passed out last month during the crucifixion scene, when watching the film in Wichita, Kansas." [more]

"In his weekly radio address to the nation today, President George W. Bush told the American people that the war on terror isn't a figure of speech, 'it's the inescapable calling of our generation.'" [more]

"...Rupert Murdoch is a very powerful player in the media – and, because of his willingness to turn his properties into mouthpieces for the administration, in the politics of the United States. So it should probably not come as any surprise that, like the politicians in any number of countries where Murdoch has come to dominate the discourse, Bush Administration officials answer Rupert's call – even when they are supposedly preoccupied with national security concerns. Rice's willingness to brief Fox executives is especially intriguing in light of the fact that she continues to refuse to brief the bipartisan panel that is investigating the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon." [more]

"Corporate critics say they are comfortable with these ideals, which are already pursued by many companies on an individual basis. What they reject is the notion that there should be any international compulsion. While the charter would not have the force of a formal UN treaty, it has taken the rare step of including an enforcement lever that might force negligent firms to pay compensation to their alleged victims - if they are convicted in local courts." [more]

"And yet, the majority of people don’t think that they live in a police state, a situation – it is said – that would require a massive and constant presence of troops in the streets, with tanks at intersections and helicopters in the sky. A conviction that conceals a monstrous misunderstanding. A true police state is characterized by the vast efficiency of its techniques of control, control that can be entrusted to the physical omnipresence of agents (as in the old dictatorial regimes), or to the omnipresence of their technological instruments – as occurs today in all the democracies." [more]

"Perhaps the most ominous signal that we've allowed government snooping to go too far recently came to light: Now the military is getting into the surveillance and gathering of information on law-abiding citizens -- in a big way. Despite a 126-year-old federal law that seems to prohibit military involvement in such matters as gathering evidence on citizens and others within our borders, the Pentagon is involved in a wide variety of domestic snooping operations." [more]

"In theory the companies should be accountable under guidelines produced by the Paris-based agency, the Organization for Co-operation and Development./ But Thursday’s report said no progress has been made in pursing the companies by their own governments." [more]

"According to reports in the highly politicised press supporting President Gbagbo, the planned protest actions of the opposition and the Forces Nouvelles however aim at stopping just this UN deployment by creating political violence. The same media however are nourishing conspiracy theories against the opposition and the ex-rebels, strongly contributing to the increased level of conflict." [more]

"Although it is clear that Telestreet begins as television, the centrality of social and technical networks in its development makes it a far more interesting hybrid. As the telestreet manifesto declared 'Television must be considered a new prosthesis and an extension of the net: but to avoid another media alternative 'ghetto', the horizontally of the net must meet the 'socializing' power of television.'" [more]

"ADC advised the Army that the personnel who attended the conference were in civilian attire, did not identify themselves as representing the Army during the event, and did not express any concern or report any of their alleged suspicions to the conference organizers, UT Austin or civilian law enforcement. Further, ADC expressed grave concern about the logic underlying these alleged suspicions." [more]

"The analogy between the picket on the highway with piquetero TV is almost perfect, because it cannot be understood as simply an interruption of radio frequencies. It is not only about trying to take control of the space that is usually dominated by the communication monopolies but also creating a new relation between the common person and mass media." [more]

"The left-wing opposition has sought to turn the regional elections, in theory based on local issues, into an anti-government vote, allowing them to recoup some of the ground lost in the 2002 polls./ Opposition parties believe they have profited from the knock-on effect of of last Sunday's surprise Socialist victory in Spain." [more]

"The merchandise sold on www.georgewbushstore.com includes a $49.95 fleece pullover, embroidered with the Bush-Cheney '04 logo and bearing a label stating it was made in Burma, now Myanmar." [more]

"Under the 1994 scheme, many universities agreed to contact the government when assessing applicants from potential students from countries then designated as rogue states. But after 9/11, institutions were asked to go further and secretly gather information on foreign students." [more]

"With revenues of 196 billion dollars and 164 billion dollars, General Motors Corp. and Ford Motor Co. came in third and fourth respectively. General Electric Co. remained at the fifth place with revenue of 134 billion dollars. Both Ford Motor and General Electric held their spots from 2002." [more]

"The boys’ deaths on Wednesday triggered days of rioting, looting and arson by ethnic Albanians against Serbs that left 28 people dead, 600 injured." [more]

"By making Syria a pariah nation, Bush has helped to realize a goal of current Israeli policy: to secure US help in weakening its unfriendly neighbors. In addition, by getting Congress to condemn Syria for alleged weapons development, Israel refocused attention away from its own nuclear arsenal." [more]

"Military lawyers refuse to name the soldiers, reportedly from the 800 Military Police Brigade, who were charged, or to release their charge sheets or describe the nature of the alleged abuse. In response to a question, they said none of the prisoners was given medical treatment, and would not say if any of the mistreated prisoners were women." [more]

"Angel Berroeta’s bakery is at 18, Martin Azpilkueta street in the Donibane quarter and the police officer lives next door in flat 'C' on the first floor. According to neighbours, at about 13.30 hours the policeman's wife had had a heated argument with Berrueta about a poster saying ETA, ez (No to ETA); the neighbours were eager to stress that the woman did not go to that bakery to get bread, 'as she always goes to buy bread at the bakery opposite'." [more]

"At his briefing in Washington on March 8, Gen Wald acknowledged US interest in establishing 'forward operation locations' in sub-Saharan Africa for American military forces. The facilities would not amount to full-scale bases but would instead serve as refuelling and equipment-storage points." [more]

"Pakistani troops have faced fierce resistance from suspected al-Qaida fighters and tribesmen in the South Waziristan area since launching a sweep on Tuesday, leading to speculation they may be protecting Ayman al-Zawahri, bin Ladin's right-hand man." [more]

Activist and singer/songwriter Evan Greer explains how public spaces are being coopted for private interests and calls for a re-claimation of public space and social interactions. [more]

An accountant in Long Beach, Calif., is leading a violent and bloody campaign to overthrow the government of Cambodia. Why doesn't the U.S. government seem to care? [more]

"'That they deceived us about the weapons of mass destruction, that's true. We were taken for a ride,' Kwasniewski said." [more]

"The eruption of violence was fuelled by tit-for-tat incidents in recent days and showed how tense Kosovo remains, despite almost five years of UN peacekeeping. With Albanian hardliners in the ascendant in Kosovo and a new nationalist government in power in Serbia, the portents are dismal." [more]

"It would be irrational for Palestinians not to believe that the goal of Sharon's fence is anything other than their confinement in a series of bantustans, if not a prelude to a second 'transfer.'" [more]

"The United Nations Secretary-General, Koffi Annan, wrote in his Millennium Report: 'When robust and comprehensive economic sanctions are directed against authoritarian regimes, a different problem is encountered. Then it is usually the people who suffer, not the political elites whose behaviour triggered the sanctions in the first place.'" [more]

"The Center's study found that investment companies continue to make staggering donations to Bush, driven by so-called bundlers. Nine of Bush's largest ten donors during October 2003 through January 2004 were financial services companies. All of Bush's ten largest donors from October through January are linked to bundlers who have pledged to donate $100,000 to $250,000 as part of the president's Pioneer and Ranger Programs." [more]

"The intended target, the use of plastic explosives, the cooperation between militant groups and the fact that Palestinian bombers managed to slip out of Gaza for the first time since 2000 were all seen as signals of escalation in tactics." [more]

Mr. Zapatero offered scathing criticism of the American-led war in Iraq, which his party, like 90 percent of the Spanish people, opposed. He stated: "The war has been a disaster; the occupation continues to be a great disaster. It hasn't generated anything but more violence and hate. What simply cannot be is that after it became so clear how badly it was handled there be no consequences." [more]

"The lists were previously made public by the media, but Internet users have been adding additional information, such as party affiliations, electoral districts, phone numbers, fax numbers, pictures and e-mail addresses, and uploading them onto bulletin boards and weblogs." [more]

"The only way to fight terrorism, according to Castro, is 'to seek sincere cooperation' because war 'is not going to put an end to it, it is going to make it worse and worse, it is going to sow ever more hatred, more dissatisfaction, more tragedy.'" [more]

"Question and answer session with President Kharzai; from the 'Good Morning Afghanistan' program: 'You and the President'" [more]

"Proliferation is merely globalization of weapons of mass destruction. ... Proliferation, however, is not, as the President seemed to think, just a rogue state or two seeking weapons of mass destruction; it is the entire half-century-long process of globalization that stretches from Klaus Fuchs's espionage to Tahir's nuclear arms bazaar and beyond. The war was a failure in its own terms because weapons of mass destruction were absent in Iraq; the war policy failed because they were present and spreading in Pakistan." [more]

"But oil is just one reason for West Africa's growing demand for guns for hire. The US, for instance, is now more engaged in West Africa. But with troops tied down in Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere, it's increasingly hiring private security firms to represent it." [more]

"Abitz joined Wallace in questioning why the proposed uranium mining is still being considered. 'We are trying to figure out why it is done differently here than in the rest of the world.' / Norman Patrick Brown, Navajo and spokesperson for a coalition of grassroots groups Diné Bidziil, said it is obvious why HRI is being allowed to proceed with the plan. 'Navajos are considered expendable.'" [more]

"Two days before he laces up his skates to take the ice with Boston Bruins legends this weekend, John Kerry today scored a 'hat trick' of endorsements from the Boston Globe, Boston Herald, and Boston Phoenix." [more]

"I'm George W. Bush and I approve this message." [more]

"Kimmitt reported the past week has seen an average of 21 daily engagements against coalition military forces, four attacks daily against Iraqi security forces, and just over three attacks daily against Iraqi civilian targets. / Over past 24 hours, Kimmitt continued, coalition forces in Iraq conducted 1,448 patrols, 15 offensive operations and seven raids. They captured 52 anti- coalition suspects and released seven detainees." [more]

"I recommend that the Supreme Court justices read Brent Kendall's report in the Feb. 13 Los Angeles Daily Journal about what actually happened when federal public defender Frank Dunham finally met Hamdi, whom he had never seen before. Dunham 'found himself in an interview room not only with Hamdi, but with a naval commander who was there to observe their conversation.'" [more]

Matrix, a controversial program intended to find criminals and terrorists, appears to be withering under its critics' attacks. [more]

"Now, therefore, be it...resolved by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, That the Congress, on behalf of the American people, extends its birthday greetings and best wishes to Ronald Reagan on his 92d birthday." [more]

"Susan Lindauer, 40, was arrested at her $250,000 suburban Washington condominium and appeared in federal court in Baltimore on suspicion of being involved as early as 1999 with members of the Iraqi Intelligence Service..." [more]

"The push would effectively expand the scope of the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act, a 1994 law that requires the telecommunications industry to build into its products tools that U.S. investigators can use to eavesdrop on conversations with a court order." [more]

"The ceremony marked the culmination of several weeks of transition operations and regional handovers in Tall Afar, Qayyara and Mosul, as many units under the operational control of Task Force Olympia worked in conjunction with 101st Airborne Division soldiers to ensure a seamless transition of authority." [more]

"The new allegations against President Kagame surely will not improve the already strained French-Rwandan relations. Since the current government came to power ... Paris has been hostile towards the leaders in Kigali. Several French sources have tried to connect Mr Kagame to the assassination of President Habyarimana, while it is official knowledge in Rwanda that France protected the genocidal government of 1994." [more]

"Mr Mohadi went on explaining that Mr Moto, a controversial Equatoguinean opposition leader exiled in Spain, had hired the 'mercenaries' to do the job. Mr Moto and the 'mercenaries' had received logistic aid from the secret services of the US, the UK and Spain, he said." [more]

"... it was a tad misleading to demand Hussein's ouster on grounds that he 'harbors a deadly terrorist network' -- when it was not Hussein, but a Taliban-like crowd of Islamic radicals in the U.S. Air Force-protected north, doing the harboring." [more]

"Corrupt Russian army officers and local Chechen officials have a financial stake in keeping the war going, getting rich from black market deals on everything from oil to weapons sales. On the other side, many Chechen field commanders long ago stopped answering to Chechen separatist leader Aslan Maskhadov. With whom, then, can the Russian government negotiate?" [more]

"'What I particularly liked was the way the movie portrayed how young most soldiers are who fight our country's battles,' Moore said. 'Most of the soldiers I served with then, and those in my company today, are 18 or 19 years old. As shown in the movie, they are not out trying to be heroes, but end up doing some pretty heroic stuff.'" [more]

I saw a narrow and deeply flawed policy favored by some executive appointees in the Pentagon used to manipulate and pressurize the traditional relationship between policymakers in the Pentagon and U.S. intelligence agencies. I witnessed neoconservative agenda bearers within OSP usurp measured and carefully considered assessments, and through suppression and distortion of intelligence analysis promulgate what were in fact falsehoods to both Congress and the Executive Office of the President. [more]

"The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) made news last year for its Total Information Awareness (TIA) project, which called for technologies to search commercial databases in order to identify potential terrorists. HSARPA Director David Bolka said his agency will research data mining but, unlike DARPA, will not seek to mine individuals' data." [more]

"Where is America to protect you today, Aznar. Who is going to protect you, Britain, Italy, Japan and other hirelings from us?" [more]

"He attributed the reasons for not carrying out their threats to stage a major operation deep inside US territories between the two (Al-Adha and Al-Fitr) ids in accordance with their former electronic messages to what he called the change to their strategies and plans." [more]

"'Humanitarian' interventionism, based on the right of interference, ultimately rallied most US liberal intellectuals, who identified with the neoconservatives in criticizing former President Bush for his lack of interest in Bosnia's Muslims, and Bill Clinton for his prevarication." [more]

"It has become clear that the rulers are not qualified to apply the religion and defend the Muslims. In fact, they have provided evidence that they are implementing the schemes of the enemies of the nation and religion and that they are qualified to abandon the countries and peoples. Now, after we have known the situation of the rulers, we should examine the policy they have been pursuing. Anyone who examines the policy of those rulers will easily see that they follow their whims and desires and their personal interests and Crusader loyalties." [more]

"While we’re all fretting over the Patriot Act, John Ashcroft’s Justice Department is after much bigger game." [more]

"'The trap is sprung,' said a senior American administration official speaking from Washington, saying that the Libyan resolution sets a precedent for future I.A.E.A. resolutions on Iran. 'It makes it very hard not to at some point address Iran's breaches by referring them to the Security Council,' he said." [more]

"The St. Petersburg Times reported Aug. 2 that documents filed by prosecutors in Chicago identified Asher as a pilot and former smuggler in the Bahamas. He served as an informant and witness in several trials and has been identified as someone who provided police protection for smuggling operations." [more]

"Wisconsin is not alone in reconsidering the Matrix, or Multistate Anti-Terrorism Information Exchange. Of the 13 states that originally signed up, six remain. Concerns center on how detailed a picture it could paint of a person's life and activities." [more]

"John Kerry said early in the race that he intended to treat female voters exactly like male voters, because they care about the same things—jobs, health care, good wages, security. He's right—up to a point. But far more men have health coverage through work, and women's jobs not only pay less, they're more marginal. Many employers keep part-time hours just below the threshold where laid-off workers can collect unemployment, and the largest group working for minimum-wage jobs is adult women." [more]

"Along with the shaving ban, the mayor has proclaimed all men and women must dress in Western or historic clothing on Fridays beginning in May." [more]

"What that means in simple English is that the US government has just bought the world's biggest RAM drive in order to speed up cross-checking across several vast databases." [more]

"The British peace movement's alternative to war has historically been a patriotic endorsement of Western intervention - with consequences that are no less dire for those on the receiving end." [more]

"When the strike began, some feared that a lack of busses would prompt more people to drive to work and cause highway traffic to soar. However, that did not appear to be happening Monday." [more]

"Lloyd said affordable health insurance is vital to his members, given the physical nature of most of their jobs – whether it be mechanics breathing diesel fumes or drivers who put in 10-hour shifts behind the wheel." [more]

"Seven of the 15 candidates hoping to succeed Peter Fitzgerald, a millionaire who is not seeking a second term, fall in the millionaire range. Four are Republicans and three are Democrats." [more]

"'Two weeks after the attack, Parks personnel removed the materials and placed them in storage. The Municipal Archives received the items six months later. We continue to sort and catalog them. The Municipal Archives also received materials from a large memorial wall (260 feet long, 9 feet high) created by the victims’ families from September - December 2001. On September 11, 2002, we visited Ground Zero at 7:00 PM to gather the flowers and other items placed by the victims’ families during the day; we also photographed the small memorials left at the site.'" [more]

"The fact that researchers could only get access to the Giuliani records through a laborious, time-consuming, and usually unsatisfactory process for three years was not well received by the research public or by citizens with evidential and informational needs for the records. These records included documentation of the City's response to 9/11, a subject on which the former mayor has already published a book - a book that no one has been able to effectively examine because the records are not available." [more]

"Civil and governmental life is interrupted, due to a major loss of equipment, databases, and documents. There is so much destruction. Tom Twiss's compilation of the damage to the libraries and cultural centers is comprehensive and accurate, as I saw at the places I was able to visit and meet with staff, or talk to people who saw the sites I was not able to visit." [more]

"The elected leader in Haiti has now been given a thumbs down by Washington. The power of the bullet is ironically speaking more effectively than the ballot ( or, at least as effectively as the bombs did in Iraq, to urge on regime change)." [more]

"According to past and present military and intelligence officials, however, Washington’s support for the pardon of Khan was predicated on what Musharraf has agreed to do next: look the other way as the U.S. hunts for Osama bin Laden in a tribal area of northwest Pakistan ..., where he is believed to be operating. American commanders have been eager for permission to conduct major sweeps in the Hindu Kush for some time, and Musharraf has repeatedly refused them. Now, with Musharraf’s agreement, the Administration has authorized a major spring offensive that will involve the movement of thousands of American troops." [more]

"The RNC also improperly deposited $250,000 received from the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation ('Freddie Mac') in its general nonfederal account in 2001 even though the donation had been properly designated for the building fund." [more]

"Pentagon investigators charge that KBR charged for nearly four million meals that were never served. There is also the question of whether KBR paid as much as $61 million too much for fuel last year by buying it from a Kuwaiti source rather than from cheaper sources in Turkey. The billings now under review bring the total cost to the U.S. taxpayer to more than $176 million." [more]

"...I don't believe the Americans were behind yesterday's carnage despite the screams of accusation by the Iraqi survivors yesterday. But I do worry about the Iraqi exile groups who think that their own actions might produce what the Americans want: a fear of civil war so intense that Iraqis will go along with any plan the United States produces for Mesopotamia." [more]

"While neither the group nor the individuals had current links to New Zealand, Clark said the move 'will serve to deter New Zealanders from becoming inadvertently involved in their activities.'" [more]

"According to ISNA, the court also ordered the United States to pay $800 million to two Iranians who were 'kidnapped' by US forces and 'suffered damage,' also without elaborating." [more]

"Mr Kay, who was formerly a UN weapons inspector, called for the president to go further. 'It's about confronting and coming clean with the American people. He should say we were mistaken and I am determined to find out why,' he said." [more]

"I was 100 metres away from the first explosion, but you didn't have to be that close. Millions of Shia saw that first terrifying explosion, which sent a great burst of yellow fire bellowing over the roofs of Karbala; cameras were already filming the ceremonies. You could watch it all on the television news, just like on 11 September." [more]

"...but again I couldn't vote on the democratic primary. What gives? I flip open my voter booklet and on the second or third page it stated something to the effect of: 'non-partisan voters can vote in 3 of the 7 party primaries, just request a ballot to do so'. So I requested the ballot." [more]

"The Iowa National Guard says it will punish 21 soldiers who failed drug tests before being sent overseas. / The...soldiers will be discharged dishonorably. The troops were not discharged or put through rehab at the time of the drug tests. / Guard officials say that's because deployment schedules didn't allow for it." [more]

"Calling itself the Coalition for Economic Growth and American Jobs, the new entity comprises about 200 trade groups -- including the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the Business Roundtable, the American Bankers Association, the National Association of Manufacturers and the Information Technology Association of America -- as well as individual companies." [more]

"Tens of thousands are on the move now as the Pentagon carries out the largest rotation of forces in its history, relieving battle-weary soldiers in Iraq, Afghanistan and Kuwait with fresh forces. By late March, 130,000 troops will be leaving Iraq and 105,000, including some of the 319th, will arrive. As many as 50% of these will be reservists or National Guard." [more]

"A fire that damaged an Islamic mosque in southeast Houston was intentionally set, federal investigators said today." [more]

"Second Friday prayer sermon by Ayatollah Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, Head of the Expediency Council, in Tehran." [more]

"The Security Council tonight, acting in response to the deteriorating political, security and humanitarian situation in Haiti, authorized the immediate deployment of Multinational Interim Force for a period of three months to help to secure and stabilize the capital, Port-au-Prince, and elsewhere in the country." [more]

"The expansion of the geographical boundaries of the region dilutes the importance of the Palestinian problem and demotes it from its central position on the political stage of the Middle East to a marginal position as just one of several "hot" issues plaguing a much wider region. Moreover, given Washington's fixation on terrorism, it could well use the new rationale to classify the Palestinian struggle for nationhood as just one more example of the terrorism that is widely propagated throughout the greater Middle East." [more]

"Digitization of transactions and instruments has been central to this multiplication of types of derivatives and their increased complexity. The overall result has been a massive increase in the extent to which the financial industry has been able to securitize various forms of what were previously considered untradeable assets or were simply not considered as assets, e.g. many forms of debt." [more]

"...the transfer of the exercise's venue out of Mindanao has alarmed the New People's Army of the Communist Party of the Philippines. They claim the exercises are just a disguised offensive against local communist insurgents." [more]

"Aristide flew out from the same airport with US help on Sunday morning, under pressure from a mounting insurrection and abandoned by the international community. Aristide's departure 'was the result of perfect co-ordination' between Washington and Paris, French Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin said." [more]

"The planned abandonment of nuclear energy will worsen the problem, which is why people like Umbach believe it is time for Germany to link energy and security policy. The United States did this quite a while ago, diversifying imports so that the United States today is less dependent on individual supplier countries." [more]

"DiamondWorks and its subsidiary Gulfofguinea already concentrate their investments in Africa. The Canadian company is active in mining and mineral and oil exploration in Sierra Leone, Angola, Central African Republic, Zambia, Malawi, Kenya, Zimbabwe, Congo Brazzaville, Congo Kinshasa, Nigeria and São Tomé." [more]

"With master’s degrees from Harvard in government and zoology and two books on Saharan Africa to her credit, she found herself transferred in the spring of 2002 to a post as a political/military desk officer at the Defense Department’s office for Near East South Asia (NESA), a policy arm of the Pentagon." [more]

"Have the neo-conservatives had dual agendas, while professing to work for the internal security of the United States against its terrorist enemies?" [more]

"At The Hague, the Palestinian envoy to the UN, Nasser Al-Kidwa, said he hoped an opinion against the wall would lead to the same kind of international sanctions that followed after the Court's 1971 ruling against South Africa's occupation of Namibia. But if this hope is what Palestinian Authority (PA) strategy is built on, then we are in trouble." [more]

"The emergence of citizen reporters has broken down the monopoly of information control and ownership by political/economic elites and has significantly contributed to the democratization of the media. In fact, OhmyNews has changed the concept of the reporter. The old way meant becoming a professional journalist and getting a press card - a credentialed and somewhat elevated position in South Korean society. The new way, however, is that the reporter is the one who has the news and who is trying to inform others. Pay, however, is not an incentive. Pay for the ‘news guerillas’ varies from nothing to just under $16, depending on how a story is ranked by the editors - 'basic,' 'bonus' or 'special.'" [more]

"The Bush administration's education secretary, Rod Paige, referred to the nation's largest teachers union as a 'terrorist organization.'" [more]

"FBI agents arrested a Louisiana man last week under the cyberterrorism provisions of the USA PATRIOT Act for allegedly tricking a handful of MSN TV users into running a malicious e-mail attachment that reprogrammed their set-top boxes to dial 9-1-1 emergency response." [more]

"An RFID tag consists of a microchip the size of a grain of sand attached to an antenna that transmits information whenever it passes in front of an RFID reader." [more]

"Consider that the total enlistment goal for active Army and Army reserves in the fiscal year ended Oct. 1 was 100,000. If half of the 140,000 troops currently in Iraq were to go home and stay, two-thirds of this year's recruits would be needed to replace them." [more]

"The Treasury Department has warned publishers they may face grave legal consequences for editing manuscripts from Iran and other disfavored nations, on the ground that such tinkering amounts to trading with the enemy." [more]

"The secretary is not particularly moved by accusations that the intervention in Iraq is 'illegal.' 'I am not a lawyer; I dropped out of law school,' he jokes." [more]

"'There's enough indications from our point of view, at least from my point of view, that the United States certainly knew what was coming about two weeks before this military operation started,' Kurzban said. 'The United States made contingency plans for Guantanamo.'" [more]

As Lyotard has pointed out, in postmodern scientific systems, increase in knowledge can lead to more uncertainty and lowering of performance; control, thus, can be instead exercised more efficiently through a regulation of chaos -- a performative management of instabilities and variables, rather than through a negation of uncertainty through metaphysical invocations of truth [more]

"It now appears that appeasing Bin Laden was a major part of the neo-con sales pitch to the White House. Congressman Christopher Shays... made a startling revelation about the war party’s marketing strategy. In an attempt to deflect a question over the non-existent WMDs, he gave away part of the neo-con arguments presented to key decision makers. 'We knew we needed to get out of Saudi Arabia, that was one of the contentions of Osama bin Laden. We knew we needed to bring peace between the Palestinians and Israelis. We could not do that as long as Saddam Hussein existed.'" [more]

"For 51 weeks -- from the day that the Observer newspaper in London broke the news about spying at the United Nations until the moment that British prosecutors dropped charges against Gun on Wednesday -- major news outlets in the United States almost completely ignored the story." [more]

"Mugabe told the opening it was time to rediscover the spirit of the founders the G15 and that developing countries were threatened by arrogant leaders of the industrialized world." [more]

"Although it has always been promised that the ubiquity of networked computing would enable a host of alternative information sources, what is found is that -- in practice and when push comes to shove -- the allegedly vast ocean of alternatives all say the same thing, with only minor variations, all drawing from the same text, the same myth." [more]

"Angola's crude oil production has increased by nearly 600 percent since 1980 and the fastest growth has been registered the last two years. New investments in explorations offshore Angola will increase production to an expected 2 million barrels per day by 2008 - or about the current level of Nigeria, today's largest oil producer in sub-Saharan Africa." [more]

"The anti-terrorism bill, designed as a reaction to the increased terrorism activity worldwide, had caused massive concern among South Africa's human and civil rights groups, including the country's trade union and several ANC members. Given its unclear definition of "terrorism", the groups feared the law could be used against peaceful activism, dissidents and protesters." [more]

"The scale of the humanitarian crisis continues to escalate, with internally displaced persons estimated to be in excess of 700,000 requiring urgent humanitarian assistance, according to EU reports." [more]

"President Museveni has several times before accused the donors of limiting government’s defence spending and said that was the main reason for the continuation of the rebellion." [more]

"It all started when EMI began shouting the odds about DJ Danger Mouse's Grey Album, a mix compiled from Jay-Z's Black Album and The Beatles' White Album and which started showing up all over the Net, as well as offline." [more]

"Kyrgyz politicians bristle over what they characterize as Uzbekistan’s desire to act as the 'elder brother' in Central Asia. 'Official documents draw one picture and reality draws a completely different one,' Kyrgyz MP Oksana Malevanaya complained in an interview with the Bishkek newspaper Obshestvennii Rating." [more]

"As with human rights, Rumsfeld largely ignored Uzbekistan’s repeated failures to implement promised economic reforms. He focused solely on praising Karimov’s administration for being a 'key member of the [anti-terrorist] coalition’s global War on Terror.'" [more]

"'...I can't give a precise viewpoint regarding it because we don't do any inspections in Israel,' ElBaradei told Dubai-based Al Arabiya television when asked about the extent of Israel's nuclear weapons program." [more]

"The United States military is facing the gravest accusations of sexual misconduct in years, with dozens of servicewomen in the Persian Gulf area and elsewhere saying they were sexually assaulted or raped by fellow troops, lawmakers and victims advocates said on Wednesday." [more]

"Ms. Gun's arrest last March and her assertion that she had acted out of conscience to expose what she regarded as an attempt by the United States to undermine the debate at the United Nations, has attracted broad attention." [more]

"Seventeen Palestinians were reported injured as Israeli soldiers fired tear gas and rubber-coated steel pellets to disperse dozens of stone throwers during the raids. Three Palestinians were said to be in critical condition." [more]

"We don’t have to get the shit kicked out of us like we did in Miami. Instead, we grow the power and sophistication of our networks and rachet up our disobedience. We attack in the dead of night and under the noonday sun. We hit them before, during and after world events. Bit by bit, hit by hit we bend them to our will." [more]

"Most stocks bought by senators had shown little movement before the purchase. But after the stock was bought, it outperformed the market by 28.6 per cent on average in the following calender year." [more]

What seems to be clear is that the United States government is playing the same game as in Iraq - pushing for "regime change" in Haiti. Their strategy includes a massive disinformation campaign in U.S. media, an embargo on desperately needed foreign aid to Haiti, and direct support for violent elements, including former military officers and Duvalierists, who openly seek the overthrow of President Aristide. [more]

"The U.S. game in Haiti has always been a double game - public lip service for "democracy" - at the same time giving concrete covert aid to the most violent anti-democratic forces." In sharp disagreement with establisment media, Reeves states " Whatever Aristide's mistakes and weaknesses have been (and they are many), they pale when compared to the extreme brutality of those who are today implicated in the violence in Gonaives and elsewhere in Haiti." [more]

"What this wall is really doing is taking Palestinian lands. It is also ... helping turn Palestinian communities into dungeons, next to which the bantustans of South Africa look like symbols of freedom, sovereignty and self-determination." [more]

"Advanced Research and Development Activity works for all the nation's intelligence services, including the CIA, FBI, Defense Intelligence Agency and parts of dozens of other departments. Its budget is part of the National Foreign Intelligence Program and is secret." [more]

"Both liberals and leftists in the U.S. have had difficulty in believing that a much-discredited American film genre, the Western, could suddenly be structuring and mandating U.S. political rhetoric. It is -- from Bush's 'Wanted Dead or Alive' Bin Laden poster, to Colin Powell's insistence that 'time is running out' as we cut to the chase, to the numerous U.S. television and print media that report daily on the 'Showdown' or 'Standoff' with Iraq." [more]

"There is also a growing belief that the release was a cynical move to divert attention from the US Supreme Court’s hearing later this year to test the legality of holding the Camp Delta detainees. Two of the released British detainees were named as plaintiffs in a legal challenge mounted by the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR), arguing that the US cannot order indefinite detention without due legal process in 'a prison that operates entirely outside the law.'" [more]

A secret report, suppressed by US defence chiefs and obtained by The Observer, warns that major European cities will be sunk beneath rising seas as Britain is plunged into a 'Siberian' climate by 2020. Nuclear conflict, mega-droughts, famine and widespread rioting will erupt across the world. [more]

"We encourage all interested parties to attend the April 24, 2004 National Convention at the campus of Dartmouth College, where such issues, and a united plaftform will be drafted." [more]

"Openness – as an organising principle and political ideology – has become an article of faith across networked social movements. From its role as a central tenet of free and open source software production to its current popularity within activist circles, the concept of openness is attracting enthusiastic adherence. Here, as part of our series on the politics of alternative media structures, JJ King takes a less credulous view of what lies beneath the dream of organisational horizontality." [more]

"This is the moment in which the language system sponsored by the sovereign is at its most violent; it seeks to efface historical memory by denying its constitutive or legislative relation with non-linguistic social energies; it casts itself and its unilateral doctrine as absolute and natural. For Deleuze, this is a psychomechanical production of social reality more than an organicity of community torn asunder by human alienation and the incursion of reactionary ideologies, false consciousnesses, and agents. Not that the latter do not exist, or are unimportant components in this matter, but that this technology of power cannot be simply seen as a neutral arrangement of tools misused by evil ones." [more]

"Starship Troopers (1997) is the last film with which he felt he could be oppositional. 'While I was working on it at Sony the regimes kept changing and ultimately no one looked at it. Someone said to me, "I think these flags look like Nazi flags", and I said, "Well, they're not. The Nazis didn't have green-and-white flags." But of course they are Nazi flags and the costumes were based on Nazi uniforms. It's about Earth, but Earth is the United States, clearly. We were showing a fascist utopia where the citizens were like the citizens of the US last year, believing in it, and not seeing the evils. A lot of the newscast inserts are based on Texas. It's all Mr George Bush - how many people get executed, gun laws, soldiers giving out bullets." [more]

"The situation today is starting to improve. There are now eight cinemas operating in Kabul, mostly showing Indian films. Afghan Film is slowly being re-equipped and some private companies are emerging from the dust of older firms such as Ariana Film and Kabul Film. New initiatives include a production company set up by Bollywood actor Hashmat Rahmini (known to audiences as Hashmat Khan), himself an Afghan." [more]

"A key provision of the law bars the government from using the vulnerability information in any enforcement action against the company, or from using it as the basis for proposing new legislation or regulations on industry. And if the information does somehow leak out, it cannot be used in court against the company." [more]

"Lebanese-born Arab-American Muaffaq Harb, news director of the new channel, appeared almost vindictive in the first discussion forum on day one. He ridiculed virtually every Arab government, chastising the Arab people for choosing to watch Aljazeera, and launching vitriolic attack on the Arab media. He was rebutted several times by Arabic Newsweek’s editor, who pointed out that many Arab dictatorships were seen to be protected by US interests in the region." [more]

"The rebellion has ravaged the northern and northeastern region where thousands of people have died, been displaced from their homes into camps or abducted into rebel ranks or married off to rebel commanders." [more]

"...US administrator Paul Bremer spent much of the summer and fall mulling 'plans that could take years,' only to abruptly change his position in late 2003 following a 'hasty' return to Washington for consultations. Confronted with mounting violence in Iraq, and an increasingly confident Democratic Party at home, the Bush team tailored the Iraqi power transition to its own political needs, al Khafaji said." [more]

Eight new books assess the effects of the 9/11 attacks on American freedom and privacy. [more]

Welcoming Tunisia's president, Zine el-Abidine ben Ali, to the White House makes America's promotion of Arab democracy ring hollow. [more]

"Under a preliminary plan floated by convention organizers, the 'free-speech zone' would be a small plot bounded by Green Line tracks and North Washington Street, in an area that until recently was given over to the elevated artery. The zone would hold as few as 400 of the several thousand protesters who are expected in Boston in late July." [more]

"All the elements are in place for a series of Supreme Court rulings this spring that will define the power of the commander in chief during wartime — and bring an election-year climax to the national debate over civil liberties and public safety that has been simmering since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001." [more]

"Mr Begg is believed by his family to have cracked after repeated questioning and confessed to a plot to attack the Houses of Parliament with planes laden with anthrax. His supporters say this is a sign that he will say anything in the hope of getting out. There have been at least 28 suicide attempts among the 680 detainees." [more]

An Air Force report sheds light on little-known plans by the U.S. military to develop space-based weapons. Some analysts fear the effort could spark a new arms race. [more]

"Cobler told reporters the initiative aimed at securing a full partnership between the transatlantic coalition and the greater Middle East, in light of US and European consensus that reforming the Middle East must be a top priority 'because reform is the basic measure required for uprooting terrorism, which is a danger to both the West and the Arab world.' " [more]

"More than 60 influential scientists, including 20 Nobel laureates, issued a statement yesterday asserting that the Bush administration had systematically distorted scientific fact in the service of policy goals on the environment, health, biomedical research and nuclear weaponry at home and abroad ... According to the report, the Bush administration has misrepresented scientific consensus on global warming, censored at least one report on climate change, manipulated scientific findings on the emissions of mercury from power plants and suppressed information on condom use." [more]

"He said that the US and UK governments 'must have known' that the evidence presented by their intelligence services about places in Iraq where there might be WMD 'was erroneous', because 'we made it known to them'." [more]

"The US imperialist military forces of aggression which are forward deployed in Japan and South Korea are not for deterring instability. Rather, they are for aggravating instability and tension and militarily attacking our Republic and other countries." [more]

"The organizer of the attack is thought to be an Islamic fanatic Sunni organization, a branch of Ansar al-Islam, which works from outside. One of al-Islam's sources of financing are people of al-Qa'ida from Saudi Arabia." [more]

"Action by Western nations on behalf of human rights and democracy in Saudi Arabia does not go beyond accusations made by Western writers and journalists who describe Saudi society as backward and dictatorial." [more]

"The US Administration is the most prominent benefactor from any internal discord that could arise in Iraq because it would find excuses to weaken and divide the country, preoccupy its people with infighting, and move away from the real reason for all Iraq's current problems; namely, US occupation." [more]

"Al-Rashid warned Islamists of the fundamentalist, jihadist forums that replaced his website. He said that they are plagued with 'hypocrites and pins,' meaning intelligence organs." [more]

"Republicans used to be the party that opposed social engineering, but now they push programs to outlaw marriage for some people, and encourage it for others." [more]

"Terror is both a real phenomenon and a fraud ... The United States has made a long series of blunders in the Middle East guaranteed to offend and intimidate Muslims, especially fundamentalists, the people from whom an organization like al Qaeda draws support. These blunders must be seen in the context of an almost irrational support for Israel's bloodiest behavior." [more]

"An official US statement declaring Ansar a terrorist group claimed that Zarqawi was a 'senior al-Qaeda operative', but later he was only 'suspected' of being some kind of affiliate. Until two weeks ago, he was considered the leader of Ansar al-Islam. Now he is thought to head a Jordanian extremist group called al-Tawhid, and only linked to al-Qaeda and other groups." [more]

"The Darpa project, called 'Metabolic Dominance' or 'peak soldier performance,' is part of a wider, future-facing Pentagon research push to develop grunts who are pretty much immune to normal human demands. The agency has sunk millions into programs to reduce the need for sleep and is investigating ways to keep injured GIs pulling the trigger for days on end -- without help from a medic." [more]

"A bold daylight attack on a police station here Saturday has underscored a growing concern: Can Iraq's fledgling security forces maintain order after the planned June 30 US transfer of power to Iraqi authorities?" [more]

"The Bl(A)ck Tea Society plans no marches or rallies, although it hopes to arrange an open-air concert and an 'alternative village' that would disseminate information on politics and current issues. Members dismissed the stereotype of unruly activists running around breaking windows or creating havoc — although they acknowledged that a little street theater or traffic disruption would not hurt." [more]

"Iraqi defectors gave misleading information to bolster the case for war, U.S. officials have found." [more]

"As he claims the qualities of leadership to be the next president of the United States, Senator Kerry should be held accountable for the failure to honor the commitment he made when he voted for the October Resolution." [more]

"To get public attention off of Kay's report (and resignation), Bush has used his political skills to try to silence his former weapons inspector, and to preempt Kay's knowledge and suggestions by making it yesterday's news." [more]

"Zeidun Fadhil and his cousin Marwan Fadhil were allegedly taken to a remote spot on the shore and ordered into the river at gunpoint. When they refused, the soldiers were said to have forced them into the river. Zeidun, who could not swim, drowned in the strong current." [more]

The dirt on the so-called "Democrats." Dean won't cut the Pentagon budget, Kerry voted for the war, and Clark is a war criminal. Asking folks to rethink their "Anyone but Bush" stance. [more]

"For progressives to submerge ourselves within the ABB tidal wave is a complete abdication of our responsibility as global citizens to agitate around the issues facing this country and the world, rather than once again believing that our work is limited to simply voting for the president every four years." [more]

"Artists who were once outspoken peaceniks seem to have lost their certainty, or even switched their position. We've seen dozens of acts quietly bury their edgier songs. We've seen radio playlists rewritten so as not to 'offend listeners.' And we've seen Republican officials and the entertainment industry — long divided over "traditional values" issues such as violent content and parental advisory stickering — bury the hatchet." [more]

"In the period before the war, US journalists were far too reliant on sources sympathetic to the administration. Those with dissenting views—and there were more than a few—were shut out. Reflecting this, the coverage was highly deferential to the White House. This was especially apparent on the issue of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction—the heart of the President's case for war. Despite abundant evidence of the administration's brazen misuse of intelligence in this matter, the press repeatedly let officials get away with it." [more]

"Given that so much confusion exists about whether to apply wartime or law-enforcement rules to a given situation, a better approach would be to make the decision based on its public policy implications. Unfortunately, the Bush administration seems to have ignored such concerns." [more]

"Mr Powell said on Thursday that he was 'disappointed' at Mr Aristide’s actions since his re-election, but the Haitian leader ought to be allowed to finish his mandate. However, State Department officials had said earlier in the week that 'some fairly thorough changes' would be needed in the way Haiti is governed." [more]

"At least 37 female service members have sought sexual-trauma counseling and other assistance from civilian rape crisis organizations after returning from war duty in Iraq, Kuwait and other overseas stations." [more]

"Guerrillas shouting 'God is great' launched a bold daylight assault on an Iraqi police station and security compound west of Baghdad on Saturday, freeing prisoners and sparking a gunbattle that killed 21 people and wounded 33, police and hospital officials said." [more]

"For the wounded veterans of the Iraq war, the battles now are with sleeping and waking, and the close-in fighting is with intimates and one's self." [more]

"Political parties are using enormous databases to learn everything about you so they can tailor their pitches for candidates just for you. Are campaigning and voting becoming just marketing and consumption?" [more]

"The military prefers bases that resemble small fundamentalist towns in the Bible Belt rather than the big population centers of the United States. For example, even though more than 100,000 women live on our overseas bases — including women in the services, spouses, and relatives of military personnel — obtaining an abortion at a local military hospital is prohibited." [more]

" 'We have been following the question of Iran pretty closely and there's no doubt in our mind that Iran continues to pursue a nuclear weapons program,' Armitage said in a press interview in Washington. Earlier Thursday, U.S. Under Secretary of State for Disarmament John Bolton made a similar remark in Berlin. 'We're not convinced Iran has come completely clean,' said Bolton." [more]

"...Israel won't remain entirely on the sidelines in the closely watched case. The Foreign Ministry is dispatching spokespeople, hundreds of Israeli demonstrators plan to fly to the Netherlands, and the Israeli rescue service ZAKA is sending the skeleton of a Jerusalem bus mangled in a Palestinian suicide bombing." [more]

At least 20,000 rallied yesterday in freezing weather against the signing of a free trade pact with Chile. "Violence erupted as their voices of dissent were silenced. Carts were set on fire, police busses and barricades were attacked, and police were fended off with steel pipes, stones and other small objects." [more]

"This period between regimes is precisely when the most devastating betrayals have taken place ... Again and again, newly liberated people arrive at the polls only to discover that there is precious little left to vote for. But in Iraq, it's not too late to block that process. The key is to confine any transitional council's mandate to matters directly related to elections: the census, security, protections for women and minorities." [more]

"A big reason for the new-found intimacy is the Indian government's desire to solidify its friendship with the United States. Indian officials have been bending over backwards to ingratiate themselves with the pro-Israel lobby in Washington in order to work Congress and to gain access to the neoconservatives who dominate the Bush administration's foreign policy." [more]

"In fiscal year 2002, the Big Three received a total of more than $42 billion in Pentagon contracts ... This is an increase of nearly one-third from 2000, Clinton's final year. These firms get one out of every four dollars the Pentagon doles out for everything from rifles to rockets. In contrast, Bush's No Child Left Behind Act is underfunded by $8 billion a year, with the additional assistance promised to school districts swallowed up by war costs and tax cuts." [more]

"Given the well-documented rights violations and other issues, the Bush administration’s policy towards Azerbaijan has been less than exemplary, and inconsistent with its self-declared 'forward strategy of freedom.' Whereas the circumstances appear to warrant a strong US condemnation of the Aliyev administration’s repression, the Bush administration has been solicitous of the new Azerbaijani president." [more]

"It's worth noting that the announcement came from an anonymous official, The Associated Press reported, a sign that the Pentagon wants its backpedaling to be done with as much secrecy as the American citizen gets inside the voting booth." [more]

"Appearing before the Senate Armed Services Committee, three of the four chiefs of the armed services expressed concerns about a financing gap, perhaps of four months, for the two missions, whose combined cost is about $5 billion a month." [more]

"A subpoena compelling Drake University to provide information about an antiwar forum on its campus on Nov. 15 was also withdrawn, as was an earlier court order that barred Drake officials from speaking publicly about the case." [more]

"While it has been reported that Jabarah had been co-operating with American agents and faced unknown charges, his case has been shrouded in secrecy. Hearings have been held in private. There is no listing of his case on New York court databases and prosecutors with the Southern District of New York state won't comment to reporters." [more]

"Unlike the commission investigating the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, which was established by a congressional resolution, the executive order creating the intelligence commission does not mention subpoena power or the authority to take testimony under oath or even hold public hearings." [more]

"Iraq demonstrated that waging war against a nation that has not attacked another and ousting its leader — even a dictator — smacks of arrogance and sours allies whose help is needed in fighting other enemies and financing postwar reconstruction." [more]

"The Palestinian leadership was infuriated by what it saw as European treachery. Cabinet Minister Saeb Erekat said: 'The United States, Britain and Germany ask the Palestinians not to have recourse to violence, but when the Palestinians have recourse to diplomacy they slam the door on us.'" [more]

"A leading maker of computer election equipment defends itself in court against charges that it overreached itself in trying to stifle critics." [more]

"If there's an upset in a close presidential race, will we be able to trust it? Ironically, the paperless systems were supposed to restore trust in a democracy that saw the presidency hang by a few thousand chads in Florida three years ago. In Georgia, and increasingly across the nation, they're in danger of doing quite the opposite." [more]

"Coalition authorities have welcomed the Iraqi Central Bank's decision to liberalise interest rates and allow foreign banks back into the country." [more]

"The dispatch of soldiers to Iraq has jarred the national psyche. No Japanese soldier has fallen — or killed an enemy — since the surrender to the United States in 1945." [more]

"When Bush was elected, activists had employed irony ... we'd deconstructed traditional protest models, reaching the limits of play and camp. By the time Resolution 909 came along, we were faced with the painful question: What do you do after post modernism? You can't live on irony alone; there is too little to show for it. So we re-embraced a canonical narrative of 'straight' protest ... If we are going to suggest that another world is possible, we'd better be able to suggest that this world is more than simply ridiculous." [more]

" 'So much is being done in the name of New York, we are saying don't use our name to infringe on people's rights,' said Glenn C. Devitt, an organizer with the Bill of Rights Defense Committee." [more]

"The Bush administration has concluded that civil war threatens to make Nepal a 'failed state' and a haven for international terrorists, leading it to place the CPNM on the State Department's 'Watch List,' along with organizations like al Qaeda, Abu Sayyaf, and Lebanon's Hezbollah. U.S. Ambassador to Nepal, Michael E. Malinowski ... advocates an all-out military offensive." [more]

"So with food, life. In elementary school my 5th grade teacher told us about our country, how we were the great giant-killers, first expelling the Brits, chinking the armor of the greatest empire of them all...And who (I grew-up up North) abolished slavery, an empire of chains and whips? We did, of course. We’ve been told all our lives that empire is bad, just like red meat. But the craving just won’t go away. We know it's bad for us, but hell, we like it." [more]

"Particularly given the Bush Administration's ferocious attack on reproductive rights, now would be an especially bad time to reinforce traditional gender stereotypes or to exalt the cult of compulsory motherhood. The notion that women are biologically – or even culturally – destined to breed and to nurture could feed the forces of reaction. As radical feminists have long suggested, denying women's capacity for aggression – and militancy – also denies our power." [more]

"How does activist anti-intellectualism manifest on the ground? One instance is the reduction of strategy to mere tactics, to horrible effect. Take for example the largely failed San Francisco protest against the National Association of Broadcasters ... Never mind the utter non-impact of this aimless march. The point was clear: we marched for ourselves. We were our own targets. Activism made us good." [more]

"Over the past year harrowing first-hand testimonies from North Korean defectors have detailed execution and torture, and now chilling evidence has emerged that the walls of Camp 22 hide an even more evil secret: gas chambers where horrific chemical experiments are conducted on human beings." [more]

"The law is clear that the use of the grand jury to investigate protected political activities or to intimidate protestors exceeds its authority. The government has no business investigating legal conferences held in academic institutions." [more]

"In what may be the first subpoena of its kind in decades, a federal judge has ordered a university to turn over records about a gathering of anti-war activists." [more]

"The vast majority of what we hear and see in the US is about suicide bombing, and in both programs we see the depth of pain inflicted on Israelis by Palestinian suicide bombings through footage of their carnage, and disturbing, emotional scenes ... Although these are appalling scenes, they are certainly no less horrific or newsworthy than an Israeli apache helicopter firing missiles into crowds of civilians, or Israeli tanks killing and wounding Palestinian men, women and children." [more]

"From what we can piece together from his actions and statements, Sharon's vision includes offloading to a faux Palestinian state the burden of Gaza, political responsibility for Palestinians in the West Bank, and a significant number of Israeli citizens of Arab origin as well. Such an arrangement would closely resemble efforts by South Africa's apartheid rulers to maintain white rule and strip black citizens of their rights as South Africans by creating ostensibly independent states for them known as Bantustans" [more]

"Since 1996, when the first Wal-Mart supercenter and Sam's Club opened in the city of Shenzhen in south China, it has set up 30 stores in 14 cities all over China in which over 99.9 percent of its employees are Chinese." [more]

"A federal appeals court ruled Tuesday that the Pentagon has no constitutional obligation to provide the media access to U.S. troops during combat." [more]

"This year’s survey is consistent with our observations of think tank citations after September 11, 2001: a decline in visibility of domestic policy think tanks, an increase in exposure for foreign policy think tanks, and an increasing focus on centrist to conservative voices, leaving progressives out of the debate. Given the events so far in 2003, there is every reason to believe that these trends will continue." [more]

"Pakistan's approach to dealing with the problem has contrasted with the Libyan and the Iranian approach. Libyan's, under pressure, opted to essentially wrap up their nuclear program. Last week a US air force plane carried 55 tons of paper and equipment related to Libya's nuclear program to the US. Iran, meanwhile, under pressure gave 'South Asian' names to the IAEA inspectors divulging the source of their technology. Pakistan has resisted pressure to rollback its nuclear program, while choosing to take steps to enhance Pakistan's credentials as a responsible nuclear state." [more]

"This missile has a range of 700-2,700 KM and it can carry 1,100 kg of explosive material." [more]

"The speech generated overall negative comment in 62 percent of the 274 editorials collected by US embassy staff and FBIS monitors in 70 countries." [more]

"Our assessment of the unsanctioned by the UN Security Council military operation against Iraq as a big political mistake remains in force it is necessary to think together about ways out of this situation and methods to solve the Iraq problem in line with the norms of international law, and about ways to ensure a better life for the Iraqi people." [more]

A selection of political highlights from the Central American press in early February 2004. [more]

"The Hizb ut-Tahrir Bangladesh is a fundamentalist Islamist political party seeking to establish an Islamic state (Khilafat) in Bangladesh and in other Muslim countries through the adoption of Islamic (Shariah) law." [more]

A Vietnam veteran columnist reflects on the treatment of POWs. [more]

"Prime Minister Ariel Sharon wants U.S. approval to expand large West Bank settlement blocs that are intended to be annexed once a permanent peace agreement is reached in exchange for evacuation of most settlements in the Gaza Strip and a few others in the West Bank." [more]

"After 27 years as a CIA analyst, Ray McGovern knows a few things about propaganda. He notes that 'the "investigation" is slated to go past the election. Members will be picked by the president, and the scope is unconscionably wider than is necessary.' McGovern contends that 'the key question for 2004 is whether the administration's stranglehold on the media can be loosened to the point where the electorate can wake up, take away the president's driver's license and put an end to the reckless endangerment.'" [more]

"Last night the former foreign secretary, Robin Cook, said that Washington would not want to see Blair concede now to pressure for a WMD inquiry and thereby 'jack-up the pressure on the White House to follow', Cook added that if the White House announced its own inquiry terms first 'then Britain would indeed find it difficult to resist launching a parallel inquiry.' "