Top Picks

"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 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]

"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 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]

"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]

"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]

"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]

"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]

"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]

"'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]

"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]

"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]

"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]

"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]

"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 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]

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

"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]

"[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]

"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]

"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]

"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]

"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]

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

"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]

"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 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]

"'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]

"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]

"'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]

"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]

"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]

"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]

"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]

"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]

"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]

"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]

"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]

"Gunther Anders wrote in the 1950's, 'Hiroshima is everywhere,' and in the 1980's, 'Chernobyl is everywhere.' Some rebels against the technologized world in the 1990's said, 'Mururoa is everywhere' (at the time when the French government subjected that island in the Pacific to murderous nuclear tests). Two years ago, other comrades claimed, 'Genoa is everywhere.' Because revolt explodes without limits and against every spectacle, because the Apparatus expects an enemy that is not there and reveals its totalitarian character still more, we say Riva is everywhere. But we will not be in the streets against the summit of the European Union ... The real conflict is elsewhere." [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]

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]

"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]

"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, 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]