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Recent News & Opinion

In this section we store articles published in the global news media since October 2001. Once you have selected an article you may view other articles by the same author and source. Articles may also be displayed by year, month or day.

Analysis: Bush Challenges Hundreds of Laws

Charlie Savage | International Herald Tribune | April 30, 2006

"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]

China, Russia Welcome Iran into the Fold

M K Bhadrakumar | Asia Times | April 18, 2006

"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]

Security and Terror

Giorgio Agamben | Theory and Event | January 1, 2002

"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]

Review: Ecology to the New Pollution

Ian R. Douglas | Theory and Event | January 1, 1998

"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]

Highly Speculative Reasoning on the Concept of Democracy

Alain Badiou | Lacan.com | January 1, 1998

"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]

Philosophical Considerations of the Very Singular Custom of Voting

Alain Badiou | Theory and Event | January 1, 2003

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 Iran Plans

Seymour Hersch | New Yorker | April 8, 2006

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]

Zapatistas quit the jungle for soapbox

Giles Tremlett | Guardian | August 8, 2005

"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]

Make Media, Make Real Trouble: What's Wrong (and Right) with Indymedia

Jennifer Whitney | LiP Magazine | June 15, 2005

"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]

The Zapatistas: The Second Stage

Immanuel Wallerstein | Fernand Braudel Center | July 15, 2005

"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 Battle of Gleneagles

Kara N. Tina | Interactivist Info Exchange | July 11, 2005

"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]

Horizontalidad in Argentina

Marina Sitrin | Interactivist Info Exchange | July 26, 2005

"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]

With Garang's Death, Southern Sudan May Secede

Cobie Kwasi Harris | Pacific News Service | August 8, 2005

"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]

PR: Minutemen Leave Early; Protesters Celebrate

Jen Lawnorne & Onto | Independent Media Center | July 8, 2005

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

Transcript: Raise the Fist case far from over

EFI | Independent Media Center | July 10, 2005

"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]

Analysis: Civil War In Iraq, Made In the USA

AK Gupta | Independent Media Center | August 4, 2005

"'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]

What the New Southern Sudan Leaders Must Do

Okiya Omtatah | Nation (Nairobi) | August 8, 2005

"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]

Darfur Genocide Easily Trumped by Michael Jackson on Nightly News

Jim Lobe | Inter Press Service | July 13, 2005

"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 Strikes For Empire

Ivan Eland | Independent Institute: Center on Peace and Liberty | March 28, 2005

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]

Another Commission Recommends Bureaucratic Buffet to Fix U.S. Intelligence

Ivan Eland | Independent Institute: Center on Peace and Liberty | April 5, 2004

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 Bush, a New Age of Prepackaged TV News

David Barstow and Robin Stein | New York Times | March 13, 2005

"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]

Pentagon Favors Air Strikes on Syria to Overthrow Assad, Free Lebanon

Staff | An-Nahar | March 4, 2005

"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]

Newspapers desperate to remain relevant

Frank Ahrens | Washington Post | February 27, 2005

"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]

IDF distributing 'resident' stickers to W. Bank settlers

Amos Harel | Ha'aretz | February 28, 2005

"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]

Could hackers attack the newest heart monitors?

David Bates | Government Security News | February 2, 2005

"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]

Administration Balks At 'Gay' In Gay Suicide Conference

Doreen Brandt | 365Gay.com | February 16, 2005

"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]

CNN's Nuke Plant Photos Identical for Both Iran and N. Korea

Brad | Brad Blog | February 14, 2005

"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]

U.S. Military Advisers 'Embed' in Iraqi Units

John Valceanu | American Forces Press Service | February 10, 2005

"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]

Tsunami bomb NZ's devastating war secret

Eugene Bingham | New Zealand Herald | June 30, 2000

"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]

What I Heard about Iraq

Eliot Weinberger | London Review of Books | February 3, 2005

"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]

Mounting Discontent in Russia Spills Into Streets

Steven Lee Myers | New York Times | February 12, 2005

"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]

Gonzales OK could be seen as OK for torture rules

Robert Collier | San Francisco Chronicle | February 2, 2005

"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]

Stories From the Inside

Bob Herbert | New York Times | February 7, 2005

"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]

A disarming meeting: Israel's Sharon says he finds Bush adviser attractive

Lee Hockstader | Washington Post | February 5, 2001

"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]

Medical bills cause about half of bankruptcies, study finds

Liz Kowalczyk | Boston Globe | February 2, 2005

"'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]

Nethercutt joins lobbying firm

Matthew Daly | Associated Press | January 31, 2005

"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]

The Moral Case Against the Iraq War

Paul Savoy | Nation | May 31, 2004

"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]

Crafty language of political power and bite

Molly Ivins | Sacramento Bee | January 27, 2005

"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]

Disaster Could Mean Closer U.S.-Indonesia Military Ties

Kathleen T. Rhem | American Forces Press Service | January 18, 2005

"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]

Analysis: 'Insurgents' Delay 'Second Coming' of Bush

STAFF | Independent Media Center | January 21, 2005

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

Peace Accord in Sudan: Good News for People or Oil Companies?

Frida Berrigan | Foreign Policy in Focus | January 14, 2005

"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]

Rallies held against Musharraf

STAFF | Agence France-Presse | January 1, 2005

"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]

Sudan, Southern Rebels a Step Closer to Ending 21-Year War

Maggie Farley | Los Angeles Times | January 1, 2005

"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]

The risks of the al-Zarqawi myth

Scott Ritter | Al Jazeera | December 28, 2004

"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]

Analysis: Why Were Government Propaganda Experts Working On News At CNN?

Staff | Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting | March 27, 2000

"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]

You Break It, You Pay For It

Naomi Klein | Nation | December 22, 2004

"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]

Reflections on Tsunamis and the State of Exception

Jordy Cummings | Press Action | December 29, 2004

"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]

Transcript: Yemeni Judge on Dialogue With Al-Qa'ida Supporters, Change in 'Convictions'

Humud al-Hattar | World News Connection | December 18, 2004

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]

Second Bush Term More Homogenously Right-Wing Than First

Mehdi Shakibai | World News Connection | December 20, 2004

"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]

CanWest buys The Jerusalem Post

STAFF | World News Connection | December 17, 2004

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]

Radical Jewish Groups Raise Funds in Brooklyn, NY

Larry Cohler-Esses | New York Daily News | August 25, 2004

"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]

Sharon Exploiting Left's Goodwill To Achieve Right's Political Goals

Yosi Beilin | World News Connection | August 26, 2004

"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]

Analysis: The potential for nonviolence in Palestine

Ghassan al-Khatib, Yosi Alpher, Sami Awad, Dani Rothschild | Bitter Lemons | December 6, 2004

"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]

Settler Explains Plan To Bring 100,000 People To 'Physically' Prevent Sharon's DP

STAFF | World News Connection | December 21, 2004

"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]

Israel Police Investigate 'Militant Right-Wing' Settler Group

Sari Cohen | World News Connection | September 6, 2004

"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]

Shaykh Khatib, Shaykh Sabri Comment on Israeli Plan To Destroy Al-Aqsa Mosque

STAFF | World News Connection | July 25, 2004

"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]

Transcript: Afghan Jihadi Leader Hekmatyar Says Iran Not Telling Truth About Bank Account

Golboddin Hekmatyar | World News Connection | December 22, 2004

"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]

Poland To Sell Helicopters, Equipment to Iraqi Army

STAFF | World News Connection | December 15, 2004

"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]

Iraqi Paper Publishes Names of Candidates, Blocs For Upcoming Elections

STAFF | World News Connection | December 18, 2004

"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]

Three Iraqi Ministers to Retain Posts After Election At US Request

STAFF | World News Connection | December 20, 2004

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

Analysis: Iraqi Press Summary (19-27 Dec. 2004)

STAFF | World News Connection | December 27, 2004

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

Transcript: Iraq's Allawi Interviewed on Elections, Wanted Iraqis in Syria, Ties With Jordan

Iyad Allawi | World News Connection | December 23, 2004

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]

Analysis: Jordan's Accusations of Iranian Interference in Iraq Motivated by US

Mohammad Reza Kashani | World News Connection | December 23, 2004

"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]

Analysis: Monitorial Observation on Pakistani State Media on Results of UBL Search

STAFF | World News Connection | November 18, 2004

"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]

Analysis: UBL's Biographer Questions US Information About Usama's Hideout

Hamid Mir | World News Connection | October 4, 2004

"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]

The Iraq War—A Catastrophic Success

Robert Higgs | Independent Institute: Center on Peace and Liberty | December 21, 2004

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]

The Making of a Muslim Holocaust

Muzaffar Iqbal | World News Connection | December 1, 2004

"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]

Analysis: The United States, Territorial Security and the Threats Against It

Abdolhoseyn Hojjatzadeh | World News Connection | November 22, 2004

" 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]

Next Target: Iran?

Ivan Eland | Independent Institute: Center on Peace and Liberty | December 18, 2004

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]

Kill Missile Defense Now

Ivan Eland | Independent Institute: Center on Peace and Liberty | December 20, 2004

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]

FBI Claims More Arab Prisoners Abused

Richard A. Serrano | Los Angeles Times | December 20, 2004

"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]

Coming in 2005: Revolution

Kalle Lasn | Adbusters | January 1, 2005

"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': A Doctrine of Aggression for the Propagation of US Style 'Democracy' by Force

Ch'oe Hak-ch'o'l | World News Connection | December 15, 2004

"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]

Analysis: Report Reveals Details of Conflict Within Al-Aqsa Brigades Over Nominations

Bassam Baddarin | World News Connection | December 7, 2004

"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]

Transcript: Fight With Zeal and Enthusiasm Until The Last Soldier Leaves Our Country

Izzat Ibrahim al-Duri | World News Connection | October 25, 2004

"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]

EuroFighters

Jon Henley | Guardian | December 1, 2004

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]

Why There Can Be No Alternative To The US Dollar

Henry Kaufman | Financial Times | December 8, 2004

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]

What Society Should Know

STAFF | Ha'aretz | December 10, 2004

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]

Compromise In Kiev, Confrontation Abroad

STAFF | Economist | December 10, 2004

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]

Speculative Money: A Hot Potatoe For China

Zhao Renfeng | China Daily | December 5, 2004

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]

Palestinians: Optimism Not Warranted

Khaled Amayreh | Al-Ahram | December 9, 2004

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 Only Way Is Down For OPEC

Sherine Abdel-Razek | Al-Ahram | December 9, 2004

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]

Normalization For Peace

Dina Ezzat and Reem Nafie | Al-Ahram | December 9, 2004

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]

OPEC Retains Output Ceiling

STAFF | Al Jazeera | December 11, 2004

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]

US Soldier Jailed For Shooting Dead Wounded Iraqi Civilian

STAFF | Agence France-Presse | December 11, 2004

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]

How Teddy Roosevelt Fathered the “Bush Doctrine”

William Marina and David Beito | Independent Institute: Center on Peace and Liberty | December 10, 2004

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]

Kissenger's Shadow

Scott Sherman | Nation | December 27, 2004

"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]

Rumsfeld's Muddy Quagmire

Ivan Eland | Independent Institute: Center on Peace and Liberty | December 6, 2004

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]

War Crimes Claim Filed Against Rumsfeld In Germany Over Abu Ghraib

Kristina Merkner | Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung | December 3, 2004

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]

The Disappearing Dollar: How Long Can It Remain The World's Most Important Reserve Currency?

STAFF | Economist | December 2, 2004

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]

Towards A More Relevant United Nations

STAFF | Economist | December 2, 2004

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]

It's Not Only The Portfolios

Akiva Eldar | Ha'aretz | December 6, 2004

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]

Israeli officer: I Was Right To Shoot 13-Year-Old Child

Chris McGreal | Guardian | November 24, 2004

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]

Bush-Musharraf Partnership Reconfirmed

STAFF | Daily Times of Pakistan | December 6, 2004

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]

Blueprint For Fair Elections

Abdul-Ilah Al-Bayaty | Al-Ahram | December 2, 2004

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]

To Vote Or Not To Vote

Omayma Abdel-Latif | Al-Ahram | December 2, 2004

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]

Hamas Rejects Ceasefire Deal

STAFF | Al Jazeera | December 5, 2004

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

Why Iraqis Should Boycott Elections

Mohammed al-Obaidi | Independent Institute: Center on Peace and Liberty | December 5, 2004

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]

Senior UN Official Warns Time Not Right For Elections

STAFF | Agence France-Presse | December 5, 2004

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]

Failure After Falluja?

Ivan Eland | Independent Institute: Center on Peace and Liberty | November 29, 2004

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]

Could the Orange Revolution be just a mirage in the snow?

Andrew Osborn and Ivan Lozowy | Independent | November 28, 2004

"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]

A Silent Act of Rebellion Raises a Din in Ukraine

Steven Lee Myers | New York Times | November 28, 2004

"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]

Analysis: US Campaign Behind the Turmoil in Kiev

Ian Traynor | Guardian | November 26, 2004

"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]

Protests Grow as Ukraine Vote Crisis Deepens

C.J. Chivers | New York Times | November 24, 2004

"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]

Protesters call for a Chestnut Revolution

Julius Strauss | Telegraph | November 25, 2004

"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]

Time To Act Against The Extremists

Ze'ev Schiff | Ha'aretz | November 24, 2004

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]

US Risks Downhill Dollar Disaster

Larry Elliot | Guardian | November 22, 2004

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]

Iraq Pullout Deadline Ruled Out

Ewen MacAskill, diplomatic editor | Guardian | November 23, 2004

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]

Mosque Attack Fuels Fear In Germany

Aaron Kirchfeld | Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung | November 19, 2004

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]

With Hamas Boycotting, Fatah's Moderate Leader, Abbas, Appears Favorite

STAFF | Agence France-Presse | November 23, 2004

"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]

World Powers, Neighbours Unite Behind Iraqi Elections In January

STAFF | Agence France-Presse | November 23, 2004

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]

Creditors To Forgive 80% Of Iraqi Debt

STAFF | Al Jazeera | November 20, 2004

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]

Electronic Voting Technology: No Appeal

Ronnie Dugger | Harper's Magazine | November 1, 2004

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]

Whitewash As Public Service: How The 9/11 Commission Defrauds The Nation

Benjamin DeMott | Harper's Magazine | October 1, 2004

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]

Beyond Fallujah: A Year With The Iraqi Resistance

Patrick Graham | Harper's Magazine | June 1, 2004

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]

No Victory In Falluja

STAFF | Nation | November 22, 2004

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]

U.S. Policy Harms Prospects For Middle East Peace

Ivan Eland | Independent Institute: Center on Peace and Liberty | November 22, 2004

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]

Red Cross Condemns 'Inhumanity' In Iraq

Chris Mooney | Scotsman | November 20, 2004

"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]

Politics And The CIA

Ivan Eland | Independent Institute: Center on Peace and Liberty | November 16, 2004

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]

Empires As Ages Of Religious Ignorance: George W. Bush's Crusade And American Fundamentalism

William Marina | Independent Institute: Center on Peace and Liberty | November 15, 2004

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]

CIA Plans to Purge its Agency

Knut Royce | Newsday | November 14, 2004

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

The French Are Snared, but This Struggle Is Ivoirian

Somini Sengupta | New York Times | November 10, 2004

"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]

AP Photographer Flees Fallujah

Katarina Kratovac | Associated Press | November 14, 2004

"'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]

Review: Empire Undressed

David Insberg | Independent Institute: Center on Peace and Liberty | November 13, 2004

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]

Analysis: Counting The Casualties In Iraq

STAFF | Economist | April 11, 2004

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]

'Mass Graves Emptied' as Darfur Probe Begins

STAFF | Agence France-Presse | November 10, 2004

"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]

Sudan Claims 270,000 Displaced from Darfur Return 'Voluntarily'

STAFF | Agence France-Presse | November 10, 2004

"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]

The Fallujah Gamble Begins

STAFF | Economist | November 9, 2004

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]

Fallujah and the Reality of War

Rahul Mahajan | Empire Notes | November 9, 2004

"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]

All the Makings of a War Crime

Tony Kevin | Sydney Morning Herald | November 8, 2004

"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]

Fear for the Future of the Republic

Ivan Eland | Independent Institute: Center on Peace and Liberty | November 8, 2004

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]

US Strikes Raze Falluja Hospital

Paul Wood | British Broadcasting Corporation | November 6, 2004

"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 Darfur

Joanne Mariner | FindLaw | October 27, 2004

"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]

Screams Will Not Be Heard

Madeleine Bunting | Guardian | November 8, 2004

"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]

Darfur Slides

EDITORIAL | Washington Post | November 7, 2004

"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 Fire is Spreading...

Dahr Jamail | Electronic Iraq | November 9, 2004

"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]

'Scores of Civilians' Killed in Falluja

STAFF | Al Jazeera | November 9, 2004

"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]

American Exceptionalism

Ivan Eland | Independent Institute: Center on Peace and Liberty | October 25, 2004

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]

Are the War and Globalization Really Connected?

Mark Engler | Foreign Policy in Focus | October 1, 2004

"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 Hand-Over that Wasn't: How the Occupation of Iraq Continues

Antonia Juhasz | Foreign Policy in Focus | July 1, 2004

"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]

Among The Three Stooges, US Claims First (Among Equals)

William Marina | Independent Institute: Center on Peace and Liberty | October 15, 2004

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]

Missile Defense: Protecting America or the President’s Reelection Chances?

Ivan Eland | Independent Institute: Center on Peace and Liberty | October 11, 2004

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]

Analysis: Pocket Guide To The Inevitable Fall Of Sharon's Government

Bradley Burston | Ha'aretz | October 13, 2004

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]

Settlements As Wings Of Desire, As Answer For Confused Soul

Avirama Golan | Ha'aretz | October 12, 2004

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]

Messy Business: The Crumbling Of Iraqi State-Run Industry

Rory McCarthy | Guardian | October 9, 2004

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]

Bush Special Envoy & Carlyle Group In Scandal Over Iraqi Debt Relief

Naomi Klein | Guardian | October 13, 2004

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]

The Oil We Eat: Following The Food Chain Back To Iraq

Richard Manning | Harper's Magazine | July 23, 2004

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]

Baghdad Year Zero: Pillaging Iraq In Pursuit Of A Neocon Utopia

Naomi Klein | Harper's Magazine | September 24, 2004

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]

Afghan Ballot Counting Set To Begin

STAFF | Al Jazeera | October 12, 2004

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]

NATO Planning For Takeover Of Afghan Military Operations

STAFF | Agence France-Presse | October 13, 2004

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]

Britain Admits Error Over Iraq Threat

STAFF | Agence France-Presse | October 13, 2004

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]

Iraqi Leaders Reject Election Fears

James Drummond in Baghdad and James Blitz | Financial Times | September 16, 2004

[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]

Iraq War Was Illegal And Breached UN Charter, Says Annan

Ewen MacAskill and Julian Borger | Guardian | September 16, 2004

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

3,000 (of 15,000) Iraqi Dead Named

Simon Jeffery | Guardian | September 16, 2004

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]

Have 1,000 U.S. Souls Died for Oil?

Ivan Eland | Independent Institute: Center on Peace and Liberty | September 14, 2004

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]

Chechen Attacks on Russia: A Harbinger for the United States?

Ivan Eland | Independent Institute: Center on Peace and Liberty | September 6, 2004

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]

Death penalty to be reinstated in Iraq

STAFF | Al Jazeera | August 8, 2004

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

Transcript: Bin Ladin's Former 'Bodyguard' Interviewed on Al-Qa'ida Strategies

STAFF | World News Connection | August 3, 2004

"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]

Bush Using Drugs to Control Depression, Erratic Behavior

Teresa Hampton | Capitol Hill Blue | July 28, 2004

"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]

African Union Plans To Deploy Peacekeeping Force In Darfur

STAFF | Agence France-Presse | August 4, 2004

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

British High Court Challenge Over Iraqi Civilian Deaths Begins

STAFF | Guardian | July 28, 2004

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]

How The US Blurred The Line Between Aid And The Armed Forces

Anne Penketh | Independent | July 29, 2004

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]

The Revolution Of 1800 And The USA Patriot Act

William J. Watkins | Independent Institute: Center on Peace and Liberty | August 2, 2004

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]

Terror Intelligence Was Years Old

Mark Oliver | Guardian | August 3, 2004

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]

What Color Is the Wolf Today?

Ivan Eland | Independent Institute: Center on Peace and Liberty | August 3, 2004

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]

Transcript: Important Commandments to the Mujahidin and in Reply to the Defeatists

Abu-Mus'ab al-Zarqawi | World News Connection | July 5, 2004

"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]

Zimbabweans Must Reinvent Struggle

Jovial Rantao | World News Connection | July 14, 2004

"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]

Ditch the Distraction in Chief

Naomi Klein | Nation | August 16, 2004

"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]

Biography of Muqtada al-Sadr

STAFF | World News Connection | June 1, 2004

"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]

Turkish Reporter Tells About His Meeting With Al-Fallujah Resistance Fighters

Sebati Karakurt | World News Connection | May 4, 2004

"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]

Saudi Civil Rights Activist Cites 'Mujahidin Sources' on Riyadh Bombing

Muhammad Bin-Abdallah al-Mas'ari | World News Connection | November 11, 2003

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

Analysis: Al-Qa'ida Military Training on the Internet

Muhammad al-Shafi'i | World News Connection | February 16, 2002

"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]

Analysis: Turning Mourning Into Political Muscle

David Rohde and Salman Masood | New York Times | July 30, 2004

"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]

Over 110 killed in violence defying Iraqi government's first month

STAFF | Xinhuanet | July 29, 2004

"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 'heartbreaking' decision: MSF leaves Afghanistan

Sarah Left | Guardian | July 28, 2004

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]

Humphrey Redux?

Jack Beatty | Atlantic Monthly | July 27, 2004

"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]

WTO Proposal Said To Threaten Food Aid Programs

STAFF | United Nations Wire | July 27, 2004

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]

Lessons The U.N. And U.S. Have Learned In Iraq

Barbara Crossette | United Nations Wire | July 26, 2004

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]

Bush Defies The Supreme Court By Denying Due Process To Noncitizen Prisoners

Nat Hentoff | Village Voice | July 23, 2004

[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]

Teaching Torture

Doug Ireland | AlterNet | July 22, 2004

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]

Analysis: Rich, Poor Countries' Rift Still Dogs World Trade Bargaining

STAFF | Agence France-Presse | July 27, 2004

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]

Four Of Seven French Nationals Held At Guantanamo Transferred To France

STAFF | Agence France-Presse | July 27, 2004

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 Stays On As Palestinian Premier, Ends Standoff With Arafat

STAFF | Agence France-Presse | July 27, 2004

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]

Patriot Act Used To Enforce Copyright Law?

STAFF | Slashdot | July 27, 2004

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]

Report Omits Key Player—Foreign Policy

Ivan Eland | Independent Institute: Center on Peace and Liberty | July 27, 2004

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]

Amnesty Says Sudan Militias Use Rape as Weapon

Marc Lacey | New York Times | July 19, 2004

"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]

Talks on ending Sudan insurgency fail

Andrew England | Financial Times | July 18, 2004

"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]

Dilemmas Of Democracy In India

Asghar Ali Engineer | The Milli Gazette | May 1, 2004

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]

What Do The Kurds Want?

Mahmoud Osman | Kurdish Media: United Kurdish Voice | July 16, 2004

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]

Transition PM Allawi Shot Prisoners in Cold Blood: Witnesses

Paul McGeough | Sydney Morning Herald | July 17, 2004

"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]

Senate Intelligence Committee Lets the Bush Administration Off the Hook on Iraq

Ivan Eland | Independent Institute: Center on Peace and Liberty | July 13, 2004

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]

Israel’s Illegal But Unstoppable Barrier

STAFF | Economist | July 12, 2004

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]

Sharon defies World Court Order to remove Barrier

STAFF | British Broadcasting Corporation | July 11, 2004

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]

Master Blaster: A New Noisemaker

Brian Braiker | Newsweek | July 12, 2004

"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 world focuses elsewhere, a systematic slaughter unfolds in Sudan

Alexandra Zavis | Associated Press | July 10, 2004

"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]

Bush officials pressuring Pakistan to catch Osama bin Laden by election

John B. Judis, Spencer Ackerman & Massoud Ansari | New Republic | July 8, 2004

"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]

Morning in Iraq?

Ivan Eland | Independent Institute: Center on Peace and Liberty | July 6, 2004

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]

What Michael Moore Misses About the Empire

Robert Jensen | CounterPunch | July 5, 2004

"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]

Analysis: Saddam Could Call CIA in His Defence

Sanjay Suri | Inter Press Service | July 2, 2004

"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]

U.S. accused of depleting Iraq fund

Mark Matthews | Baltimore Sun | July 3, 2004

"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]

U.S. Funds for Iraq Are Largely Unspent

Rajiv Chandrasekaran | Washington Post | July 4, 2004

"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 PM prepared to offer amnesty to insurgents

Patrick Martin | Globe and Mail | July 5, 2004

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]

The American Revolution and Iraq

William Marina | Independent Institute: Center on Peace and Liberty | July 2, 2004

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]

Sex Pros Get Ready For Party, RNC

Jose Martinez | New York Daily News | June 28, 2004

"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]

Iraq is Worse Off Than Before the War Began, GAO reports

Seth Borenstein | Knight Ridder/Tribune Wire | June 29, 2004

"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]

Turkey, Drugs, Faustian Alliances & Sibel Edmonds

John Stanton | Cryptome | June 28, 2004

"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]

'Fahrenheit 9/11' or 'Farce and Hype 7-11'

Ivan Eland | Independent Institute: Center on Peace and Liberty | June 28, 2004

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]

Analysis: All Eyes on the Man Who Stepped into Iraqi Inferno

Paul McGeough | Sydney Morning Herald | June 30, 2004

"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]

Plan B

Seymour M. Hersh | New Yorker | June 28, 2004

"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]

Analysis: The Dawn of a New Iraq or a Return to Secrecy and Killing?

James Meek | Guardian | June 29, 2004

"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]

Born Under a Cloud of Irony

Robert Scheer | Los Angeles Times | June 29, 2004

"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]

European Socialists Object to Portuguese PM for Top EU Job

Staff | EUbusiness | June 27, 2004

"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]

Ralph Nader Wins Reform Party Nomination

Staff | Reform Party | May 11, 2004

"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]

Close Vote Costs Nader the Green Nomination

P.J. Huffstutter | Los Angeles Times | June 27, 2004

"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]

Demonstrators Protest U.S. Policies on AIDS

Terry Leonard | Associated Press | June 24, 2004

"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]

Iraq’s 'Sovereign' Government to Have Little Control Over Oil Money

Chris Shumway | NewStandard | June 22, 2004

"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]

Bush Continues the 'Big Lie' in the Face of Mountains of Contrary Evidence

Ivan Eland | Independent Institute: Center on Peace and Liberty | June 22, 2004

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]

Al-Qaeda's Thumbs Up for Bush

Craig B Hulet | Asia Times | June 24, 2004

"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]

Feds Urge Secrecy Over Network Outages

Kevin Poulsen | Security Focus | June 23, 2004

"'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]

U.S. Drops Effort to Gain Immunity for Its Troops

Warren Hoge | New York Times | June 23, 2004

"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]

Judge Favors Christian Fired for Refusing Company's Pro-Homosexual Policy

Fred Jackson and Jenni Parker | Agape Press | April 7, 2004

"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]

Police 'Helped Al Qaeda'

Staff | Sky News | June 20, 2004

"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]

British Lawmakers Say Were Shot At In Gaza, No Injuries

Arnon Regular | Ha'aretz | June 20, 2004

"'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]

Warlords Take Afghan Provincial Capital

STAFF | Canadian Broadcasting Corporation | June 18, 2004

"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]

'Global South' Flexes its Trade Muscle in Brazil

Abraham McLaughlin | | Christian Science Monitor | June 18, 2004

"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]

W.T.O. Rules Against U.S. Cotton Subsidies

Todd Benson | New York Times | June 19, 2004

"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]

The Little Engine That Could: How Linux is Inadvertently Poised to Remake the Telephone and Internet Markets

Robert X. Cringely | Public Broadcasting Service | May 27, 2004

"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]

Israel: Industrial Estates Along the Wall

Meron Rapoport | Le Monde Diplomatique | June 1, 2004

"'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]

The Gov't Submitted A New Anti-Terrorist Law to Parliament

Staff | Macedonian Press Agency | June 15, 2004

"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 EU Counter-Terrorism Coordinator Visits Greece

Staff | Macedonian Press Agency | June 16, 2004

"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]

First Mobile Phone Virus Discovered

Staff | Agence France-Presse | June 16, 2004

"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]

Errors Are Seen in Early Attacks on Iraqi Leaders

Douglas Jehl and Eric Schmitt | New York Times | June 13, 2004

"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]

Interim Iraqi Government

Staff | British Broadcasting Corporation | June 1, 2004

"[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]

Pills vs. Talking

Bryan Robinson | ABC News | June 7, 2004

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

Child ID System Makes Its Mark

Peter Demarco | Boston Globe | May 23, 2004

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

Chicago Surveillance Cameras to be Fitted With Listening Devices

Staff | Chicago Tribune | April 7, 2004

"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]

Chicago Police's Crime-Fighting Cameras Divide Neighbors

Mike Colias | Associated Press | April 29, 2004

"'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]

Interrogation Abuses were 'Approved at Highest Levels': Surfacing Evidence

Julian Coman | Telegraph | June 13, 2004

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]

Lockdown on Sea Island: Scenes from the G8 Summit

E Jane Dickson | Independent | June 8, 2004

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]

Ashcroft Refuses to Release Torture Memo to Congress

Susan Schmidt | Washington Post | June 8, 2004

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]

Tenet Now, Rummy and Wolfie Soon

Ivan Eland | Independent Institute: Center on Peace and Liberty | June 8, 2004

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]

Transcript: Saddam Husayn Denies Any Link to Al-Najaf Explosion

Saddam Husayn | World News Connection | September 1, 2003

"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]

Transcript: Al-Zarqawi Claims Responsibility for Attack on Iraqi Interior Ministry Official

STAFF | World News Connection | May 22, 2004

"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]

Transcript: Al-Qa'ida's Al-Zawahiri Attacks French Ban on Headscarf

Ayman al-Zawahiri | World News Connection | February 24, 2004

"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]

Transcript: al-Zawahiri Calls For Overthrow of Pakistan Government

Ayman al-Zawahiri | British Broadcasting Corporation | March 25, 2004

"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]

Transcript: Bin Ladin Threatens Revenge on Israel, US, Offers Truce With Europeans

Usama Bin Ladin | World News Connection | April 15, 2004

"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]

Transcript: Chalabi, Bremer Discuss Ba'thist Rehabilitation, Al-Sadr Issue, Al-Fallujah

STAFF | World News Connection | April 26, 2004

"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]

Transcript: Al-Zarqawi Denies Jordanian Intelligence Story on Chemical Bomb

Abu-Mus'ab al-Zarqawi | World News Connection | April 29, 2004

"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]

Al-Qa'ida Claims Responsibility for Al-Washm Terrorist Attack

Mahmud Khalil | World News Connection | May 2, 2004

"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]

Time to Leave

STAFF | Nation | June 3, 2004

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]

Transcript: Alleged Bin Ladin Statement - May 6, 2004

Usama Bin Ladin | World News Connection | May 7, 2004

"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]

Rumsfeld: Grab Whom You Must; Do What You Want

Muta al-Safadi | World News Connection | May 17, 2004

"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]

Transcript: Alleged Al-Qaida Statement on Details of Al-Khubar Attack

STAFF | World News Connection | May 30, 2004

"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]

Survey Shows Higher Demand, Lower Prices for Terrorism Insurance

Tom Ichniowski | McGraw-Hill Construction | April 26, 2004

"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]

"Misleading" Statistics Blame Crime on Foreigners

Isobel Leybold | swissinfo | June 2, 2004

"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]

'9/11' Heading to Theaters

John Horn | Los Angeles Times | June 2, 2004

"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]

Courting Disaster: Bush’s Real Strategy in Iraq

Ivan Eland | Independent Institute: Center on Peace and Liberty | June 1, 2004

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]

Can Prints Lie? Yes, Man Finds to His Dismay

Benjamin Weiser | New York Times | May 31, 2004

"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]

Analysis: The Times and Iraq: A Self-Critique

STAFF | New York Times | May 26, 2004

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]

To Tell the Truth

Paul Krugman | New York Times | May 28, 2004

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]

'The Arab Mind' in Neoconservative Ideology and Military Doctrine

Brian Whitaker | Guardian | May 24, 2004

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]

Iraq Council Recommends Allawi for Prime Minister in Spite, or Because, of US Ties

Rajiv Chandrasekaran and Fred Barbash | Washington Post | May 28, 2004

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

Dangers to the Constitution: Immigrants' Rights and the "War on Terror" in Germany

Elise Kissling | Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung | May 28, 2004

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]

Keeping Troops out of the Question, Schroeder Lists Criteria for 'Yes' Vote on Iraq

Elise Kissling | Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung | May 28, 2004

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]

Analysis: Iraqis Lose Right to Sue Troops over War Crimes; Military Win Immunity Pledge in Deal on UN Vote

Kamal Ahmed | Guardian | May 23, 2004

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]

Has the U.S. Government Committed War Crimes in Afghanistan and Iraq?

Robert Higgs | Independent Institute: Center on Peace and Liberty | May 23, 2004

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]

Sergeant Disciplined for Speaking of Abuse

David Rising | Associated Press | May 25, 2004

"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]

Mr. President, What Planet Are You On?

Ivan Eland | Independent Institute: Center on Peace and Liberty | May 24, 2004

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]

Former Soldier Claims He Was Beaten During Training Exercise In Cuba

STAFF | NBC News | May 25, 2004

"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]

Analysis: The Roots of Torture

John Barry, Michael Hirsh and Michael Isikoff | Newsweek | May 24, 2004

"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]

Anti-war Iraq Veteran Found Guilty of Desertion

Jonathan Finer | Washington Post | May 22, 2004

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]

Think the Unthinkable: Partition Iraq

Ivan Eland | Independent Institute: Center on Peace and Liberty | May 18, 2004

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]

Sexual Domination in Uniform: An American Value

Linda Burnham | War Times | May 18, 2004

"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]

Israeli Shells Hit Crowd of Palestinians, Killing at Least 9

James Bennet | New York Times | May 19, 2004

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]

US Attack Reportedly Kills More than 40 at Wedding

Scheherezade Faramarzi | Associated Press | May 19, 2004

"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]

Analysis: Greek Paper Prints Leftist Terrorist Group Proclamation Identifying 'Potential Targets'

Matina Iriotou | World News Connection | May 14, 2004

"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]

Analysis: Why Does 'Al-Qa'ida' Point Its Spearhead at the United Nations?

Zhu Mengkui | World News Connection | May 11, 2004

"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]

Transcript: Malaysian Prime Minister Interviewed on Terrorism, Iraq, OIC, Domestic Issues

STAFF | World News Connection | May 15, 2004

"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]

Malaysia Cracks Down on Firm Hosting Website Showing Beheading of US Citizen

STAFF | Agence France-Presse | May 14, 2004

"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 Color of Abu Ghraib

Bob Wing | War Times | May 17, 2004

"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]

Either Israelis or Settlers

Ari Shavit | Ha'aretz | May 13, 2004

"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]

Analysis: The Gray Zone

Seymour M. Hersh | New Yorker | May 24, 2004

"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]

U.S. Tanks Enter Najaf Cemetery to Pursue Insurgents

Alissa J. Rubin and Raheem Salman | Los Angeles Times | May 15, 2004

"'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]

Analysis: Expert: US Failure to Comprehend Islamic Radical Motivations Undermines Democratization Hopes for Middle East, Central Asia

STAFF | EurasiaNet | May 13, 2004

"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]

Thousands of Cubans Rally Against New U.S Sanctions

STAFF | Canadian Broadcasting Corporation | May 14, 2004

"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]

British High Court Allows Iraqis to Challenge Death Cases

Nikki Tait and Jean Eaglesham | Financial Times | May 12, 2004

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]

Torture in Iraq: Appalling. Politicians’ Reactions? Not Much Better.

Ivan Eland | Independent Institute: Center on Peace and Liberty | May 11, 2004

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]

Lawn vs. Demonstrators

STAFF | New York Times | May 11, 2004

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]

Tourists and Torturers

Luc Sante | New York Times | May 11, 2004

"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]

Torture as Pornography

Joanna Bourke | Guardian | May 7, 2004

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

The Crimes at Abu Ghraib Are Not the Worst

Robert Higgs | Independent Institute: Center on Peace and Liberty | May 11, 2004

"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]

U.S. to Worldwide Firms: Iraq Safer Than You Think

Sandip Roy | Pacific News Service | May 7, 2004

"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]

Big Guns Will Travel for Money

Tom Godfrey | Toronto Sun | May 9, 2004

"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]

PLO Urges Bush to Reconsider Torpedoing 'Roadmap'

STAFF | Palestine Media Center | May 9, 2004

"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]

Chechen President Killed in Bomb Blast at Parade

Margaret Neighbour | Scotsman | May 10, 2004

"... 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]

General Calls Insurgency in Iraq a Sign of U.S. Success

Sewell Chan | Washington Post | April 16, 2004

"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]

More Tales of Indians' Ill-Treatment Tumble Out

Ramesh Babu | Hindustan Times | May 8, 2004

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

Fourth Soldier Makes Abuse Claims

STAFF | Ananova | May 7, 2004

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

Grueling Duties in Prison, Rounds of Golf on its Roof

Scott Shane | Baltimore Sun | May 7, 2004

"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]

Torturing Iraq in an Unnecessary War

Ivan Eland | Independent Institute: Center on Peace and Liberty | May 4, 2004

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]

Swiss Re Wins World Trade Center Ruling

STAFF | swissinfo | May 4, 2004

"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]

Rall's 'Tillman' Cartoon Pulled by MSNBC.com

Dave Astor | Editor & Publisher | May 3, 2004

"'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]

The Mass Media Are Soldiers in a Wider War

Rami G. Khouri | Daily Star | May 5, 2004

"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]

Pentagon Reveals Deaths in Custody

Marian Wilkinson | Age | May 6, 2004

"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]

Torture and Civilian Deaths in Three Counterinsurgencies

William Marina | Independent Institute: Center on Peace and Liberty | May 3, 2004

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]

Victory Rises Above a Mass Grave

Aaron Glantz | Inter Press Service | May 3, 2004

"'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]

Pressure Has Place in War, Some Say

Jeff Barker | Baltimore Sun | May 3, 2004

"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]

Cornerstone Laid for New Gush Katif Neighborhood

Uri Glikman | Maariv International | May 3, 2004

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

Torture at Abu Ghraib

Seymour M. Hersh | New Yorker | May 10, 2004

"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 Pictures That Lost The War

Neil Mackay | Sunday Herald | May 2, 2004

"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]

Press Freedom Day Marks General Decline In Access To Independent Media

Don Hill | Radio Free Europe | April 30, 2004

"'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]

Washington Moves Towards Imposing Sanctions Against Syria

STAFF | Arabic News | May 1, 2004

"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]

Abuse of Iraqi POWs by GIs Probed

Dan Rather | CBS News | April 29, 2004

"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]

Rioters Kidnap and Murder Peruvian Mayor Accused of Embezzling Funds

Andrew Gumbel | Guardian | April 28, 2004

"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]

New Flag Raises Anger Among Iraqi Students

STAFF | Middle East Online | April 28, 2004

"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]

Remember Falluja

Orit Shohat | Ha'aretz | April 28, 2004

"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]

Can Sharon Win By Force?

Mitchell Plitnick | Electronic Intifada | April 28, 2004

"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]

How to Get Out of Iraq

Peter W. Galbraith | New York Review of Books | April 15, 2004

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]

US Tactics Condemned by Senior British Officers

Sean Rayment | London Telegraph | April 11, 2004

"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]

Iraq: The Moon Is Down, Again!

William Marina | Independent Institute: Center on Peace and Liberty | April 23, 2004

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

Southern Nations Demand More Power in IMF, World Bank

Emad Mekay | Inter Press Service | April 24, 2004

"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]

Israel Vows to Continue 'Targeted Killings'

STAFF | Middle East Online | April 26, 2004

"'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]

DPRK Slams US Withdrawalf from JSA in Panmunjom

STAFF | Xinhuanet | April 25, 2004

"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]

California Set to Reject Diebold E-Voting Machines

Andrew Orlowski | Register | April 24, 2004

"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]

Iraq: Clerics Say U.S. Will Pay Dearly If It Attacks Al-Fallujah, Al-Najaf

STAFF | Radio Free Europe | April 23, 2004

"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]

San Jose Police Take Law Enforcement Into Future

Crystal Carreon | San Jose Mercury News | April 25, 2004

"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]

Coalition Strife as Minister Quits

Peter Wilson | Australian | April 26, 2004

"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]

U.S. Wants Radar System in Japan

STAFF | Asahi Daily News | April 22, 2004

"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]

Spain's Position on Sahara Issue, Similar to UN's, Moratinos

STAFF | Arabic News | April 24, 2004

"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]

US Asks Former Baathist Army Officers to Help Create Force

Karl Vick | Washington Post | April 23, 2004

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 'Iraqization' Scam

Anthony Gregory | Independent Institute: Center on Peace and Liberty | April 20, 2004

"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 Disintegration of Palestine

Edward R. F. Sheehan | New York Review of Books | April 29, 2004

"...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]

Spain, Honduras Ready to Withdraw Troops from Iraq

STAFF | Canadian Broadcasting Corporation | April 19, 2004

"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]

Security Council Holds Meeting on Rantisi Assassination

STAFF | Ha'aretz | April 20, 2004

"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]

Weapons of Mass Destruction and the Media: Anatomy of a Failure

Susan Moeller | Yale Global | April 14, 2004

"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]

Bush Urges Patriot Act Renewed, Expanded

STAFF | Cable News Network | April 19, 2004

"'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]

Ruling Expected in Balkan Genocide Case

STAFF | Angola Press | April 19, 2004

"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 Says US Undermined Efforts to Stabilize Iraq

STAFF | Daily Times of Pakistan | April 19, 2004

"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]

Peace Force in Kosovo Gunfight

STAFF | Guardian | April 19, 2004

"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]

US Bans Civilian Traffic on Iraq Highways

Patrick Cockburn | Independent | April 19, 2004

"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]

The Marines' 'How To' Handbook for Empire

William Marina | Independent Institute: Center on Peace and Liberty | April 13, 2004

"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]

Guantanamo Issue Took Two Years to Reach UN Commission

Gustavo Capdevila | Inter Press Service | April 15, 2004

"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]

Genocide: Darfur Ceasefire Eases Pressure on the US

Kevin J. Kelley | East African | April 12, 2004

"'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]

Transcript: Al Qa'ida Statement - April 15th, 2004

Usama Bin Laden | British Broadcasting Corporation | April 15, 2004

"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]

Chechnya Official Denies Report of Chemical Weapons Experiments

STAFF | World News Connection | April 12, 2004

"'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]

Iranian Diplomat Gunned Down in Baghdad

STAFF | Canadian Broadcasting Corporation | April 15, 2004

"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]

Bush Walks Fine Line on Sadr-Hizbullah Link

Christian Henderson | Daily Star | April 15, 2004

"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]

US Commander Requests Troops in Iraq as Deaths Spiral Upwards

Robert Fisk and Patrick Cockburn | Independent | April 13, 2004

"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]

Bush Makes Three Mistakes While Trying to Cite One

STAFF | Reuters | April 14, 2004

"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 Chosen as US Ambassador to Iraq

David Usborne and Anne Penketh | Independent | April 15, 2004

"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]

Iraqi 'Beaten to Death' by US Troops

STAFF | Agence France-Presse | April 14, 2004

"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]

Terrorists Planned to Explode Bomb Tainted with HIV-Infected Blood

Ellis Shuman | Israel Insider | April 13, 2004

"'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]

Al-Jazeera, Al-Arabiya Come Under Renewed US Criticism

Taieb Mahjoub | Middle East Online | April 13, 2004

"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]

Korea, U.S. Don’t See Eye-to-Eye on Troops in Iraq

Yoo Yong-won | Chosun Ilbo | April 11, 2004

"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]

Collateral Damage

Matthew Yglesias | American Prospect | April 5, 2004

"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]

US’ Disinterest in African Affairs is Just Strategic

Muniini K. Mulera | Monitor | April 12, 2004

"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 Opens U.S. Visit Office

Roseanne Gerin | Washington Technology | April 8, 2004

"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]

Karzai Calls for More Aid for Afghanistan

STAFF | Agence France-Presse | April 11, 2004

"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]

Fallujah Death Toll 600, Official Says

STAFF | Canadian Broadcasting Corporation | April 11, 2004

"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]

Singer Takes a Pop at Bush, Sharon

Alaa Shahine | Al Jazeera | April 5, 2004

"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]

Grand Rapids Court Interpreter Targeted and Threatened by Police for Involvement in Anti-War Demonstrations

Brian McAfee | Media Monitors Network | April 9, 2004

"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]

PR: President Condemns Atrocities in Sudan

George W. Bush | White House | April 7, 2004

"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]

Eager Would-Be Gun Toters Line Up

Janice Morse | Cincinnati Enquirer | April 9, 2004

"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]

North Korea Says Standoff with US at "Brink of Nuclear War"

STAFF | Agence France-Presse | April 9, 2004

"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]

Iraqi Governing Council Members Denounce U.S. Actions

STAFF | Radio Free Europe | April 9, 2004

"'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]

Captives' Crisis Spurs Nikkei Dive

STAFF | Japan Times | April 10, 2004

"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]

Signs That Shiites and Sunnis Are Joining to Battle Americans

Jeffrey Gettleman | New York Times | April 9, 2004

"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]

Rallying Around an Insurgent City

Karl Vick | Washington Post | April 9, 2004

"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]

Dostum's Forces Capture Afghan Town

STAFF | Al Jazeera | April 8, 2004

"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]

Insects of Mass Destruction

Lee Dye | ABC News | April 8, 2004

"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]

US Military: "We Will Destroy This Cleric's Army"

Khaled Yacoub Oweis | Scotsman | April 8, 2004

"...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]

The Internet Surveillance Cash Cow

Annalee Newitz | Security Focus | April 5, 2004

"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]

US Troops Hit Mosque in Iraq

STAFF | Xinhuanet | April 8, 2004

"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]

Europe-Wide Dragnets

Sam Manuel | Militant | April 20, 2004

"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]

Passive E-Mail Monitoring Leads To Arrest

David Akin | Globe and Mail | April 6, 2004

"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]

Analysis: Will the 2004 Election Be Called Off? Why Three Out of Four Experts Predict a Terrorist Attack by November

Maureen Farrell | BuzzFlash | April 6, 2004

"'[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]

Troops Set to Take Out Fallujah's "Bad Guys"

Bassem Mroue | Scotsman | April 6, 2004

"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]

Iraq: Unrest Sparks New Debate Over U.S. Strategy

Charles Recknagel | Radio Free Europe | April 6, 2004

"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]

US to Conduct New Anti-Terror Drills

STAFF | Xinhuanet | April 5, 2004

"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 Saudi Fifth Column On Our Nation's Campuses

Lee Kaplan | Front Page Magazine | April 5, 2004

"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]

Terrorists Warn Spain of 'Inferno'

STAFF | NewsMax | April 5, 2004

"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]

Withdrawal Could Delay Palestinian Statehood for Years, Says Sharon

Hisham Abu Taha | Arab News | April 6, 2004

"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]

'Unite Against Threats' - Queen

STAFF | Ananova | April 5, 2004

"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]

Slovenes Reject Renewed Residency Rights for Former Minorities

Patrick G. Moore | Radio Free Europe | April 5, 2004

"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]

More War if New Government Denies Autonomy: LTTE

STAFF | Press Trust of India | April 5, 2004

"...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]

Flash Mob Supercomputer Misses Its Target

Will Knight | New Scientist | April 5, 2004

"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]

Shia Protests Spread to Basra

STAFF | Matamat | April 6, 2004

"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]

Murder Warrant Issued for Shiite Cleric Months Ago: U.S.

STAFF | Canadian Broadcasting Corporation | April 5, 2004

"'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]

Otegi: “Changes are Coming to the Basque Country, Let’s Seize the Opportunity”

Gotzon Hermosilla | Berria | April 4, 2004

"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]

Logoglu Reacts to Statememt of Powell: -''Turkey is a Democratic and Secular Republic''

STAFF | Anadolu Agency | April 5, 2004

"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]

Mainstream Manipulation

Cat Warren | Independent | March 31, 2004

"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]

Academia Under Siege

Barbara Solow | Durham Independent | March 31, 2004

"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]

Afghanistan Conference Ends with Focus on Drugs, Security

STAFF | Deutsche Welle | April 1, 2004

"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]

US Court Okays Nigeria Lawsuit Against ChevronTexaco

Hector Igbikiowubo | Vanguard | March 30, 2004

"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]

UN Urges Global Action on Darfur

STAFF | Angola Press | April 4, 2004

"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]

Gibson Film Breaks as the Prayers Stop

STAFF | Ekklesia | March 29, 2004

"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]

Churches Told Palm Sunday Is Not Environmentally Sustainable

STAFF | Ekklesia | April 2, 2004

"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 Responsible for Injuring Orthodox Priest in Terrorist Act.

Timothy Bancroft-Hinchey | Pravda | April 2, 2004

"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]

World Bank Funds Linked to Suicide Terror

Jim Hauser | Talon News | April 2, 2004

"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]

Letterman's Bush Skit Embellished By CNN Anchors

Jimmy Moore | Talon News | April 2, 2004

"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 Middle Eastern Connection to Oklahoma City

Jim Crogan | Indianapolis Star | February 17, 2002

"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]

FBI Campaign Against Einstein Revealed

Dr David Whitehouse | British Broadcasting Corporation | June 8, 2002

"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]

U.S. Expands Controversial Border Program

Sheldon Alberts | Calgary Herald | April 4, 2004

"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]

The 10 Worst Corporations of 2003

Russell Mokhiber & Robert Weissman | Z Magazine | April 1, 2004

"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]

The Iraq Deployment Gets Even Stranger

STAFF | Chosun Ilbo | April 2, 2004

"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]

Case for Mugabe ICC Trial

Mark S. Ellis | New Zimbabwe | April 4, 2004

"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]

France Reaffirms Arafat as Legitimate Leader of Palestinian People

STAFF | Xinhuanet | April 2, 2004

"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]

Police Storm Temple Mount After Muslims Throw Rocks at Officers

Jonathan Lis and Arnon Regular | Ha'aretz | April 2, 2004

"'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]

Palestinians Passionate About Christ Film

STAFF | Al Jazeera | April 2, 2004

"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]

Mercenaries Flock to Fill Vacuum

Paul McGeough | Age | April 2, 2004

"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]

House Democrats Criticize U.S. North Korea Policy; Experts Weigh in on Chances of a Deal With Kim Regime

Marina Malenic | Global Security Newswire | March 31, 2004

"'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]

Uzbek Authorities Launch Round-Up of Islamic Suspects in Uzbekistan

Esmer Islamov | EurasiaNet | March 31, 2004

"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]

Orgy of Violence as More Die in Iraq

Naseer Al-Nahr | Arab News | April 1, 2004

"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]

In Video We Trust

STAFF | Government Security | February 1, 2004

"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]

Intermec Builds a Wireless Fortress for the DOD

Brad Grimes | Washington Technology | March 22, 2004

"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 Withdraws From Anti-Terrorism Network

William Welsh | PostNewsweek Tech Media | March 30, 2004

"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]

ACLU Blasts Louisiana For Traffic Camera Proposal

STAFF | Government Security | February 10, 2004

"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]

Community Colleges Offer Homeland Security Education

STAFF | Government Security | February 9, 2004

"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]

South Africa's Growing Private Army

Franz Kruger | British Broadcasting Corporation | March 23, 2004

"'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]

Book Calls Hispanic 'Migration' a 'Threat'

Oscar Corral | Miami Herald | March 21, 2004

"'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 Helped Craft Measure Awarding Boeing Tanker Deal

Alan Bjerga | Knight Ridder/Tribune Wire | March 29, 2004

"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]

Iraq Was Invaded 'To Protect Israel' - US Official

Emad Mekay | Inter Press Service | March 31, 2004

"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]

As Terror Fears Rise, UJC Idea Could Help Garner Homeland Security Funds

Matthew E. Berger | Jewish Telegraphic Agency | March 30, 2004

"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]

US Newspaper Ban Plays Into Cleric's Hands

Nir Rosen | Asia Times | March 31, 2004

"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]

Fighting Rages for Third Straight Day in Uzbekistan

Esmer Islamov | EurasiaNet | March 30, 2004

"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]

Behind the Scenes in a Cambodian Sweatshop

STAFF | Radio Free Asia | March 29, 2004

"'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]

Australians Show Popular Support For Iraq Troops To Stay On

Catherine McGrath | ABC News | March 30, 2004

"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]

Controversial French Lawyer to Represent Saddam Hussein

STAFF | Deutsche Welle | March 30, 2004

"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]

The Height Gap

Urkhard Bilger | New Yorker | April 5, 2004

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

The War Over the War

Mark Danner | New Yorker | April 5, 2004

Richard Clarke and the lessons of Iraq. [more]

Meeting Collapse Highlights Regional Fissures, US Pressure

STAFF | Agence France-Presse | March 30, 2004

"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]

Bush to Welcome New NATO Members

STAFF | Canadian Broadcasting Corporation | March 29, 2004

"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]

9 Terrorists Killed, 4 Seized While Planting Bomb in Uzbekistan

STAFF | ITAR-TASS | March 29, 2004

"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]

Rice Stands by Refusal to Testify

Marian Wilkinson | Age | March 30, 2004

"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]

Coup Attempt in Congo Kinshasa (DRC)

Eddy Isango and Edward Harris | Namibian | March 29, 2004

"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 Police Officers Spied on Anti-War Activists

STAFF | Associated Press | March 28, 2004

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]

Kerry's Oratory Style Needs Work

Don Aucoin | Boston Globe | March 25, 2004

"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]

2003 Suicide Rates Elevated Among Iraqi Freedom Troops; 2004 Rates Dip

Donna Miles | American Forces Press Service | March 25, 2004

"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]

Cheney Tells Troops America Must Remain on Offensive

Jim Garamone | American Forces Press Service | March 26, 2004

"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]

France's Socialists Beat Ruling Coalition in Regional Elections

Simon Packard | Bloomberg News | March 28, 2004

"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]

Turkish Ruling Party Bolsters Strength in Municipal Polls

Amberin Zaman | Voice of America | March 28, 2004

"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]

Prime Minister Erdogan Meets With Chirac

STAFF | Anadolu Agency | March 26, 2004

"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]

Israel 'Fabricated' Child Bomber Story

Khalid Amayreh | Al Jazeera | March 25, 2004

"'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]

MIA WMDs--For Bush, It's a Joke

David Corn | Nation | March 25, 2004

"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]

The Core at the Future of Warfare

Duane D. Freese | Tech Central Station | March 26, 2004

"'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]

‘LRA Different From Al Qaeda’

Badru D. Mulumba | Monitor | March 28, 2004

'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]

India Doubting its US 'Strategic Partnership'

Sultan Shahin | Asia Times | March 27, 2004

"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]

Israel Goes on West Bank Rampage

Khalid Amayreh | Al Jazeera | March 27, 2004

"'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]

Land Warrior System to Improve Soldier's Ability on Battlefield

K.L. Vantran | American Forces Press Service | March 25, 2004

"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]

UN May Cut Back Gaza Work Because of Israeli Restrictions

STAFF | Associated Press | March 27, 2004

"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]

Developing Nations Deserve to Have Leading Positions on International Bodies

Alberto Alesina and Francesco Giavazzi | Project Syndicate | March 27, 2004

"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]

Culture Industry Reconsidered

Theodor W. Adorno | New German Critique | September 1, 1975

"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]

Shams, Scams and Kofi Annan

Roger Franklin | New Zealand Herald | March 27, 2004

"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]

U.S. May Cut Access To Generic AIDS Drugs In Poor Nations

STAFF | United Nations Wire | March 26, 2004

"'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]

Transcript: Remarks by the Vice President at a Rally for the Troops

Dick Cheney | White House | March 26, 2004

"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 Secures Libya Deal During Blair's Visit

STAFF | afrol News | March 26, 2004

"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]

Creating the Enemy

Brendan O'Neill | Spiked | March 22, 2004

"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]

'Fiercely Independent' Clan Accused of Harboring Al-Qa'ida in Pakistan

Helen Rowe | Agence France-Presse | March 24, 2003

"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]

Italy Looks at Controlling New Mosques

STAFF | Canadian Broadcasting Corporation | March 25, 2004

"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]

Clear Channel Execs Donate More to Bush

Jim Hopkins | USA Today | March 23, 2004

"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]

Mark Thomas Urges the Unions to Take on Coca-Cola

Mark Thomas | New Statesman | March 29, 2004

"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]

Cell Phones Jury-Rigged to Detonate Bombs

Lou Dolinar | Newsday | March 15, 2004

"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]

Democrats for Bush

Jeffrey McMurray | Associated Press | March 24, 2004

"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]

After Madrid, Does Urban Life Have a Future?

Eric Klinenberg | New Statesman | March 22, 2004

"...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]

U.S. Blocks U.N. Rebuke of Israel for Assassination

Thalif Deen | Inter Press Service | March 23, 2004

"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]

Missionaries' War for Souls Raises Iraq Tension

Paul McGeough | Age | March 25, 2004

"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]

US Appeal to Latham: Back Off On Troops

Mark Forbes | Age | March 25, 2004

"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]

Iraq: The Beginning of Phase Three

William S. Lind | Defense and the National Interest | March 22, 2004

"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 Dies at Passion Screening

STAFF | British Broadcasting Corporation | March 23, 2004

"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]

Terror War 'Inescapable Calling of Our Generation,' Bush Says

Rudi Williams | American Forces Press Service | March 20, 2004

"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]

When Rupert Murdoch Calls...

John Nichols | Nation | March 22, 2004

"...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]

Multinationals Show Their Global Muscle

Alan Boyd | Asia Times | March 23, 2004

"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]

Which War: A One-Shot Publication of Social Reconnaissance

Roveretans | Guerra Sociale | March 1, 2004

"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]

Misplaced Paranoia

Bob Barr | Creative Loafing Atlanta | March 18, 2004

"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]

New Report Pins Profiteering Firms In Congo Conflict

Frank Nyakairu | Monitor | March 22, 2004

"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]

Coup and War Fears In Côte d'Ivoire

STAFF | afrol News | March 22, 2004

"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]

Telestreet [Pirate Television] Etera 2 in Senigall

David Garcia | InterActivist | March 19, 2004

"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]

PR: US Army Concludes Special Agents Exceeded Authority at UT Austin

STAFF | American-Arab Anti Discrimination Committee | March 16, 2004

"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]

Blockade the Airwaves: Piquetero TV in Argentina

Sebastian Hacher | Mute | March 1, 2004

"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]

Voters Punish French Government In Regional Polls

Robert Graham | Financial Times | March 21, 2004

"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]

Bush Campaign Gear Made in Burma

Lauren Weber | Newsday | March 18, 2004

"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]

Go to British Universities, Get Spied Upon

Vijay Dutt | Hindustan Times | March 21, 2004

"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]

Wal-Mart Tops Fortune 500 List Again

STAFF | Xinhuanet | March 22, 2004

"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]

Alert on Albanian Boys' Funeral

STAFF | Associated Press | March 22, 2004

"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]

The Plot Against Syria: An Irresponsible Accountability Act

Saul Landau and Farrah Hassen | CounterPunch | March 20, 2004

"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]

U.S. Military Officials Offer Few Details In Prisoner-Abuse Scandal

Carol Rosenberg | Knight Ridder/Tribune Wire | March 21, 2004

"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]

Spanish Police Officer Kills Member of "Gurasoak" Association in Iruñea

Asier Azpilikueta | Berria | March 14, 2004

"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]

War on Terror: US Forces in Tanzania

Kevin J. Kelley | East African | March 15, 2004

"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]

Taliban Warns US, Pakistan To Stop Attacks

STAFF | Al Jazeera | March 19, 2004

"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]

The Postmodern Police State and the Battle for Public Space

Evan Greer | Phoenix | March 18, 2004

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]

The Strip-Mall Revolutionaries

Joshua Kurlantzick | New York Times | March 21, 2004

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]

Poland 'Deceived' on Iraq WMDs

STAFF | Agence France-Presse | March 19, 2004

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

Fourteen Dead as Ethnic Violence Sweeps Kosovo

Ian Traynor | Guardian | March 18, 2004

"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]

Analysis: Israel: The Threat from Within

Henry Siegman | New York Review of Books | February 26, 2004

"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]

Sanctions Against Zimbabwe - a Complex Matter

STAFF | New Zimbabwe | March 16, 2004

"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]

Bush Has a New Top Career Patron: MBNA Surpasses Enron as the President's Top Lifetime Contributor

Alex Knott | Center For Public Integrity | March 11, 2004

"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]

Vengeful Israel Rains Rockets on Gaza City

Nazir Majally | Arab News | March 16, 2004

"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]

Spain Will Pull Troops from Iraq and Loosen Its Alliance With U.S., Premier-Elect Says

Elaine Sciolino | New York Times | March 16, 2004

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]

S. Korean Netizens Circulating Information on Lawmakers Who Supported Impeachment

STAFF | Chosun Ilbo | March 15, 2004

"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]

'No Act of Terrorism Is Justified,' Castro Says

STAFF | World News Connection | March 14, 2004

"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]

Transcript: Afghanistan's Kharzai Answers Questions on Health Clinics, Constitution, Sport

STAFF | World News Connection | April 6, 2004

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

The Empire Backfires

Jonathan Schell | Nation | March 29, 2004

"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]

Guns For Hire Thrive in Africa

Abraham McLaughlin | Christian Science Monitor | March 15, 2004

"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]

Scientists Back Navajos Fighting Uranium Mining

Brenda Norrell | Indian Country Today | March 12, 2004

"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]

PR: Kerry Scores "Hat Trick" of Boston Newspaper Endorsements

STAFF | John Kerry '04 | January 22, 2004

"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]

Bush-Cheney '04 Ad Scripts - "Forward" & "100 Days"

STAFF | Bush-Cheney '04 | March 11, 2004

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

U.S. Troops May Have Clashed With Iranians at Border

Gerry J. Gilmore | American Forces Press Service | March 15, 2004

"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]

'Enemy Combatants' Cases Toss Out American Rule of Law

Nat Hentoff | Chicago Sun-Times | March 15, 2004

"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]

Privacy Fears Erode Support for 'MATRIX'

John Schwartz | New York Times | March 14, 2004

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

Recognizing the 92d Birthday of Ronald Reagan

STAFF | US House of Representatives | March 6, 2004

"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]

From Capitol Hill Aide to Iraqi Spy

Lisa Hoffman and Lance Gay | Capitol Hill Blue | March 12, 2004

"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]

Big Brother Wants to Monitor Your Internet Activity

Ted Bridis | Associated Press | March 14, 2004

"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]

PR: 101st Airborne Division Transfers Authority to Task Force Olympia

STAFF | United States Central Command | February 5, 2004

"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]

New French Genocide Accusations Against Rwandan President

Rainer Chr. Hennig | afrol News | March 9, 2004

"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]

Zimbabwe Accuses US, UK, Spain of Equatoguinean Coup Plan

STAFF | afrol News | March 11, 2004

"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]

U.S. Harbored Terrorists to Bolster Its Case

Matt Bivens | Moscow Times | March 15, 2004

"... 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]

War in Chechnya Out of Sight, Not Necessarily Out of Mind, Ahead of Russian Vote

Jeremy Bransten | Evening Standard | March 14, 2004

"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]

'Black Hawk Down' Reflects Army Values

Joe Burlas | Army News Service | January 16, 2002

"'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]

The New Pentagon Papers

Karen Kwiatkowski | Salon | March 10, 2004

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]

Homeland Data Mining Efforts Will Differ From Pentagon's

William New | National Journal | January 6, 2004

"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]

Transcript: Purported al-Qaida Statement on Madrid Bombings

STAFF | Al Jazeera | March 11, 2004

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

'Al-Qa'ida' Denies Bin Ladin's Capture

STAFF | World News Connection | March 7, 2004

"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]

'Neo-Liberals,' George W. Bush, and War in Iraq

Daniel Vernet | Le Monde | March 10, 2004

"'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]

Transcript: Full Text of Bin Ladin 4 January Audio Message

Usama Bin Laden | World News Connection | March 4, 2004

"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]

Analysis: Crossing the Threshold

Harvey A. Silverglate and Carl Takei | Boston Phoenix | March 11, 2004

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

Alarm Raised Over Quality of Uranium Found in Iran

Craig S. Smith | New York Times | March 11, 2004

"'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]

Founder of Seisint Inc Implicated As Ex-Smuggler and Quits Job

STAFF | Associated Press | August 29, 2003

"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 Backs Out of Matrix Database Over Privacy Issues

Jason Stitt | Daily Cardinal | March 10, 2004

"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]

A Different W

Martha Burk | TomPaine.com | March 9, 2004

"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]

Nebraska Mayor Implements Shaving Ban

STAFF | Associated Press | March 9, 2004

"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]

US Government Buys World's Biggest RAM Disk

Chris Mellor | TechWorld | March 9, 2004

"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 Problem With The Peace Movement

Jennie Bristow | Spiked | February 7, 2003

"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]

Bus Strike Has No Apparent Effect on Monday Morning Commutes

STAFF | KSTP TV5 | March 8, 2004

"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]

Transit Strikers Keep Up Heat on Pawlenty

STAFF | Workday Minnesota | March 8, 2004

"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]

Millionaires Dominate Senate Race

Monica Davey | New York Times | March 7, 2004

"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]

Documenting the World Trade Center Spontaneous Memorials

Lenora A. Gidlund | Government Record News | January 1, 2003

"'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]

Who Owns Hizzoner's Records? Civic Ownership of Executive Records

Janet Linde and Robert Sink | Government Record News | January 1, 2004

"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]

Palestinian Libraries: Little Pieces of Heaven in Hell

Ghada Elturk | Progressive Librarian | November 1, 2003

"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]

Reflections on Haiti and Democracy

Courtenay Barnett | Global Justice Online | February 29, 2004

"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]

The Deal

Seymour M. Hersh | New Yorker | March 1, 2004

"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]

PR: Soft Money Donations Result in $132,000 in Civil Penalties

STAFF | Federal Election Commission | March 3, 2004

"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]

Never Saying 'Sorry'

Laura Flanders | Common Dreams | March 3, 2004

"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]

All This Talk of Civil War, Now This

Robert Fisk | Independent | March 2, 2004

"...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]

New Zealand Bans Islamic Group and 25 Individuals

STAFF | Agence France-Presse | March 3, 2004

"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]

Iran Charges US Over Military Action

STAFF | Al Jazeera | March 3, 2004

"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]

Admit WMD Lie, Survey Chief Tells Bush

Julian Borger | Guardian | March 3, 2004

"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]

How Bombs Tore Apart a Festival of Hope

Justin Huggler | Independent | March 2, 2004

"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]

Voting in America

Jordan Ritter | Slashdot | March 1, 2004

"...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]

Some Iowa Troops Returning from Iraq to be Punished for Failing Drug Tests

STAFF | KCRG TV9 | February 24, 2004

"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]

Business Coalition Battles Outsourcing Backlash

STAFF | Dow Jones Newswire | March 1, 2004

"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]

'Bullet Magnets' Prepare for Iraqi Frontline

Suzanne Goldenberg | Guardian | March 1, 2004

"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]

Houston Mosque Fire Was Arson, Officials Say

STAFF | Houston Chronicle | February 24, 2004

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

Transcript: Iran's Rafsanjani Says All Terrorists Created by 'US Money, Policy, and Support'

Ayatollah Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani | World News Connection | February 27, 2004

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

PR: UN Security Council Authorizes Deployment of Multinational Force To Haiti

UN Security Council | United Nations | February 29, 2004

"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]

On the Greater Middle East

Mohamed Sid-Ahmed | Media Monitors Network | March 1, 2004

"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]

Electronic Markets and Activist Networks

Saskia Sassen | Make Worlds | January 8, 2004

"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]

Joint US-Philippine Military Drill Alarms Communist New People's Army

STAFF | Channel News Asia | March 1, 2004

"...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]

US, French Troops Start Peacekeeping Mission as Rebels Enter the Haitian Capital

STAFF | Agence France-Presse | March 1, 2004

"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]

An Ever More Dangerous Dependency

Nikolas Busse | Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung | February 27, 2004

"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]

New Gabon Oil Production Contract Signed

STAFF | afrol News | February 25, 2004

"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]

Transcript: Soldier for the Truth

STAFF | Los Angeles Weekly | February 26, 2004

"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]

Analysis: Serving Two Flags

Stephen Green | CounterPunch | February 28, 2004

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

Even if Palestine Wins at The Hague...

Ali Abunimah | Electronic Intifada | February 24, 2004

"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]

Internet Newspapers as Alternative Media: The Case of OhmyNews in South Korea

Cheon Young-Cheol | Media Development | January 1, 2004

"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]

Education Secretary Calls NEA 'Terrorist Organization'

STAFF | Associated Press | February 23, 2004

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

Small-time Hacker Charged as a Terrorist

Kevin Poulsen | Security Focus | February 26, 2004

"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]

Germans Protest Radio-ID Plans

Kim Zetter | Wired News | February 28, 2004

"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]

Analysis: Oiling Up the Draft Machine?

Dave Lindorff | Salon | November 3, 2003

"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]

Treasury Department Is Warning Publishers of the Perils of Criminal Editing of the Enemy

Adam Liptak | New York Times | February 28, 2004

"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]

Transcript: Secretary Rumsfeld on Terrorism, Iraq, NATO Relation

Marek Ostrowski | World News Connection | February 28, 2004

"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]

Haiti's Lawyer: US Is Arming Anti-Aristide Paramilitaries, Calls For UN Peacekeepers

Amy Goodman and Jeremy Scahill | Democracy Now! | February 25, 2004

"'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]

The State of Security and Warfare of Demons

Anustup Basu | Critical Quarterly | April 1, 2003

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]

Invading Iraq to Appease Bin Laden

Ahmed Amr | Media Monitors Network | February 26, 2004

"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]

U.N. Spying and Evasions of American Journalism

Norman Solomon | Media Monitors Network | February 27, 2004

"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]

Two Dead, 16 Injured as Chavez Foes, Backers Rally Outside G15 Summit in Venezuela

STAFF | Agence France-Presse | February 27, 2004

"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]

Analysis: The Recipe For Ricin: Examining the Legend

George Smith | National Security Notes | February 20, 2004

"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]

Angolan Oil Production to Double by 2008

STAFF | afrol News | February 18, 2004

"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]

Controversial South African Anti-Terrorism Bill Withdrawn

STAFF | afrol News | February 27, 2004

"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]

Sudan's Darfur War Still Ongoing

STAFF | afrol News | February 26, 2004

"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]

Don't Blame Us For Kony War - Donors

Mercy Nalugo | Monitor | February 28, 2004

"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]

The Grey Album Goes Gold

STAFF | P2PNet | February 25, 2004

"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]

Border Issues Ruffle Relations Among Central Asian States

Kambiz Arman | EurasiaNet | February 25, 2004

"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]

Rumsfeld Defends Status Quo on Central Asian Tour

Esmer Islamov | EurasiaNet | February 26, 2004

"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]

Nuclear Watchdog Chief: Extent of Israeli Nuclear Program ''Unknown''

STAFF | Al Bawaba | February 25, 2004

"'...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]

Rapes Reported by Servicewomen in the Persian Gulf and Elsewhere

Eric Schmitt | New York Times | February 26, 2004

"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]

Britain Drops Charges in Leak of U.S. Memo

Patrick E. Tyler | New York Times | February 25, 2004

"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]

Israeli Troops Seize Millions in Raids on Palestinian Banks

STAFF | Canadian Broadcasting Corporation | February 25, 2004

"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]

World War IV

Kalle Lasn | Adbusters | March 1, 2004

"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]

Senators' Stocks Beat the Market by 12 Percent

STAFF | Financial Times | February 25, 2004

"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]

Haiti and the US Game

Tom Reeves | Z Magazine | March 27, 2003

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]

US Double Game in Haiti

Tom Reeves | Z Magazine | February 16, 2004

"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]

A Wall as a Weapon

Noam Chomsky | New York Times | February 23, 2004

"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]

U.S. High-Tech Spy Agency Has Low Profile

STAFF | Associated Press | February 22, 2004

"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]

Gender and the American Ideology of War

Ann Kibbey | Genders | February 23, 2004

"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]

I'm No Taliban ... Get Me Out Of Here

Trevor Royle | Sunday Herald | February 22, 2004

"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]

Now the Pentagon Tells Bush: Climate Change Will Destroy Us

Mark Townsend and Paul Harris | The Observer (Guardian) | February 22, 2004

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]

Outcry of the Student Reform Movement

Luis-Alejandro Dinnella-Borrego | Student Reform Movement | February 23, 2004

"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]

The Packet Gang: Open Source Software and Social Movements

Jamie King | Mute | January 12, 2004

"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]

Bombs and Bytes: Deleuze, Fascism, and the 'Informatic'

Anustup Basu | Mute | January 12, 2004

"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]

No Sex Please We're American

Linda Ruth Williams | Sight and Sound | January 1, 2004

"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]

Afghan Aftermath: The Future of Film in Afghanistan

Dave Calhoun | Sight and Sound | February 1, 2004

"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]

US Vuln Info-Sharing Program Draws Fire

Kevin Poulsen | Register | February 22, 2004

"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]

Off Target & Stillborn: US-Based Alhurra Fails to Impress

Firas Al-Atraqchi | Islam Online | February 19, 2004

"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]

Rebels Massacre 192 in Lira Camp, Uganda

Frank Nyakairu, Joe Wacha, and Elias Biryabarema | Monitor | February 23, 2004

"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]

Iraqi Scholar Warns That Bush Approach May Compromise Iraqi Democracy

STAFF | EurasiaNet | February 21, 2004

"...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]

Review: Civil Liberties and the War on Terrorism

Ethan Bronner | New York Times | February 22, 2004

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

The Wrong Man to Promote Democracy

Kamel Labidi | New York Times | February 21, 2004

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

DNC to Confine Protesters to Zone Blocks Away

Rick Klein | Boston Globe | February 20, 2004

"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]

Court Accepts Case of 'Dirty Bomb' Suspect

Charles Lane | Washington Post | February 21, 2004

"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]

Analysis: No Rights, No Charges, No Lawyers

Vikram Dodd and Michael White | Guardian | February 20, 2004

"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]

Pentagon Prepares to Weaponize Space

Noah Shachtman | Wired News | February 20, 2004

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]

Reform and Reformulating

Gamal Essam El-Din | Al-Ahram | February 19, 2004

"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]

Scientists Say Administration Distorts Facts

James Glanz | New York Times | February 19, 2004

"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]

Blix Tells Spanish Radio 45-Minute Claim 'Alarmist'

STAFF | World News Connection | February 16, 2004

"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 Maneuver to Prepare for a New Korean War

STAFF | World News Connection | November 13, 2003

"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]

Analysis: Karbala Attackers Reported To Have Taken $60,000

Gasan Nasur | World News Connection | February 13, 2004

"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]

What Is the Position of the West Regarding Democracy in Saudi Arabia?

Abd-al-Aziz al-Khamis | World News Connection | February 11, 2004

"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]

Sectarian Discord in Iraq

Abd-al-Bari Atwan | World News Connection | February 13, 2004

"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]

'Jihad-on-Line' Webmaster Says he is Under House Arrest in Gulf State

STAFF | World News Connection | February 17, 2004

"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]

We Don't Need Laws About Love

Bill Maher | Boston Globe | February 14, 2004

"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]

Anatomy of Terror

John Chuckman | Media Monitors Network | February 13, 2004

"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]

Al-Qaeda or Not, Al-Zarqawi's Worth $10m

Ritt Goldstein | Asia Times | February 18, 2004

"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]

Darpa Offers No Food for Thought

Noah Shachtman | Wired News | February 17, 2004

"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]

Analysis: Doubts on Iraqi Security as US Draws Down

Nicholas Blanford | Christian Science Monitor | February 17, 2004

"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]

Activists in Boston Host No-DNC Consulta

Anand Vaishnav | Boston Globe | February 15, 2004

"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]

Exiles' Prewar Data Assailed

Warren P. Strobel and Jonathan S. Landay | Philadelphia Inquirer | February 14, 2004

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

Analysis: Kerry's Iraq Hipocrisy

John C. Bonifaz | Common Dreams | February 12, 2004

"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]

Bush's New Iraq Commission Won't Be Investigating the Key WMD Issue

John W. Dean | FindLaw | February 13, 2004

"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]

Drowned Iraqi 'Was Forced Into River By Five US Soldiers'

Justin Huggler | Independent | February 14, 2004

"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]

Democracy: Not A Multiple Choice Question

Evan Greer | Phoenix | February 12, 2004

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]

The Problem with 'Anyone But Bush'

T. Patrick Donovan | Dissident Voice | February 4, 2004

"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]

Analysis: Is Protest Music Dead?

Jeff Chang | MetroActive | April 16, 2002

"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]

Now They Tell Us

Michael Massing | New York Review of Books | February 26, 2004

"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]

The Law of War

Kenneth Roth | Foreign Affairs Magazine | February 14, 2004

"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]

Two Centuries of Misery, Continued

STAFF | Economist | February 13, 2004

"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]

Female GIs Report Rapes in Iraq War

Miles Moffeit and Amy Herdy | Denver Post | January 25, 2004

"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]

At Least 21 Killed in Attack in Iraq

Mariam Fam | Associated Press | February 14, 2004

"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]

The Permanent Scars of Iraq

Sara Corbett | New York Times | February 15, 2004

"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]

The Very, Very Personal is the Political

Jon Gertner | New York Times | February 15, 2004

"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]

America's Empire of Bases

Chalmers Johnson | Japan Policy Research Institute | January 15, 2004

"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]

Iran Denies US 'Nuke' Accusations

STAFF | Islam Online | February 13, 2004

" '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]

Int'l Court Likely to Oppose Israel on Fence

Aluf Benn | Ha'aretz | February 13, 2004

"...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]

South Koreans Riot Against Free Trade

J.D. | Independent Media Center | February 13, 2004

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]

Hold Bush to His Lie

Naomi Klein | Nation | February 5, 2004

"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]

An Alliance of Insecurity

Amitabh Pal | AlterNet | February 12, 2004

"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]

Making Money on Terrorism

William D. Hartung | Nation | February 5, 2004

"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]

Analysis: US Policy In Azerbaijan: A Backward Strategy From Freedom

Richard Lee Hough | EurasiaNet | February 11, 2004

"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]

Analysis: Pentagon E-Voting Plan Scrapped

Cynthia Webb | Washington Post | February 6, 2004

"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]

Service Chiefs Challenge White House on the Budget

Eric Schmitt | New York Times | February 10, 2004

"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]

Subpoenas on Anti-War Protest Dropped

Monica Davey | New York Times | February 11, 2004

"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]

Canadian Tried in Secret

Michelle Shephard | Toronto Star | February 10, 2004

"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]

Study of Rhetoric On Iraq Urged

Walter Pincus | Washington Post | February 11, 2004

"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]

Taps for Preemptive War

EDITORIAL | Los Angeles Times | February 11, 2004

"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]

Skirting the Issue

Jonathan Cook | Al-Ahram | February 5, 2004

"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]

Voting Machine Showdown

Farhad Manjoo | Salon | February 10, 2004

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

Will the Election Be Hacked?

Farhad Manjoo | Salon | February 9, 2004

"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]

Foreign Banks Given Iraqi Permits

STAFF | British Broadcasting Corporation | February 2, 2004

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

Japan's Military Sculpts New Image in Iraqi Sand

Anthony Faiola | Washington Post | February 10, 2004

"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]

A Post-Absurd, Post-Camp Activist Moment

Benjamin Shepard | CounterPunch | February 5, 2004

"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]

New York City Passes Anti-Patriot Act Resolution

Michelle Garcia | Washington Post | February 5, 2004

" '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]

Nepal & the Bush Administration: Into Thin Air

Conn Hallinan | Foreign Policy in Focus | February 3, 2004

"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]

Our Imperial Diet

David Hahn | Why War? | February 9, 2004

"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]

Mighty in Pink

Liza Featherstone | Nation | February 14, 2003

"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]

Left Anti-Intellectualism and Its Discontents

Liza Featherstone, Doug Henwood and Christian Parenti | Radical Society | September 1, 2002

"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]

Death Camps in North Korea

Antony Barnett | Guardian | February 1, 2004

"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]

PR: National Lawyers Guild Target of FBI Subpoena

STAFF | National Lawyers Guild | February 6, 2004

"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]

Feds Win Right to War Protesters' Records

Ryan J. Foley | Associated Press | February 7, 2004

"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]

Analysis: The US Media and the Wall

David Bloom, Patrick Connors and Tom Wallace | Electronic Intifada | February 4, 2004

"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]

What Does Sharon's Latest Settlement Move Mean For Israel?

Ali Abunimah & Hussein Ibish | Chicago Tribune | February 6, 2004

"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]

Wal-Mart vs. All-China Federation of Trade Unions

STAFF | People's Daily | October 8, 2003

"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]

Media Access To Troops Can Be Denied

STAFF | Associated Press | February 4, 2004

"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]

Analysis: Progressive Domestic Think-Tanks See Drop

Michael Dolny | Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting | August 1, 2003

"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]

US May Seek Rollback of Nuclear Program by Pakistan

Nasim Zehra | News International Pakistan | February 5, 2004

"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]

Pakistan to Test Fire Missile that Can Hit All Indian Cities

STAFF | World News Connection | February 6, 2004

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

Analysis: Int'l Media Interpret State of Union as Campaign Speech

STAFF | World News Connection | February 6, 2004

"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]

Russian Minister Says Iraq Attack a Mistake

Mariya Pshenichnikova | ITAR-TASS | February 5, 2004

"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]

Analysis: Highlights of Central America Political Press

STAFF | World News Connection | February 5, 2004

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

Analysis: Website of the Hizb ut-Tahrir Bangladesh

STAFF | World News Connection | February 2, 2004

"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]

The Realities of War

James Glaser | Why War? | February 5, 2004

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

Sharon Asks for West Bank Settlements in Exchange for Gaza Ones

Aluf Benn | Ha'aretz | February 6, 2004

"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]

Analysis: The Deadly Lies of Reliable Sources

Norman Solomon | CounterPunch | February 5, 2004

"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]

Blair May Call Iraq Inquiry ... If Bush Lets Him

James Cusick and Torcuil Crichton | Sunday Herald | February 1, 2004

"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.' " [more]

Abuse of Iraqi Prisoners Common, Marine Says

Rick Rogers | San Diego Union-Tribune | February 3, 2004

"A former Marine guard testified yesterday that it was common practice in Iraq to kick and punch prisoners who didn't cooperate — and even some who did." [more]

Pursuing the Millennium: Jewish Fundamentalism in Israel

David Hirst | Nation | February 2, 2004

"Fundamentalists come in a multitude of sects [...] but all are agreed on this basic eschatological truth: It is upon the coming of the Messiah that the Jewish Kingdom will arise, and the twice-destroyed Temple will be reconstructed on the site where the Dome of the Rock and al-Aqsa mosques now stand." [more]

With All Deliberate Stupidity

Daniel Patrick Welsh | Daniel P Welsh | February 3, 2004

US self-isolation makes Iraq a virtual non-issue in the elections so far. [more]

Analysis: Missing WMD Politically Problematic

Tom Regan | Christian Science Monitor | February 4, 2004

Blair and Bush both continue to suffer from the near-total lack of evidence of WMD in Iraq. [more]

Detained Citizen Meets Lawyer After Two Years

Jerry Markon | Washington Post | February 4, 2004

"After a series of lower-court rulings, the government convinced a federal appeals court in Richmond that the military — and not the courts — had the sole authority to wage war and that courts should defer to battlefield judgments. More than 100 law professors and other legal experts weighed in on Hamdi's side, arguing that no U.S. citizen can be held without a lawyer." [more]

Climate Change a National Security Threat

David Stipp | Fortune | January 26, 2004

"Global warming may be bad news for future generations, but let's face it, most of us spend as little time worrying about it as we did about al Qaeda before 9/11. Like the terrorists, though, the seemingly remote climate risk may hit home sooner and harder than we ever imagined. In fact, the prospect has become so real that the Pentagon's strategic planners are grappling with it." [more]

Blame, Blindness ...

Richard Cohen | Washington Post | February 3, 2004

"A consensus — based on false facts, outright lies and exaggerated fears — took over the nation ... More than 500 Americans and thousands of Iraqis have died for a mistake. Peace has not been brought to the Middle East and America is not only no safer than it was, it may well be in even greater danger. This was no mere failure of intelligence. This was a failure of character." [more]

Israel Exposes Horror of Bus Bombing on Web

Molly Moore | Washington Post | February 2, 2004

"The decision to put the graphic five-minute, 38-second video on the Israeli Foreign Ministry Web site just hours after the Thursday morning explosion, which killed 11 people and the bomber, has unleashed an emotional public debate. Many Israelis are weary of a conflict that has turned buses, cafes and streets into targets and are increasingly frustrated with political leadership on both sides that has not stopped the violence." [more]

US Missile Defense Set to Get Early Start

Bradley Graham | Washington Post | February 1, 2004

"The Pentagon plans to begin operation of a national missile defense system this summer, putting the first missile interceptors on alert weeks ahead of a previous autumn deadline." [more]

Perle Speaks at Charity with 'Terrorist Ties'

Glenn Kessler | Washington Post | January 29, 2004

"Pentagon adviser Richard N. Perle, a strong advocate of war against Iraq, spoke last weekend at a charity event that U.S. officials say may have had ties to an alleged terrorist group seeking to topple the Iranian government and backed by Saddam Hussein." [more]

Kurds' Deaths Could Alter Iraq's Shape

Jeffrey Gettleman and Edward Wong | New York Times | February 2, 2004

"The attacks came just as Kurdish leaders were embroiled in negotiations over how much independence the Kurdish region would be allowed and how the two leading Kurdish parties, whose offices were bombed during holiday receptions, would share power. The deaths of important officials could change the balance of political viewpoints in each party." [more]

Showdown Over the Boundaries of Democracy in Iran

Scott Peterson | Christian Science Monitor | February 3, 2004

"The main reform party announced Monday that it would boycott upcoming parliamentary elections, but stopped short of asking Iranians not to vote ... Nearly one third of the 290 members of parliament resigned on Sunday after the unelected hard-line Guardian Council reinstated 1,160 reform candidates — but upheld rejections of 2,400 others over the weekend." [more]

On the Dark Side of Democracy

Emily Eakin | New York Times | January 31, 2004

"The idea that political and economic liberty could trigger ... atrocities is heretical to many Western liberals. That, Ms. Chua says, is because people here are blind to ethnicity." [more]

US, China on Collision Course Over Oil

Gal Luft | Los Angeles Times | February 2, 2004

"The U.S. should embark on a frank dialogue with China, conveying to the Chinese the mutual benefits of circumventing oil and offering any assistance required to curb China's growing appetite for it." [more]

The Mess in Afghanistan

Ahmed Rashid | New York Review of Books | February 12, 2004

"Since the end of 2002, most of the major US think tanks, human rights groups, and Western NGOs have persistently pointed out the flaws in US strategy and suggested the fairly obvious changes that need to be made. As in Iraq, however, the Bush administration is extremely reluctant to admit its mistakes or rectify them publicly or even make reliable information available." [more]

The New Immigrant Ankle Lock: Success and Sorrow

Emily T. Eckland | Miami Herald | January 11, 2004

"Sandivar must wear the monitor, a thick band with a box attached, at all times, even in the shower. A large black box on her bedroom nightstand sends a signal from the ankle device to federal deportation officers ... She may not leave [the county] without permission. Immigration officials also are monitoring her phone calls and have given strict instructions about the phone, such as not to pick up before two rings ... 'It's embarrassing and inhumane,' she said." [more]

Dubious Victories

Matthias Matussek | Der Spiegel | February 1, 2004

"This is what is so astonishing about this victory for Blair: It dissolved into thin air within a few hours. What's more, it soon came to be viewed as an undeserved gift, nothing but spin, a political Houdini act. According to a survey conducted by The Guardian, three times as many Britons trust the BBC as the government. Who should resign? Blair, and not the director general of the BBC." [more]

How to Hack an Election

EDITORIAL | New York Times | January 31, 2004

"When the State of Maryland hired a computer security firm to test its new machines, these paid hackers had little trouble casting multiple votes and taking over the machines' vote-recording mechanisms. The Maryland study shows convincingly that more security is needed for electronic voting, starting with voter-verified paper trails." [more]

Integral War of Attrition in the Rebel Zone of Chiapas

Hermann Bellinghausen | La Jornada | January 21, 2004

"The paramilitarization, so the mentioned manual continues, 'serves at the same time to legitimize the presence of the Federal Army, arguing that the indigenous are killing each other, and the Army is here to prevent this, as was maintained when the Acteal massacre occured'." [more]

Analysis: BMW Drives Wedge Between Rich, Poor

Raymond Zhou | China Daily | January 18, 2004

"People started posting the story in Internet forums. It snowballed into a rage, with most people accusing the rich and the powerful of trampling on the underprivileged. The BMW and the tractor stacked with vegetables have taken symbols of the haves and the have-nots." [more]

Notes on Summits and Counter-Summits

Roveretans | Guerra Sociale | August 1, 2003

"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]

Rural Cambodia, Though Far Off the Grid, Finding its Way Online

James Brooke | New York Times | January 26, 2004

"Almost as he spoke ... police were raiding Internet cafes in Phnom Penh, confiscating equipment for making Internet telephone calls. The cafes charged as little as 5 cents a minute to call the United States, far below the government-mandated minimum of 96 cents for phone calls using conventional technology." [more]

PR: Bush-Hitler Ads Removed by MoveOn

Wes Boyd | MoveOn.org | January 5, 2004

"We do not support the sentiment expressed in the two Hitler submissions. They were voted down by our members and the public ... Contrast this with the behavior of the RNC, when supporters of President Bush used TV ads morphing the face of Sen. Max Cleland (D-GA) into that of Osama Bin Laden during the 2002 Senate race." [more]

Iran Parliament Hit by Mass Resignation

STAFF | Scotsman | February 1, 2004

"The furore began in early January when the Guardian Council, whose 12 members are appointed by Khamenei, disqualified more than 3,600 of the 8,200 people who filed papers to run in the polls. After protests, and an opinion from Khamenei, the council restored 1,160 low-profile candidates to the list on Friday." [more]

Punk Rock Meets Politics in the Heart of Middle America

Matt Stearns | Knight Ridder/Tribune Wire | January 11, 2004

"The Man clearly has co-opted punk's glorious nihilism. Flanking Chris No. 2 was Iowa Gov. Tom Vilsack (who conceded that he preferred Phil Collins) and political organizers from the United Auto Workers and the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees. They all said they hoped to help attract young people to politics." [more]

Military Lawyer Criticizes Tribunals

John Mintz | Washington Post | January 22, 2004

"A military defense lawyer for an Australian detainee expected to be the first man tried before a military tribunal denounced President Bush's rules for the special courts yesterday, saying they are skewed against defendants and could result in proceedings that resemble political trials in authoritarian Third World countries." [more]

Analysis: Struck Down in Baghdad, US Tries to Involve the United Nations

Corine Lesnes | Le Monde | January 19, 2004

"This is not the first American return to the United Nations, but it is the most spectacular ... Nine months after the fall of Baghdad, the American government faces a Gordian knot of problems." [more]

Test of Electronic Balloting System Finds Major Security Flaws

John Schwartz | New York Times | January 30, 2004

A report presented to the Maryland state legislature indicated that Diebold voting systems, which have been purchased by many states, are not tamper-proof. [more]

Four Generations of the Bush Dynasty

Kevin Phillips | Los Angeles Times | January 11, 2004

Four generations of the Bush Dynasty have chased profits through cozy ties with Mideast leaders, spinning webs of conflicts of interest. [more]

Weapons of Mass Destruction Are Overrated as a Threat to America

Ivan Eland | Independent Institute: Center on Peace and Liberty | January 28, 2004

Nobody disagrees that W.M.D's are absolutely monstrous weapons, but that shouldn't prevent us from making realistic assessments of their capabilities for harm, argues Ivan Eland. [more]

US Releases Three Teenage Guantánamo Prisoners

STAFF | British Broadcasting Corporation | January 29, 2004

"The United States has released three teenage boys who have been held in custody at the Guantanamo Bay prison camp in Cuba for more than a year. The Pentagon cautioned, however, that 'age is not a determining factor in detention.'" [more]

30,000 More Soldiers Approved by Rumsfeld

Bradley Graham | Washington Post | January 29, 2004

"Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, invoking emergency powers, has authorized the Army to grow temporarily by 30,000 troops above its congressionally approved limit of 482,000 to facilitate a restructuring of forces severely strained by operations in Iraq and Afghanistan and counterterrorism missions elsewhere." [more]

The Tyranny of Copyright?

Robert S. Boynton | New York Times | January 25, 2004

"The question of whether the students were within their rights to post the [politically embarassing] memos was essentially moot: thanks to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, their speech could be silenced without the benefit of actual lawsuits, public hearings, judges or other niceties of due process." [more]

US Planning Afghan Spring Offensive

Stephen Graham | Associated Press | January 28, 2004

"Seeing that operations in Afghanistan haven't succeeded in shutting down terror networks, the Pentagon is planning a 'spring offensive' and ordered troops to start working on logistics and getting equipment in place, a Washington official said, speaking on condition of anonymity." [more]

Fatal Attacks Indicate New Taliban Offensive In Afghanistan

STAFF | Xinhuanet | January 28, 2004

"The suicide attack on Tuesday was the first one in Afghanistan in which a human body was used as weapon to make a direct bomb attack." [more]

US Watches 5 Million 'Potential Terrorists'

Tom Godfrey | Toronto Sun | January 20, 2004

"U.S. security agents have a master list of five million people worldwide thought to be potential terrorists or criminals, officials say. 'The U.S. lookout index contains some five million names of known terrorists and other persons representing a potential problem,' Brian Davis, a senior Canadian immigration official in Paris, said in a confidential document obtained by the Sun." [more]

CBS Censors MoveOn.org

John Nichols | Nation | January 22, 2004

John Nichols takes to task the recent decision to ban commercials from MoveOn.org, a major anti-war player, and PETA, the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, from the Super Bowl, claiming they are too controversial. This has generated a major call-in and e-mail campaign against CBS. Howard Kurtz, a media expert with the Washington Post, states shutting activists groups out from broadcasting rights is the rule rather than the exception. Nichols explores the relationship between CBS and the Administration at a bit more depth. [more]

Kay Blames Intelligence on Iraqi Misrepresentation

Richard Simon | Los Angeles Times | January 26, 2004

"The former leader of the U.S. hunt for Iraqi weapons of mass destruction said Sunday that intelligence agencies owe the president and the public an explanation for the failure to find large stockpiles of chemical or biological weapons after the U.S.-led war ... [He] also said that the looting and rioting that followed the short war could have destroyed evidence that would have shed light on whether Iraq possessed such weapons." [more]

Cancel Iraqi Debt? What About Africa?

Robyn Dixon | Los Angeles Times | January 26, 2004

"A major difference between Iraq's $116-billion debt and Africa's aggregate $300-billion debt is the creditors. Iraq's is owed mainly to various countries. Africa's main lenders are the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank ... Activists charge that the contrast between progress on Iraqi debt and the paralysis of debt-relief programs for Africa reflects the low priority Western nations often accord Africa." [more]

Sept. 11 Commission Finds US Security Gaps

Dan Eggen | Washington Post | January 26, 2003

"The U.S. government fumbled repeated opportunities to stop many of the men responsible for the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks from entering the country, missing fraudulent passports and other warning signs that should have attracted greater scrutiny." [more]

Section of Patriot Act Ruled Unconstitutional

Linda Deutsch | Associated Press | January 26, 2003

"The judge's ruling said the law, as written, does not differentiate between impermissible advice on violence and encouraging the use of peaceful, nonviolent means to achieve goals." [more]

White House to Review Prewar Intelligence on Iraqi Arms

Brian Knowlton | International Herald Tribune | January 26, 2003

"As the months have passed and American weapons inspectors have failed to report significant discoveries, the Bush administration has gradually shifted from dire-sounding warnings about purported Iraqi weapons toward a greater emphasis on other justifications for the war, including the desire to topple a dictator and to bring democracy to Iraq." [more]

Dennis Kucinich and the Question

William Rivers Pitt | Truthout | January 23, 2004

"At one stop outside a burger joint, an older man came out of the crowd and embraced Kucinich in a bear hug. He commandeered the microphone Kucinich was using to address the large crowd and demanded that U.S. troops be withdrawn immediately from Iraq. Kucinich hailed him, shook his hand, and went inside the shop to address the rest of the crowd away from the bitter wind." [more]

US Sending Anti-Terror Team to W. Africa

Ahmed Mohamed | Associated Press | January 12, 2004

"Unlike North and East Africa, no country in West Africa has seen a terror attack against Western interests." [more]

Japanese Press Questions Troop Dispatch

STAFF | British Broadcasting Corporation | January 17, 2004

One Japanese paper writes "that Iraq differs greatly from places such as East Timor, where Japanese troops are currently carrying out peacekeeping duties under the auspices of the UN." [more]

BBC Buys Up 'Hutton Inquiry' Google Links

Owen Gibson | Guardian | January 26, 2004

"Despite the sensitive climate surrounding the publication of Lord Hutton's report, the BBC's marketing department has decided to focus on the BBC website's in-depth coverage of the inquiry as part of a drive to attract new users." [more]

From Iraq to Libya, US Knew Little About Weapons

Peter Grier | Christian Science Monitor | January 27, 2004

"Iraq's weapons programs were apparently in shambles, for instance, while Libya's were surprisingly advanced. Pakistan's nuclear scientists might have been rogue agents, proffering secrets for cash. And it appears that North Korea may be the most advanced rogue nuclear nation of all, with an advanced capacity to produce fissile material." [more]

Annan Seeks UN Commission on Genocide

Karl Ritter | Associated Press | January 26, 2004

"Annan suggested forming a U.N. committee on preventing genocide and having a 'special rapporteur' who would report directly to the Security Council to monitor 'massive and systematic violations of human rights and threats to international peace and security.' " [more]

Morally Wrong. Politically Wrong. Economically Wrong.

Doug Saunders | Globe and Mail | January 24, 2004

"Chief among the discoveries that led him to see Vietnam as a mistake, McNamara said, was his realization that the United States could not, by itself, properly analyze the actions and ground-level conditions necessary to achieve the complex and ambiguous goals of a war — reversing the influence of communism in Asia, in Vietnam's case, or bringing democracy to the Arab world, in Iraq's." [more]

Guantánamo Spy Cases Evaporate

John Mintz | Washington Post | January 24, 2004

Top officials of the Navy prison at Guantanamo Bay told a military judge in Florida that the prison's Muslim chaplain, Army Capt. James Yee, would soon be charged with mutiny, sedition, espionage, spying and aiding the enemy — crimes that could lead to his execution. But authorities never charged him with any of those offenses. [more]

Head US Inspector in Iraq Resigns, Citing Lack of Weapons

Richard W. Stevenson | New York Times | January 23, 2004

"Kay's statements undermined one of the primary justifications set out by President Bush for the war with Iraq. Bush and other top administration officials repeatedly cited Iraq's possession of chemical and biological weapons as a threat to the United States, and the lack of evidence so far that Saddam Hussein actually had large caches of weapons has fueled criticism that Bush exaggerated the peril from Iraq." [more]

Infiltration of Files Seen As Extensive

Charlie Savage | Boston Globe | January 22, 2004

" 'There appears to have been no hacking, no stealing, and no violation of any Senate rule,' Miranda said. 'Stealing assumes a property right and there is no property right to a government document ... These documents are not covered under the Senate disclosure rule because they are not official business and, to the extent they were disclosed, they were disclosed inadvertently by negligent [Democratic] staff.' " [more]

Ads Affixed to Dollar Bills Promote TV Shows

Lisa Sanders | Advertising Age | January 19, 2004

" 'We had ours look into it and make sure it was OK,' said Sarah Beatty, senior vice president of marketing for USA Network. 'We thought this was a fresh way to promote a show, but we wanted to do it legally and responsibly.' " [more]

Palestinians Take to Streets

STAFF | Australian | January 24, 2004

"The Palestinian Prisoners Club estimates that 7500 Palestinians are currently detained by Israel either on its territory or in prisons it controls in the occupied West Bank." [more]

Transcript: Interview with Muslim Chaplain of Camp Delta, Guantánamo

STAFF | World News Connection | January 15, 2004

"Interview via e-mail with Captain Khalid Shahbaz, Muslim chaplain at Camp Delta in Guantanamo, by Muhammad al-Shafi'i in London ... 'The detention of my predecessor, Imam Yusuf, will not affect my work; I supply the prisoners with their needs' " [more]

Taliban Kill 10 Italian Soldiers in 'Vicious' Khost Airport Attack

STAFF | World News Connection | January 15, 2004

"The attack was the most vicious in the area in the last two years. In retaliation, the foreign forces also attacked the Taliban, and when US aircraft arrived the Taliban retreated." [more]

PR: Vermont Tribe Endorses Clark

STAFF | Clark '04 | January 12, 2004

"The endorsement by the Abenaki Tribal Council and its Chief, April Rushlow, follows on the heels of other major endorsements from the American Indian and Alaskan Native community. Chairman Brian Wallace of the Washoe Nation and the Native American Times, the nation's largest independent Indian news source, also endorsed Clark." [more]

PR: Students for Bush Launch 'Kickoff '04 Bush' Initiative in Michigan

STAFF | Bush-Cheney '04 | November 22, 2003

"More than 150 Bush supporters participated in a pre-game rally organized by Bush-Cheney '04 and Michigan Students for Bush in an event designed to engage young people in presidential politics. The rally took place outside Elbel Field prior to the Michigan v. Ohio State football game." [more]

Homeless Squatter on Golf Course Evicted

STAFF | Associated Press | January 12, 2004

"A man who lived on a golf course for 40 years was told to leave because some golfers complained that he scared them." [more]

GIs Fire on Family in Car, Killing 2

Ed Wong | New York Times | January 13, 2004

"American soldiers on Monday night killed an Iraqi man and a boy and wounded four others in a car that was driving behind their convoy after a roadside bomb went off nearby, said witnesses, a police official and relatives of the family in the car." [more]

US Charges Saudi Man with Terrorism

Susan Schmidt | Washington Post | January 10, 2004

"Sami Omar Hussayen, a doctoral candidate in computer science in a University of Idaho program sponsored by the National Security Agency, is accused of creating websites and an e-mail group that disseminated messages from him and two radical clerics in Saudi Arabia." [more]

US Wants to Tap Internet Voice Conversations

Declan McCullagh | Globe and Mail | January 8, 2004

"Federal and local police rely heavily on wiretaps. In 2002, the most recent year for which information is available, police intercepted nearly 2.2-million conversations with court approval, according to the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts." [more]

Analysis: Occupation Economic Reforms of Dubious Legality

Daphne Eviatar | New York Times | January 10, 2004

"Tariffs were suspended, a new banking code was adopted, a 15 percent cap was placed on all future taxes, and foreign investors can now own Iraqi companies fully with no requirements for reinvesting profits back into the country." [more]

PR: Protest the Democratic National Convention: Consulta

STAFF | Black Tea Society | November 29, 2003

The Black Tea Society is organizing efforts to resist the Democratic National Convention when it comes to Boston this summer. The Society says that the Democrats are equally culpable as the Republicans for putting profit in front of people and perpetuating corporate domination. [more]

Analysis: Counterinsurgency Tactics in Iraq

Peter Maas | New York Times | January 11, 2004

"Can the lessons of history help defeat the insurgency in Iraq? Dodging bullets, taking prisoners and trying to win hearts and minds." [more]

GIs in Iraq Scoff at Re-Enlistment Bonus

Matthew Rosenberg | Associated Press | January 7, 2004

"'Man, they can't pay me enough to stay here,' said a 23-year-old specialist from the Army's 4th Infantry Division as he manned the checkpoint with Iraqi police outside this city 35 miles northeast of Baghdad." [more]

The Domination Effect

David Miller | Guardian | January 8, 2004

"Information dominance, by contrast, sees little distinction between command and control systems, propaganda and journalism. They are all types of 'weaponized information' to be deployed." [more]

Transcript: Ansar al-Islam Founder Thinks New Attacks on US Unlikely

STAFF | World News Connection | December 28, 2003

"The US administration wishes to frighten the US people in order to justify its flouting of UN resolutions, its violation of human rights in Iraq, and its holding of prisoners at the Guantanamo Base." [more]

Transcript: Qaeda Leader Deplores Muslims' 'Renunciation' of Jihad

STAFF | World News Connection | January 5, 2004

"You must know that what prevents you from joining jihad is nothing but your soul and Satan. If you hope to live a long life and fear death, then you must know that death is inevitable. You should not fear the path that you must tread." [more]

Iraq's Arsenal Was Only on Paper

Barton Gellman | Washington Post | January 6, 2004

"Investigators have found no support for the two main fears expressed in London and Washington before the war: that Iraq had a hidden arsenal of old weapons and built advanced programs for new ones." [more]

Carnegie Study Calls Iraq Threat Overstated

Farah Stockman | Boston Globe | January 9, 2004

"The Carnegie study, based on five months of interviews and research that compared statements by US officials with declassified documents, said that the Bush administration ignored experts who could have offered more accurate information and swept aside the assessments of the State and Energy departments, whose different findings were not made public until July, months after the invasion." [more]

Daniel Pipes, Peacemaker?

Michael Scherer | Mother Jones | May 26, 2003

"Pipes is ... founder of Campus Watch, a website that compiles public files on college professors who are critical of Israel or certain aspects of American Foreign policy." [more]

Analysis: Selective Memri

Brian Whitaker | Guardian | August 12, 2002

"The stories selected by Memri for translation follow a familiar pattern: either they reflect badly on the character of Arabs or they in some way further the political agenda of Israel." [more]

Army Funds Robot Dog Project

Noah Shachtman | Wired News | January 8, 2004

"Today's soldiers carry as much as 100 pounds of equipment. That's exhausting, even for the toughest grunt. In the future, the Army wants to dump up to half that gear onto the back of a drone. But military scientists are worried that robots with wheels won't be able to follow their human masters across mountain passes, up stairs and through forest trails." [more]

FBI Will Inspect Bank Records Without Warrant

Kim Zetter | Wired News | January 6, 2004

"While the nation was distracted last month by images of Saddam Hussein's spider hole and dental exam, President George W. Bush quietly signed into law a new bill that gives the FBI increased surveillance powers and dramatically expands the reach of the USA Patriot Act." [more]

CIA to Build Secret Police Force in Iraq

Julian Coman | Telegraph | January 4, 2004

"The presence of a powerful secret police, loyal to the Americans, will mean that the new Iraqi political regime will not stray outside the parameters that the US wants to set." [more]

Kurdish Region in Northern Iraq Will Keep Special Status

Steven R. Weisman | New York Times | January 5, 2004

The Bush Administration has reluctantly granted autonomy to the Kurdish region within the transitional Iraq government. Saddam's influence in Kurdish Iraq was limited in the 1990s — the Kurds were able to set up a functioning government that helped administer what sparse aid made it through the UN sanctions. Kurdish autonomy will also greatly trouble their northern neighbor because of the conflict that the Turkish government had with Kurdish separatists in the 1990s. [more]

Bush Extends Libya Sanctions

STAFF | Associated Press | January 4, 2004

Bush has extended economic sanctions against Libya — a tool commonly used against nations in the Middle East. [more]

Selective Intelligence

Seymore Hersch | New Yorker | May 12, 2003

A very thorough analysis of the Administration's intelligence that was used to justify the war in iraq. [more]

New Book by Al-Qa'ida's Al-Ayiri Views Region's Future After Fall of Baghdad

STAFF | World News Connection | August 29, 2003

"Al-Ayiri noted that 'the collapse of the Ba'th government is a blessing for Islam and Muslims as the fall of the Arab Ba'th signals the collapse of the infidel pan-Arab slogans that swept the Islamic nation.'" [more]

Al-Qa'ida Says Preparations for Attacks in US Completed, Urges Muslims To Leave

STAFF | World News Connection | November 26, 2003

"[al-Qa'ida] claimed that the 'upcoming attacks will make the United States lose its self-control and lose the ability to communicate with its army.'" [more]

Transcript: Al-Qa'ida Tape Pays Tribute To Saudi 'Martyrs' in Clashes With Saudi Forces

STAFF | World News Connection | December 5, 2003

"In the first stage, the stage of attrition and engaging the enemy in battle, you need to make your enemy tired more than you need to kill a large number of its members. You need to scatter the enemy, demoralize it, spread it out over a large area, and cause it to get tired." [more]

Al-Qa'ida Member Recalls US Bombardment, Accuses Taliban of Betrayal

STAFF | World News Connection | October 29, 2003

"We heard a missile passing over our heads immediately before we had finished eating and it exploded 100 meters from the house. We immediately started to leave fearing that we were the target and the targeting would be corrected so as to hit us." [more]

Transcript: Interview with Iraqi Council Member Dara Nur al-Din

STAFF | World News Connection | December 29, 2003

"Occupation ends on 1 July with the installation of the transition government. After that, Iraq will be a sovereign state -- and then no country in the world has the right to impose conditions on us. It will be up to us to cooperate with France, Germany and Russia." [more]

Al-Qa'ida's Al-Ablaj Warns 'Zero Hour' for Strike Inside US Has Been Set

STAFF | World News Connection | December 28, 2003

"Let them prepare from now for more sorrows and let them prepare the coffins and the largest number of hospitals and graves. The coming days are full of surprises and major events that will make them an historic example. We will teach them the painful lessons that they will never forget." [more]

Chairman Walks Out of Afghan Council

Carlotta Gall | New York Times | December 31, 2003

"[Karzai's] opponents want Parliament to control the printing of money, the creation of a constitutional court, three vice presidents rather than one, a ban on top officials holding dual citizenship or having a foreign spouse, more power devolved to provincial councils, and for Uzbek and Turkmen language rights in their ethnic regions." [more]

Israel to Expand Settlements at Golan Height

STAFF | Associated Press | December 31, 2003

"'This is an Israeli decision that the Golan Heights is an integral part of the state of Israel, and we don't have any intention of giving up our hold.''" [more]

FBI Urges Police to Watch for People Carrying Almanacs

Ted Bridis | Associated Press | December 29, 2003

"The FBI is warning police nationwide to be alert for people carrying almanacs, cautioning that the popular reference books covering everything from abbreviations to weather trends could be used for terrorist planning." [more]

Analysis: In Iraq, Pace of US Casualties Has Accelerated

Vernon Loeb | Washington Post | December 28, 2003

"The number of U.S. service members killed and wounded in Iraq has more than doubled in the past four months compared with the four months preceding them, according to Pentagon statistics." [more]

Attacks Force Retreat From Wide-Ranging Plans for Iraq

Rajiv Chandrasekaran | Washington Post | December 27, 2003

"The United States has backed away from several of its more ambitious initiatives to transform Iraq's economy, political system and security forces as attacks on U.S. troops have escalated and the timetable for ending the civil occupation has accelerated." [more]

Four Bombings Kill 13 in Iraq

Alan Sipress | Washington Post | December 28, 2003

"Suicide attackers carried out four coordinated car bombings Saturday outside the bases of U.S.-led forces in the Shiite holy city of Karbala, killing six soldiers from Bulgaria and Thailand as well as seven Iraqis, according to military officials." [more]

White House Faulted on Uranium Claim

Walter Pincus | Washington Post | December 24, 2003

"A presidential advisory board has concluded that a questionable claim about Iraqi efforts to obtain nuclear materials resulted from a desperation to show an active nuclear-weapons program." [more]

Senators Were Told Iraqi Weapons Could Hit US

John McCarthy | Florida Today | December 15, 2003

"Nelson said the senators were told [by the White House] Iraq had both biological and chemical weapons, notably anthrax, and it could deliver them to cities along the Eastern seaboard via unmanned aerial vehicles, commonly known as drones." [more]

Analysis: Casualties of US Miscalculations

Doug Struck | Washington Post | February 11, 2002

"A Washington Post reporter who reached the remote scene of the attack was held at gunpoint by U.S. soldiers and prevented from entering the site. The soldiers also barred access to the nearby village where Ahmad and the two other [alleged civilian casualties] had lived." [more]

Why the Capture Could Make Things Worse

Yasir Suleiman | Sunday Herald | December 21, 2003

"The arrest of Saddam has left the Arab world more divided than ever, as Yasir Suleiman explains" [more]

The Revolutionary Music of Evan Greer

Erin Osgood | Flamejolt Magazine | December 20, 2003

Young political songwriter Evan Greer has made a name for himself in Boston by gracing stages with the likes of Howard Zinn and Tim Robbins. Erin Osgood of Flamejolt Magazine reviews his music, his politics, and his message. [more]

Fight to the Death

Paul McGeough | Sydney Morning Herald | December 19, 2003

A look at the Iraqis who hated Saddam, but who hate the Americans more. [more]

Federal Guards Abused Suspected Immigrants

James Vicini | Reuters | December 18, 2003

"Federal prison officers in Brooklyn physically and verbally abused immigrants detained after the Sept. 11 attacks, slamming them against the wall and painfully twisting their arms and hands, the U.S. Justice Department's inspector general said on Thursday." [more]

Courts Grant 'Combatant' Detainees Rights, Lawyers

David Kravets | Associated Press | December 18, 2003

"In twin setbacks for the Bush administration's war on terror, federal appeals courts on opposite coasts ruled Thursday that the U.S. military cannot indefinitely hold prisoners without access to lawyers or the American courts." [more]

US Cannot Hold Citizens as 'Combatants'

Fred Barbash | Washington Post | December 18, 2003

"A federal appeals court ruled today that the Bush administration overstepped its authority by detaining Jose Padilla, a U.S. citizen seized in Chicago ... [and] said the administration has no inherent constitutional power to sidestep the normal procedures required to imprison a U.S. citizen seized on American soil." [more]

Guantánamo Prisoner Granted Access to Lawyer

John Mintz | Washington Post | December 19, 2003

"The split decision by a three-judge panel in San Francisco raised the possibility that all the approximately 660 prisoners at the Guantanamo Bay jail for alleged al Qaeda and Taliban fighters could also be given their first habeas corpus hearings in a U.S. court." [more]

Head Iraqi Weapons Investigator May Leave

Adam Entous | Reuters | December 18, 2003

"U.S. officials said Kay, who could leave as early as January or February, was frustrated in part by the lack of progress and because some of his staff have been diverted from the weapons search to helping combat Iraqi insurgents." [more]

European Militant Network Shut Down

Victor L. Simpson | Associated Press | December 18, 2003

"All the suspects were charged with 'association with the aim of international terrorism' — a charge introduced in Italy after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. They are believed to have provided false passports and money for recruits." [more]

White House Web Scrubbing

Dana Milbank | Washington Post | December 18, 2003

"This is not the first time the administration has done some creative editing of government Web sites. After the insurrection in Iraq proved more stubborn than expected, the White House edited the original headline on its Web site of President Bush's May 1 speech, 'President Bush Announces Combat Operations in Iraq Have Ended,' to insert the word 'Major.' " [more]

Hussein Enters Post-Sept. 11 Web of Prisons

James Risen and Thom Shanker | New York Times | December 18, 2003

"Guantánamo's inmates are among the least significant of any detainees captured since the Sept. 11 attacks, according to several American counterterrorism experts. The C.I.A. has not sent any of the highest-ranking Qaeda leaders it has captured to the base, officials said." [more]

US Launches Massive Crackdown in Iraq

Joseph Logan | Reuters | December 18, 2003

"United States forces killed three attackers and thousands of soldiers swooped on a town in a major crackdown on Wednesday as violence and instability gripped Iraq in the wake of Saddam Hussein's capture." [more]

Hussein Was Not in Hiding But a Captive

STAFF | DEBKAfile | December 14, 2003

"Saddam was seized, possibly with the connivance of his own men, and held in that hole in Adwar for three weeks or more, which would have accounted for his appearance and condition. Meanwhile, his captors bargained for the $25m prize the Americans promised for information leading to his capture alive or dead." [more]

Dairy Monsters Part II

Ann Karpf | Guardian | December 13, 2003

Part II of Ann Karpf's investigation of the dairy industry. (See Part I, click here). [more]

Dairy Monsters Part I

Anne Karpf | Guardian | December 13, 2003

We used to take it for granted that milk was good for us. But now the industry faces a crisis, with the public questioning such assumptions. So just how healthy is milk? Anne Karpf investigates, in two parts. [more]

Got Hormones? The Simmering Issue of Milk Labels

Margot Roosevelt Leeds | Time Magazine | December 22, 2003

Agrochemical giant Monsanto is suing the state of Maine to ban small organic farmers from advertising their milk as having "NO ARTIFICIAL HORMONES." [more]

Saddam is Ours, but Does al Qaeda Care?

Bruce Hoffman | New York Times | December 17, 2003

"There's strong evidence that Saddam Hussein's arrest is irrelevant, and Osama bin Laden is using Iraq as a smoke screen." [more]

Women Under Siege

Lauren Sandler | Nation | December 29, 2003

"Millions of women have found themselves living under de facto house arrest since the coalition forces claimed Baghdad in April." [more]

Israel to Coordinate With US on Moves

STAFF | Associated Press | December 16, 2003

"Unilateral moves would include the completion of a West Bank separation barrier that swallows up large chunks of the land the Palestinians seek for their state, as well as the dismantling of some Jewish settlements ... Sharon will stop short of annexing parts of the West Bank, to avoid further angering the United States." [more]

Iraqi Plan Calls for Full Elections Within 2 Years

Oliver Moore | Globe and Mail | December 16, 2003

"The Iraqi Foreign Minister laid out the details Tuesday for a resumption of sovereignty that calls for nationwide elections by the end of 2005, but he warned that movement toward democracy depends on the establishment of a stable and secure country." [more]

Transcript: The Coming Trial of Saddam Hussein

Mark Follman | Salon | December 15, 2003

"Saddam's capture is a 'model opportunity' for international justice, says the head of Amnesty International USA, but it doesn't justify Bush's civil liberties crackdown." [more]

US Convoys Attacked in Kuwait, 4 Soldiers Hurt

Haitham Haddadin | Reuters | December 14, 2003

"The assaults came a few hours after news that Iraqi President Saddam Hussein has been captured in Iraq, news welcomed by many Kuwaitis whose country was invaded by Saddam's forces in 1990." [more]

Saddam a POW, Red Cross Says

Jonathan Fowler | Associated Press | December 15, 2003

"Rumsfeld [said] that Saddam's classification may change and he may lose POW status if it appears he had a role in the postwar insurgency in Iraq that has killed more than 200 Americans." [more]

Opposition to USA Patriot Act Swells

Ken Ritter | Associated Press | November 15, 2003

" 'What we see in the Patriot Act is an attempt to legalize and make more easily available to intelligence agencies tools that were used illegally and unconstitutionally to fight attempts to bring about social and political change,' [a law professor] said." [more]

Revision Thing

Sam Smith | Harper's Magazine | September 1, 2003

"A history of the Iraq war, told entirely in lies." [more]

Analysis: Cool War

Joy Gordon | Harper's Magazine | November 1, 2002

Economic sanctions in Iraq as a weapon of mass destruction. [more]

Iraq Contract Decision Reopens US-European Rift

Robert H. Reid | Associated Press | December 10, 2003

"Critics said the policy could discourage countries from helping to rebuild Iraq and complicate American efforts to restructure Iraq's estimated $125 billion debt, much of it owed to France, Germany, Russia and other nations whose companies are excluded under the Pentagon directive." [more]

Analysis: US Losing Control in Forgotton Afghanistan

Kim Sengupta | Independent | December 14, 2003

"While the eyes of world are on Iraq, the Taliban are reborn across much of this country and their al-Qa'ida allies are once more in the ascendant. As attacks mount and the death toll rises, the US [is] losing control" [more]

Logistics for Hussein Trial Complex

Peter Slevin | Washington Post | December 14, 2003

"Any trial of Hussein would be a hugely complicated undertaking, especially for an Iraqi justice system that barely exists eight months after U.S. forces captured Baghdad. Human rights organizations raised questions today about the credibility of a still-unformed Iraqi tribunal that would operate with U.S. backing." [more]

Saddam Hussein Captured by US Forces

Peter Grier | Christian Science Monitor | December 15, 2003

"Eight months after a giant statue of Saddam Hussein was pulled to the ground in Baghdad in a gesture of celebration, the US finally has Mr. Hussein for real. It was probably the most intensive manhunt in history, with thousands of troops, secret units, and intensive pressure from Washington." [more]

A Deliberate Debacle

Paul Krugman | New York Times | December 12, 2003

"These are tough times for the architects of the 'Bush doctrine' of unilateralism and preventive war. Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and their fellow Project for a New American Century alumni viewed Iraq as a pilot project, one that would validate their views and clear the way for further regime changes. Instead, the venture has turned sour — and many insiders see Mr. Baker's mission as part of an effort by veterans of the first Bush administration to extricate George W. Bush from the hard-liners' clutches. If the mission collapses amid acrimony over contracts, that's a good thing from the hard-liners' point of view. [more]

The Privatization of War

Ian Traynor | Guardian | December 10, 2003

"While the official coalition figures list the British as the second largest contingent with around 9,900 troops, they are narrowly outnumbered by the 10,000 private military contractors now on the ground." [more]

CIA Plans New Iraqi Spy Agency Using Baathist Agents

Dana Priest and Robin Wright | Washington Post | December 11, 2003

"The Bush administration has authorized creation of an Iraqi intelligence service to spy on groups and individuals inside Iraq that are targeting U.S. troops and civilians working to form a new government." [more]

US Officer Fined, Will Resign for Beating Iraqi

Robin Pomeroy | Reuters | December 13, 2003

" 'While his crimes could merit a court martial, mitigating factors involved were considered including the stressful environment our leaders and soldiers face daily and Lt Col West's record as an officer and commander,' the division [court] said in a statement." [more]

Saudi Paper Identifies Leaders of 'Jihadist Trend', 'Al-Qa'ida' in Saudi Arabia

STAFF | World News Connection | December 7, 2003

"According to security sources, Abd-al-Aziz al-Muqrin is the mastermind and current leader of the Al-Qa'ida organization in Saudi Arabia. He led the bombing operation against the Al-Muhayya residential compound in Riyadh on 8 November. He is still at large." [more]

Profile of 'Local Leader' of Al-Qa'ida in Saudi Arabia

STAFF | World News Connection | December 10, 2003

"Al-Muqrin gained combat experience during his stints in Afghanistan, Bosnia-Herzogvina, Algeria, and Somalia. [more]

The Bubble of American Supremacy

George Šoroš | Atlantic Monthly | December 1, 2003

"The dominant position the United States occupies in the world is the element of reality that is being distorted. The proposition that the United States will be better off if it uses its position to impose its values and interests everywhere is the misconception. It is exactly by not abusing its power that America attained its current position." [more]

Analysis: Phoenix Rising

Robert Dreyfuss | American Prospect | January 1, 2004

"Part of a secret $3 billion in new funds ... will go toward the creation of a paramilitary unit manned by militiamen associated with former Iraqi exile groups. Experts say it could lead to a wave of extrajudicial killings, not only of armed rebels but of nationalists, other opponents of the U.S. occupation and thousands of civilian Baathists." [more]

Britain 'Failed' Iraqi Citizens in Using Cluster Bombs

STAFF | British Broadcasting Corporation | December 12, 2003

"Scores of Iraqi civilians were killed or injured needlessly, because Britain failed in its duty as an occupying power, a human rights group claims. " [more]

Lagging Efforts to Fight Terrorist Financing

Eric Lichtblau and Timothy L. O'Brien | New York Times | December 12, 2003

"Federal authorities do not have a clear understanding of how terrorists move their financial assets and are still struggling to prevent the flow of money to terror groups." [more]

Iraqi Protesters Oust US-Appointed Governor

Rajiv Chandrasekaran | Washington Post | December 12, 2003

"As soon as [the governor] resigned, the local representative of the U.S. occupation authority appointed a former Iraqi air force officer as acting governor. To the protesters, that was unacceptable. The new governor, they insisted, should be chosen not by an American but by Iraqis — through an election." [more]

Pentagon Charges Halliburton with Profiteering

Douglas Jehl | New York Times | December 12, 2003

"A Pentagon investigation has found evidence that a subsidiary of the politically connected Halliburton Company overcharged the government by as much as $61 million for fuel delivered to Iraq under huge no-bid reconstruction contracts, senior military officials said Thursday." [more]

Resurgent Taliban Stalk Afghan Gov't

Catherine Philp | Times of London | December 12, 2003

"Two years after they fell from power, the Taleban are back, rearmed with guns and a determination to stop the march of democracy in an attempt to win back the hearts and minds they once controlled." [more]

Nearly Half US-Trained Iraqi Army Quits

Stephen Farrell | Times of London | December 12, 2003

"Three hundred of the new Iraqi army’s 700-strong 1st Battalion were discharged after they refused to obey orders following a row over pay and 'terms and conditions.' " [more]

German Judge Frees Qaeda Suspect, Citing US Secrecy

Desmond Butler | New York Times | December 12, 2003

"The trial of Zacarias Moussaoui, the only person charged in an American court in connection with the attacks, has also been thrown into doubt by the government's refusal to make captured Qaeda operatives available for questioning." [more]

Army Capt. Questions Deployment, Faces Insubordination Charge

Ben Dobbin | Associated Press | November 29, 2003

" 'We signed up to fight our nation's enemies and we are fully prepared to do that,' [the soldier] said. 'But if they're going to usurp the laws of this country at the expense of our most precious asset, our soldiers, then I will not stand for that, not for a minute.' " [more]

Transcript: Remarks of Gen. Anthony Zinni Opposing War with Iraq

Anthony Zinni | National Public Radio | August 23, 2002

"It [is] interesting to wonder why all the generals see it the same way, and all those that never fired a shot in anger and really hell-bent to go to war see it a different way. That's usually the way it is in history." [more]

Seven in Ten Americans Don't Believe US is Safer

STAFF | Associated Press | December 3, 2003

The vast majority of Americans do not believe the war with Iraq has made them any safer, a new poll revealed. The same majority feel the UN should be allowed to take a more prominent role. [more]

Patriot Act Spawns New Laws Across the Globe

Elaine Cassel | CounterPunch | November 10, 2003

"Canada was the first country to pass a virtual mirror of our Patriot Act, within weeks of ours. Australia and Great Britain followed shortly, and South Africa is struggling with one now. Unlike the U.S., Australia, Great Britain, and Canada, countries that did not bother to debate the merits of curtailing liberty, there is a strong movement of dissent in South Africa. Blacks, and concerned whites there, see the specter of apartheid returning under the guise of 'national' security." [more]

Divided Court Says Government Can Ban 'Soft Money'

David Stout | New York Times | December 10, 2003

"The court also upheld two other pillars of the law: a ban on the solicitation of soft money by federal candidates, and a prohibition against political advertisements by special interest groups in the weeks just before an election." [more]

High Payments to Halliburton for Fuel in Iraq

Don Van Natta, Jr. | New York Times | December 10, 2003

"The United States government is paying the Halliburton Company an average of $2.64 a gallon to import gasoline and other fuel to Iraq from Kuwait, more than twice what others are paying to truck in Kuwaiti fuel, government documents show." [more]

US Operation Claims Six More Afghan Children

STAFF | Guardian | December 10, 2003

"Six children and two adults were killed during a US attack on a weapons compound in south-eastern Afghanistan, the second bungled operation in the country to leave child victims in as many days." [more]

Afghanistan Raid Killed Ten, May Have Missed Target

Carlotta Gall | New York Times | December 9, 2003

Despite the raid's failure, "the American military is pressing ahead with its objectives ... announcing Monday that it had 2,000 soldiers out on its biggest operation ever against elements of the Taliban and Al Qaeda across a wide swath of the country." [more]

Suicide Bomber Wounds 58 US Soldiers in Iraq

Alan Sipress | Washington Post | December 9, 2003

"During the past two months, more than 100 people have been killed in car bombings and other explosions targeting U.S. and allied forces, foreign diplomats and aid workers, and Iraqi security forces cooperating with the occupation authorities." [more]

US Bars Iraq Contracts for Nations That Opposed War

Douglas Jehl | New York Times | December 9, 2003

"The Pentagon has barred French, German and Russian companies from competing for $18.6 billion in contracts for the reconstruction of Iraq, saying the step 'is necessary for the protection of the essential security interests of the United States.'" [more]

American Apocalypse

Robert Jay Lifton | Nation | December 22, 2003

"The war on terrorism is apocalyptic exactly because it is militarized and yet amorphous, without limits of time or place, and has no clear end. It therefore enters the realm of the infinite. Implied in its approach is that every last terrorist everywhere on the earth is to be hunted down until there are no more terrorists anywhere to threaten us, and in that way the world will be rid of evil." [more]

Swept Up Despite Adherence to Law

Flynn McRoberts | Chicago Tribune | November 17, 2003

"Jailed for months with case pending, Pakistani gives up." [more]

Immigration Crackdown Shatters Muslims' Lives

Cam Simpson, Flynn McRoberts and Liz Sly | Chicago Tribune | November 16, 2003

"A plane filled with deportees provides a glimpse into an initiative aimed at men from Islamic nations. Justified in the name of security, it hasn't yielded a single public charge of terrorism." [more]

US Apologizes for Deaths of Afghan Children

Aijaz Rahi | Associated Press | December 8, 2003

"The 11,500 U.S.-led troops hunting Taliban and al Qaeda remnants in south and east Afghanistan often are supported by air power, and there have been a string of military mishaps. The worst occurred in July 2002, when Afghan officials said 48 civilians at a wedding party were killed and 117 wounded by a U.S. Air Force AC-130 gunship." [more]

Meet the 'Terror Tourists'

Tim Tate | British Broadcasting Corporation | December 7, 2003

"Throughout the five-day course, Lisa Reed and her fellow Terror Tourists will fire machine-guns, learn hand-to-hand combat and take part in mock attacks by Israeli commandos pretending to be Arab terrorists." [more]

Rumsfeld Admits Number of Security Forces May Have Been Underestimated

Robert Burns | Associated Press | December 7, 2003

"Four Army divisions now in Iraq are to return next year and will need about six months to rest, retrain and repair equipment. With three divisions set to rotate into Iraq and another into Afghanistan as replacements, about 80 percent of the Army's fighting strength will be either on the mend or on duty fighting terror and stabilizing the two countries." [more]

Violence Casts Pall Over Afghan Assembly

Pamela Constable | Washington Post | December 7, 2003

"A flurry of terrorist attacks over the past several days, as well as the deaths of nine children Saturday in a U.S. air assault on a village where a lone Taliban terrorist was said to be hiding, have cast a jittery pall over preparations for an historic constitutional assembly scheduled to begin Wednesday." [more]

Tough New Tactics by US Tighten Grip on Iraqi Towns

Dexter Filkins | New York Times | December 7, 2003

" 'You have to understand the Arab mind,' Capt. Todd Brown, a company commander with the Fourth Infantry Division, said as he stood outside the gates of Abu Hishma. 'The only thing they understand is force — force, pride and saving face.' " [more]

A Diplomat's Letter of Resignation

John Brady Kiesling | New York Times | February 27, 2003

"Our fervent pursuit of war with Iraq is driving us to squander the international legitimacy that has been America’s most potent weapon of both offense and defense since the days of Woodrow Wilson. We have begun to dismantle the largest and most effective web of international relationships the world has ever known. Our current course will bring instability and danger, not security." [more]

US Fires Guantánamo Defense Team

James Meek | Guardian | December 3, 2003

"Of the more than 600 detainees at the US prison camp at Guantanamo, none has been charged with any crime. But the US has repeatedly promised that at least some of the prisoners will be charged and tried by military commissions, an arcane form of tribunal based on long-disused models from the 1940s." [more]

Intellectual Property Theft Declared 'Terrorism'

STAFF | Agence France-Presse | December 4, 2003

" 'Piracy is like terrorism today and it exists everywhere and it is a very dangerous phenomenon.' "` [more]

Rumsfeld Offers US Support for Georgia

Robert Burns | Associated Press | December 5, 2003

"Rumsfeld told Davis he could understand [Afghan warlord] Dostum's reluctance to surrender the foundation of his power. 'I don't think his position is unreasonable,' Rumsfeld said." [more]

GOP Option at Convention: Luxury Liner

Michael Slackman | New York Times | December 1, 2003

"It is being billed as the perfect place for celebrations during the Republican National Convention next summer, with shows, fine works of art, health clubs, bars, cafes, amazing views, luxury staterooms and restaurants serving cuisine from around the world. And it is just a short walk to Midtown." [more]

Amnesty Int'l Calls for Probe of Miami Protest Policing

STAFF | Reuters | November 26, 2003

The city was closed down by squads of riot police during the Free Trade Area of the Americas meeting ... armored vehicles patrolled the streets, police helicopters hovered overhead and, during street clashes on Nov. 20, police fired volleys of rubber bullets and pepper spray at protesters in the city center. [more]

Union: Police Broke Protest Promise

Amy Driscoll | Miami Herald | November 26, 2003

In addition to other egregious civil rights violations, police in Miami prevented 20 busloads of seniors from attending a permitted AFL-CIO march in Miami against the FTAA. [more]

Parents of Troops Visit Iraq for Independent Look

Steve Hymon | Los Angeles Times | November 30, 2003

A trip to Iraq, organized by peace and justice organization Global Exchange, will give the parents of troops stationed in Iraq a first-hand look at military activities and the civilian population there. For some of the parents, it is a chance to become more vocal about their opposition to the war. [more]

Army Censors Reporters

Jim Spencer | Denver Post | November 26, 2003

"Ground Rule 9 for the media covering President Bush's presidential visit Monday sounded more like an edict from Beijing or a banana republic: 'Write positive stories about Ft. Carson and the U.S. Army.' " [more]

Congress Expands FBI Spying Power

Ryan Singel | Wired News | November 24, 2003

"Congress approved a bill on Friday that expands the reach of the Patriot Act, reduces oversight of the FBI and intelligence agencies and, according to critics, shifts the balance of power away from the legislature and the courts." [more]

Reaping the Whirlwind

EDITORIAL | Guardian | November 21, 2003

"Another terrible terrorist atrocity, another steely vow to crush the terrorists. How long can this go on? George Bush and Tony Blair were united yesterday in their determination 'to defeat this evil'. The prime minister was adamant that 'there must be no holding back, no compromise, no hesitation in confronting this menace, in attacking it wherever and whenever we can and in defeating it utterly'. The president claimed, again, that the struggle against al-Qaida and its allies is being won. But the evidence suggests otherwise. The blood and rubble in the streets of Istanbul, for the second time in a week, tells a different story." [more]

Transcript: Bin Laden Says Holy War Not His to Call

STAFF | World News Connection | August 5, 1999

"Countries like the United States determine right and wrong on the basis of their interests. If it is in their interest to arrest General Noriega, they forget years of his faithfulness. If they have to leave the Shah of Iran, they forget years of friendship." [more]

Taliban Minister Promises Security for Foreign Workers

STAFF | World News Connection | November 13, 1999

"He said the Islamic militia appreciated aid workers were helping the country's impoverished people and said anyone legally entering the country would be safe." [more]

Congress Moves to Regulate Postcolonial Studies

Michael Bednar | Nettime | October 20, 2003

"Testimony provided by Dr. Stanley Kurtz ... portrays areas studies centers as hotbeds of unpatriotic anti-Americanism. Dr. Kurtz focuses, in particular, on post-colonial theory and the work of Edward Said's Orientalism in which 'Said equated professors who support American foreign policy with the 19th century European intellectuals who propped up racist colonial empires. The core premise of post colonial theory is that it is immoral for a scholar to put his knowledge of foreign languages and cultures at the service of American power.' " [more]

Qaeda Position on Recruiting Europeans, Americans

STAFF | World News Connection | August 3, 2003

"Asked if what he wants to convey is that Al-Qa'ida is succeeding in penetrating US institutions in the United States or abroad, he said: 'We have already penetrated US institutions. What is coming is worse. I cannot go into any more details because the matter is very sensitive.' " [more]

More Israelis Challenging Sharon

Joel Greenberg | Chicago Tribune | November 23, 2003

"Rumblings of discontent have come from the army chief of staff and four former chiefs of the security services, from members of Sharon's governing coalition and from opposition politicians who have forged their own model peace agreement with Palestinian counterparts." [more]

Qaeda Leader Says Strike Against US 'Closer' Than Ever

STAFF | World News Connection | November 23, 2003

"If they are seeking the elimination of their economic might, devastation, and destruction under the feet of the soldiers of God, let them come to Iraq, as our strikes will reach the center of Tokyo ... if they are seeking that, let them try their luck with us." [more]

FBI Scrutinizes Anti-War Rallies

Eric Lichtblau | New York Times | November 23, 2003

"The abuses of the Hoover era, which included efforts by the F.B.I. to harass and discredit Hoover's political enemies under a program known as Cointelpro, led to tight restrictions on F.B.I. investigations of political activities. Those restrictions were relaxed significantly last year, when Attorney General John Ashcroft issued guidelines giving agents authority to attend political rallies, mosques and any event 'open to the public.' " [more]

I Predicted The Istanbul Incident – What's Next?

Max Broker | Karma Banque | November 22, 2003

"This choke hold corpocracy are the environmental terrorists that have done huge damage and have, if you care to blow away the smoke and look at the true history of how 9/11 and Istanbul happened, are the ones who funded these events in the first place; driven by the 'animal instincts' of criminal-capitalism that is their ethos." [more]

Va. Student Held for Months in Saudi Prison

Caryle Murphy and John Mintz | Washington Post | November 22, 2003

"With no public evidence or open court hearing in Abu Ali's case, the degree to which he may have been involved in terrorism remains a mystery. Neither Saudi nor U.S. authorities will say publicly whether charges have been filed against him or tell his family what alleged acts led to his lengthy detention. His rights as a U.S. citizen offer him no legal protection while he is in Saudi custody. And U.S. law enforcement officials appear content to leave him where he is." [more]

Perle Admits Iraq War Was Illegal

Oliver Burkeman and Julian Borger | Guardian | November 20, 2003

"In a startling break with the official White House and Downing Street lines, Mr Perle told an audience in London: 'I think in this case international law stood in the way of doing the right thing.' " [more]

War Tactics – Again

Rajiv Chandrasekaran and Daniel Williams | Washington Post | November 22, 2003

"The decision to demolish houses suspected of sheltering insurgents resembles a tactic long in use by Israeli occupation forces in the West Bank and Gaza Strip to punish the families of Palestinian suicide bombers. Like the Israelis, troops with the 4th Infantry have also flattened wide swaths on roadsides to inhibit the laying of bombs." [more]

US Hid Vital War Data from Allies

Marian Wilkinson | Age | November 21, 2003

"US Major-General Tommy Crawford told the conference he strongly opposed the policy that blocked Australian officers from getting intelligence on Iraq, even when some of it originated from Australian intelligence sources." [more]

The Bubble

Maria Margaronis | Nation | November 21, 2003

"Bush was driven from the back of the palace to the front in his own armored Cadillac for the official welcoming ceremony—a made-for-TV election commercial that no one could get close enough to watch. This was the new empire condescending to the old while borrowing a little of its glitter-and-paste glamour." [more]

Special Registration for Arab Immigrants May Stop

Dan Eggen | Washington Post | November 20, 2003

Homeland Security spokesman Bill Strassberger and other officials said a new border-control effort set to begin Jan. 5 ... will play a similar role in monitoring visitors. The program will use photographs and fingerprints to log entries and exits at major U.S. airports and seaports." [more]

FBI Aided Murderers, Allowed Innocents Sentenced to Death

Fox Butterfield | New York Times | November 21, 2003

"A report issued yesterday by the House Committee on Government Reform gave the fullest accounting to date of the F.B.I.'s use of murderers as informants in Boston for three decades and its protection of them even to the point of allowing innocent men to be sentenced to death." [more]

Heady Days for Contractors in Race for Iraq Deals

Sue Pleming | Reuters | November 20, 2003

"A new U.S. office established in Baghdad to supervise and oversee contracts has set an aggressive timetable, awarding up to $18.7 billion in 25 contracts over the next 10 weeks to rebuild Iraq." [more]

Car Bombs Hit Iraq, Bush Says US Will Stay

Alistair Lyon | Reuters | November 20, 2003

" 'We will finish the job we have begun,' Bush said during a state visit to Britain. 'We could have less troops in Iraq. We could have the same number of troops in Iraq. We could have more troops in Iraq — [whatever is] necessary to secure Iraq.' " [more]

US Military Drops Pair of 2,000-Pound Bombs in Iraq

STAFF | Associated Press | November 19, 2003

"About 70 allied soldiers have died in November, already making it the deadliest month since April, when 73 troops died. President Bush declared major combat over May 1." [more]

Anarchism and the Argentine Labor Movement

Fernando Lopez | New Formulation | February 1, 2003

"In other words, the struggle that aims to transcend capitalism actually improves it. And it is this tendency that obliges the most lucid members of the ruling class to give ground to the workers in order not to lose everything. ... Democratization and integration—we would add—are not irreversible processes, as demonstrated by the social disintegration and marginalization that has occurred in Argentina over the last twenty years." [more]

Transcript: A Bigger, Looser EU?

Gilles Andreani, Michael Portillo, and Others | Prospect Magazine | November 1, 2003

"Portillo: It is arguable that Chirac's policy is not anti-American; it is much more difficult to argue that it is not non-American. It almost defines itself in terms of being non-American, which I think from time to time will be anti-American." [more]

The Vanishing Case for War

Thomas Powers | New York Review of Books | December 4, 2003

"The administration's justification for war was not merely flawed or imperfect—it was wrong in almost every detail, and completely wrong at the heart. There was no imminent danger—indeed there was no distant danger. Saddam Hussein had no weapons of mass destruction to give to al-Qaeda or anyone else." [more]

Iraqi Insurgents Take Page from Afghan Soviet Resistance

Milt Bearden | New York Times | November 9, 2003

"These growing attacks against American forces have two clear goals: inflict casualties and force a reaction that alienates the local population. Both are being achieved, as the quick-response raids by coalition troops to seize those behind the attacks fuel Iraqi alienation." [more]

Iraq Declares Saddam Election Winner

Sameer Youcoubq | Associated Press | October 16, 2002

"The vote was widely advertised not only as backing for Saddam but as a rebuke to the United States, which has been pressing in the United Nations Security Council for a resolution that would allow a war to topple Saddam." [more]

CIA Finds No Evidence Hussein Sought to Arm Terrorists

Walter Pincus | Washington Post | November 16, 2003

"The CIA's search for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq has found no evidence that former president Saddam Hussein tried to transfer chemical or biological technology or weapons to terrorists, according to a military and intelligence expert." [more]

Unprovoked, NYPD Attacks Anti-Racist Fundraiser

Critical Resistance | Independent Media Center | November 16, 2003

In "liberal" New York City, 100 people attending a fundraiser for APOC, an anti-racist group of activists of color was attacked by police with nightsticks and pepperspray after police responded to an officer who claimed he had seen someone with an "open container" outside the venue of the fundraiser. 8 activists have been arrested, charged with disorderly conduct, resisting arrest, and inciting riot. [more]

Mr. Bush & the Divine

Joan Didion | New York Review of Books | November 6, 2003

"This notion of the nation, or its president, having been chosen to fulfill some divine purpose was repeated many times, with the active encouragement of the White House. ... Since God was on America's side, there need be no further reason to discuss the presence or absence of weapons of mass destruction. Since we were acting out divine will, we could regard as moot any question of whether we had succeeded mainly in further encouraging those who would act against us." [more]

Activists, Police Mobilize for FTAA

Miami IMC | Independent Media Center | November 14, 2003

With all the recent propaganda released by police about the upcoming Free Trade Agreement of the Americas protests in Miami, Indymedia provides a refreshingly realistic account of the preparations (on both sides) being made to ready Miami for the impact of the FTAA. [more]

Analysis: Secret Service Visits Boston Radical Bookstore

LPC Collective | Independent Media Center | November 11, 2003

"An agent from the Secret Service paid a visit to the Lucy Parsons Center, a long-time radical bookstore and infoshop in Boston. Earlier in the week the bookstore received a suspicious piece of mail allegedly sent from the bookstore and containing questionable material. The Secret Service acting on 'intelligence reports' was investigating this mail which had been reported to the National Lawyers Guild, but not to the Secret Service." [more]

Italy Vows to Stay Course in Iraq

STAFF | British Broadcasting Corporation | November 12, 2003

Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi has said his country will not be deterred by a bomb in Iraq which claimed the lives of 18 Italians. [more]

High Court to Hear Appeals from Guantánamo Prisoners

Charles Lane | Washington Post | November 10, 2003

"The Supreme Court intervened for the first time in the war on terrorism, announcing today that it will review the legal status of the 660 suspected terrorists currently being held in near-total secrecy in a U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba." [more]

Ties Frayed Between US and Iraqi Council

Hamza Hendawi | Associated Press | November 10, 2003

"Some council members, who were appointed by the coalition in July, are pressing for full sovereign powers as a provisional government, with the United States handing over responsibility for security to an Iraqi-led paramilitary force composed of private militias." [more]

Expansion of FBI Intelligence Ignores Lessons of Past Debacles

STAFF | American Civil Liberties Union | November 5, 2003

" 'Liberals remember Watergate — conservatives remember Waco and Ruby Ridge,' said Timothy Edgar, an ACLU Legislative Counsel. 'All were the result of overzealous — and unchecked — federal power. Giving the FBI carte blanche to initiate highly invasive and super-secret intelligence investigations, without any indication of actual wrongdoing, invites a repetition of these past abuses.' " [more]

Use of Patriot Act Causing Concerns

J.M. Kalil and Steve Tetreault | Las Vegas Review Journal | November 5, 2003

" 'The law was intended for activities related to terrorism and not to naked women,' said Reid, who as minority whip is the second most powerful Democrat in the Senate." [more]

Iraq Tried to Avert War with US, Was Rebuffed

James Risen | New York Times | November 6, 2003

"Iraqi officials, including the chief of the Iraqi Intelligence Service ... offered to allow American troops and experts to conduct a search. The businessman said in an interview that the Iraqis also offered to hand over a man accused of being involved in the World Trade Center bombing in 1993 who was being held in Baghdad. At one point, he said, the Iraqis pledged to hold elections." [more]

Qaeda Leader Warns of 'Painful' Strike on Americans in Iraq

STAFF | World News Connection | October 31, 2003

"Al-Ablaj said that Al-Qa'ida leaders are currently busy working to issue a fatwa signed by reliable ulema that would allow them to fight the Arab and Islamic regimes." [more]

Qaeda Leader: Meetings Held to Carry Out bin Laden's Threats

STAFF | World News Connection | October 26, 2003

"We are acting according to a simple formula, namely, that the building is very difficult but the demolition might be done with a matchstick and that this is easier than easy. For example, can the United States protect its earthquake fault lines and forests?" [more]

Calls to Jihad Said to Lure Hundreds of Militants Into Iraq

Don Van Natta Jr. and Desmond Butler | New York Times | November 1, 2003

"Signs of a movement to Iraq have also been detected in Europe. Jean-Louis Bruguière, France's top investigative judge on terrorism, said dozens of poor and middle-class Muslim men had left France for Iraq since the summer. He said some of them appeared to have been inspired by exhortations of Qaeda leaders, even if they were not trained by Al Qaeda." [more]

Analysis: Newspapers Change Reporting on Iraq Deaths

Seth Porges | Editor & Publisher | November 4, 2003

"On Monday, USA Today, The New York Times, and The Washington Post all cited the number of total U.S. deaths in Iraq — 378 or 379 as of Monday, in addition to the killed-in-action number." [more]

Turned Over to Torture?

DeNeen L. Brown and Dana Priest | Washington Post | November 5, 2003

"Arar said his prison cell 'was like a grave, exactly like a grave. It had no light, it was 3 feet wide, it was 6 feet deep, it was 7 feet high ... It had a metal door. There was a small opening in the ceiling. There were cats and rats up there, and from time to time, the cats peed through the opening into the cell.' " [more]

Civil Rights Groups Sue Diebold Over Threats

Rachel Konrad | Associated Press | November 4, 2003

"Many groups are refusing to remove from their Web sites internal Diebold documents that they claim raise serious security questions and threaten the U.S. elections process." [more]

Death by Optimism

Nicholas D. Kristof | New York Times | November 5, 2003

"I wish administration officials were lying, because I would prefer hypocrisy to delusion — at least hypocritical officials make decisions with accurate information." [more]

Seeking an Angle in the Sunni Triangle

David Lamb | Los Angeles Times | November 4, 2003

"What has emerged here in the triangle that reaches from Baghdad's northern doorstep to Tikrit, Hussein's hometown, is a war of attrition. The Americans detain and kill anti-coalition fighters in the belief the insurgents' shell will eventually crack. The fighters retaliate with roadside explosions and mortar attacks on the assumption the Americans at some point will lose heart and go home." [more]

How Many Body Bags?

Robert Scheer | Los Angeles Times | November 4, 2003

"Some pundits and politicians, even those who may have been skeptical about the war to begin with, now argue that we must 'finish the job,' even if it means increasing our commitment of troops or ruling Iraq indefinitely. This is, however, exactly the kind of stubborn and mushy thinking that led us into the hell of the Vietnam War and the deaths of 58,000 Americans and more than 2 million Vietnamese and Cambodians." [more]

US Headquarters Bombed in Baghdad

James Drummond | Financial Times | November 4, 2003

"For the second consecutive day, Baghdad's Green Zone, a secure area that houses the headquarters of the US-led coalition, was the target of a bomb attack." [more]

Senate Passes Funding Bill for Iraq

Janet Hook | Los Angeles Times | November 4, 2003

"The Iraq reconstruction aid is down from the $20.3 billion Bush had requested, but is still the biggest one-shot foreign aid outlay Congress has ever approved — and more money than Congress is providing this year for all other countries combined." [more]

Blueprint for a Mess

David Rieff | New York Times | November 2, 2003

"It is becoming painfully clear that the American plan (if it can even be dignified with the name) for dealing with postwar Iraq was flawed in its conception and ineptly carried out. At the very least, the bulk of the evidence suggests that what was probably bound to be a difficult aftermath to the war was made far more difficult by blinkered vision and overoptimistic assumptions on the part of the war's greatest partisans within the Bush administration." [more]

Israel to Raze Palestinian Homes with Robot Bulldozers

Gavin Rabinowitz | Associated Press | November 3, 2003

"The giant Caterpillar bulldozer, used by the Israeli military to destroy Palestinian homes in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, now comes with a controversial new feature: remote control." [more]

Threats Overstated by Bush Official

Sonni Efron | Los Angeles Times | November 3, 2003

"The Bush administration's point man on nonproliferation has exaggerated the threat posed by Syria, Libya and Cuba in an effort to build the case that strong action is needed to prevent them from developing weapons of mass destruction, former intelligence officials and independent experts say." [more]

Quiet Negotiations Develop Possible Mideast Peace Plan

Jimmy Carter | USA Today | November 2, 2003

"The Quartet's plan is now a dead issue. Instead, there are continuing violent attacks by Palestinian terrorist groups and increasingly harsh reprisals from Israel. Supporting such policies is the worst thing America could do for Israelis who want peace." [more]

Analysis: Iraqi Attacks May Change US Political Strategy

Thomas E. Ricks | Washington Post | November 3, 2003

"In tactical terms, yesterday's action was troubling but unlikely to result in major changes in how the U.S. military operates on the ground and in the skies over Iraq. But the latest round of attacks in Iraq, and especially yesterday's deaths — which amounted to the biggest single day of losses since last spring's conventional war — may prove more significant in strategic terms." [more]

US-Mexico Border Crackdown Failing

Niko Price | Associated Press | November 2, 2003

"The tightening net of Border Patrol and Immigration agents has slowed trade, snarled traffic and cost American taxpayers millions, perhaps billions, of dollars, while hundreds of migrants have died trying to evade the growing army of border authorities." [more]

Analysis: A Better Ballot?

Mary Wiltenburg | Christian Science Monitor | November 3, 2003

"A growing number of computer scientists are now warning that [electronic voting], far from solving America's voting problems, may actually make things worse. 'If you look at the consequences for democracy, it's terrifying,' says David Dill, a Stanford University computer-science professor." [more]

File Sharing Pits Copyright Against Free Speech

John Schwartz | New York Times | November 3, 2003

"The students say that, by trying to spread the word about problems with the company’s software, they are performing a valuable form of electronic civil disobedience, one that has broad implications for American society. They also contend that they are protected by fair use exceptions in copyright law." [more]

Groups Question Voting Machines' Accuracy

Robert Tanner | Associated Press | October 30, 2003

" 'The computer science community has pretty much rallied against electronic voting,' said Stephen Ansolabahere, a voting expert at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. 'A disproportionate number of computer scientists who have weighed in on this issue are opposed to it.' " [more]

Analysis: Black Box Voting Blues

Steven Levy | Newsweek | November 3, 2003

"The best minds in the computer-security world contend that [electronic] voting terminals can't be trusted." [more]

E-Vote Protest Gains Momentum

Kim Zetter | Wired News | October 28, 2003

"Swarthmore College students embroiled in a legal battle against voting machine-maker Diebold Election Systems have received a ground swell of support from universities and colleges nationwide." [more]

Thinkers Launch Anti-Empire Drive

Jim Lobe | Inter Press Service | October 27, 2003

"The coalition does not intend to recruit from the grassroots, where a number of existing movements opposed the war on Iraq. It will instead focus on the recruitment of foreign-policy specialists and analysts who can help frame the context for public and media debate." [more]

Diebold Threatens Publishers of Leaked Documents

Rachel Konrad | Associated Press | October 27, 2003

"Diebold spokesman Mike Jacobsen said the fact that the company sent the cease-and-desist letters does not mean the documents are authentic — or give credence to advocates who claim lax Diebold security could allow hackers to rig machines. But the activists say the mere fact that Diebold was hacked shows that the company's technology cannot be trusted." [more]

Swarthmore Shuts Down Web Sites of Students Publicizing Company's Voting-Machine Memos

Andrea Foster | Chronicle of Higher Education | October 27, 2003

"Diebold will continue to send copyright-infringement notices to Internet service providers that host the company documents, including the four other institutions — the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Purdue University, the University of Southern California, and the University of Texas-Pan American." [more]

A Brief History of Computerized Election Fraud

Victoria Collier | Truthout | October 25, 2003

"Squadrons of shiny new Touch Screen Trojan horses are being rolled into precincts across America. Not, as we are told, to make voting easier or more accurate, or to help disabled people vote privately, or to save America from the dangers of hanging chad and butterfly ballots — no. The real reason America is being flooded with billions of dollars worth of paperless computerized voting machines is so that no one will ever again be able to prove vote fraud." [more]

Analysis: Why Are We Back in Vietnam?

Frank Rich | New York Times | October 26, 2003

"At the tender age of six months, the war in Iraq is not remotely a Vietnam. But from the way the administration tries to manage the news against all reality, even that irrevocable reality encased in flag-draped coffins, you can only wonder if it might yet persuade the audience at home that we're mired in another Tet after all." [more]

Investigators: Hussein Had No Nuclear Program

Barton Gellman | Washington Post | October 26, 2003

"Despite prewar claims, it is now clear Iraq had no active program to build a nuclear weapon." [more]

Protests Against Iraq as Bush Popularity Declines

Niala Boodhoo | Reuters | October 25, 2003

"Peace activists, many carrying placards, said increasing concerns about casualties in Iraq have spurred the U.S. anti-war movement back into action after months of relative quiet." [more]

Protesters Rally for End to War in Iraq

Jennifer C. Kerr | Associated Press | October 25, 2003

"To chants of 'Impeach Bush,' thousands of anti-war protesters rallied in the nation's capital Saturday and delivered a scathing critique of President Bush and his Iraq policy." [more]

Thousands Join US Anti-War March

STAFF | British Broadcasting Corporation | October 25, 2003

"The demonstration reflects the mood of many Americans, who are becoming increasingly concerned about the cost of the occupation and the rising number of casualties." [more]

Analysis: Many Peaces, One War

Christian Parenti | Nation | October 25, 2003

"The central point of contention is whether the United States should quit Iraq completely and at all costs or hand off the occupation to some sort of international/United Nations security force, with or without US participation. In light of these splits, what is most impressive is that the movement has managed to maintain as much tactical, strategic and ideological coherence as it has." [more]

Protesters in Washington Demand Iraq Withdrawal

Eric Lichtblau | New York Times | October 26, 2003

"Many of the same demonstrators gathered here months ago to urge the White House not to go to war in Iraq. The demonstrators reassembled here in the shadow of the Washington Monument because they said they wanted to let the president know that they remained deeply opposed to the American military's continued presence in Iraq." [more]

Analysis: This Memo Must Not Be Leaked

David Johnston | New York Times | October 25, 2003

"Many political analysts of both parties said they believed that the memorandum, although seemingly sent in confidence, was written to carefully position Mr. Rumsfeld in the struggle within the Bush administration for control of postwar policy in Iraq." [more]

Israeli Forces Blow Up Palestinian Police Station

Shahdi al-Kashif | Reuters | October 25, 2003

"A military official said the fleeing Islamic Jihad gunman received shelter at the police station and policemen helped him to escape the area." [more]

Transcript: Why We Opposed the Iraq War

Australian Federal Parliamentarians | Sydney Morning Herald | October 23, 2003

Forty-one Australian Labour Party federal parliamentarians have written an open letter to George Bush, explaining why so many Australians opposed the war on Iraq. [more]

Students Fight E-Vote Firm

Kim Zetter | Wired News | October 21, 2003

" 'We're advocating freedom of information and open-source standards," Smith said. "If there's anything the public has an inherent right to look in on, it's voting technology. That's why we're pushing this.' " [more]

Swarthmore Groups Told to Nix Links to Memos

Don Russel | Philadelphia Daily News | October 23, 2003

"Yesterday, the Delaware County school's dean, Robert Gross, asked a pair of student groups to remove Internet links at their Web sites to a trove of damning memos that activists believe reveal potential security flaws in new electronic voting machines." [more]

Report Critical of Security in Vote Machines

Jeff McDonald | San Diego Union-Tribune | August 4, 2003

"Before the Johns Hopkins report was published, most information about how computerized balloting works was limited to elections officials and the companies that make voting equipment. This worries voter advocates, who say elections officials often end up working for the manufacturers after they leave public service." [more]

Touch-Screen Voting 'Disaster' with a 'Myriad of Problems'

Larry Carson | Baltimore Sun | September 26, 2003

"Maryland's rush to convert 19 counties to touch-screen voting before the March 6 primary election will impose a tough deadline, local officials say, leading Howard County's elections administrator to warn yesterday that the pressure could create 'the combination for disaster' on election day." [more]

Report Raises Electronic Vote Security Issues

John Schwartz | New York Times | September 25, 2003

"Electronic voting machine technology used nationwide is 'at high risk of compromise' because of software flaws that could make them vulnerable to computer hackers and voting fraud." [more]

New Security Woes for E-Vote Firm

Brian McWilliams | Wired News | August 7, 2003

"The archive of internal Diebold Election Systems mailing lists taken from the staff site includes thousands of messages dating from January 1999 through March 2003. ... Diebold's Internet security problems necessitate that the company hire a 'Big Five-caliber' firm to conduct a thorough inspection of its software code, and to insure that malicious outsiders have not tampered with it." [more]

Voting Machine Controversy

Julie Carr Smyth | Cleveland Plain Dealer | August 28, 2003

"[A] letter from Walden O'Dell, chief executive of Diebold Inc. — who has become active in the re-election effort of President Bush — prompted Democrats this week to question the propriety of allowing O'Dell's company to calculate votes in the 2004 presidential election." [more]

Transcript: An Open Invitation to Election Fraud

Farhad Manjoo | Salon | September 23, 2003

"All you do is double-click the icon. You go backwards through the Internet to that county computer, and if you have Microsoft Access on your machine you can walk right into that election database while it's open. It's configured for multiple access at the same time. You can be in there changing things and you can change anything you want." [more]

Briton Says CIA Threatened Torture

Vikram Dodd | Guardian | October 4, 2003

" 'The little American said: "We can be just as ruthless as Saddam Hussein" — he was trying very hard to scare me. They were threatening me with rape and assault.' " [more]

All the President's Votes?

Andrew Gumbel | Independent | October 14, 2003

"A quiet revolution is taking place in US politics. By the time it's over, the integrity of elections will be in the unchallenged, unscrutinised control of a few large — and pro-Republican — corporations." [more]

Transcript: Text of Bin Laden Broadcast

STAFF | Al Jazeera | October 18, 2003

Text of Osama bin Laden's message "to the American people regarding your aggression in Iraq" broadcast on al Jazeera television. [more]

Bush Cites Philippines as Model in Rebuilding Iraq

David E Sanger | New York Times | October 18, 2003

"President Bush told the Congress of this former American colony on Saturday that Iraq, like the Philippines, could be transformed into a vibrant democracy. He also pledged his help in remaking the troubled and sometimes mutinous Philippine military into a force for fighting terrorism." [more]

Students, Nuns and Sailor-Mongers, Beware

Jonathan Turley | Los Angeles Times | October 17, 2003

"Not only is the law being used to prosecute one of the administration's most vocal critics in an unprecedented attack on the 1st Amendment, but it appears to be part of a broader campaign by Ashcroft to protect the nation against free speech, a campaign that has converted environmentalists into 'sailor-mongers' and nuns into terrorists." [more]

General Extols 'Army of God' vs. Muslims and 'Satan'

Richard T. Cooper | Los Angeles Times | October 16, 2003

"[Gen.] Boykin's new job makes his role especially sensitive: He is charged with speeding up the flow of intelligence on terrorist leaders to combat teams in the field so that they can attack top-ranking terrorist leaders. Virtually all these leaders are Muslim." [more]

Pentagon Unleashes Holy Warrior

William M. Arkin | Los Angeles Times | October 17, 2003

"A Christian extremist in a high Defense post can only set back the U.S. approach to the Muslim world." [more]

The Limits of Japanese Hospitality

EDITORIAL | Times of London | October 15, 2003

"[Bush] is travelling to Tokyo with two really major asks in mind. First, there is the question of Japan sending troops, as well as money, to Iraq. The Japanese public are understandably nervous. The nation has been branded 'Washington's ATM' by sections of the domestic and international media." [more]

Iraqi Shiite Split Widens

Dan Murphy | Christian Science Monitor | October 15, 2003

"The shootout in Karbala was the latest in a string of incidents involving [local cleric] Sadr and his Mahdi Army. Sadr had helped lead the physical expulsion of the US-appointed district council for Sadr City from its building. He and a number of other leaders in the district are seeking to replace the council with representatives they see as more legitimate." [more]

Is Security in Iraq Getting Any Better?

Sarmad S. Ali | Iraq Today | October 14, 2003

"The inability of the authorities to restore security has been reaffirmed again and again over recent months. For Iraqis, the first signs of difficulty were present immediately upon the fall of the last government. The decision of American forces to protect the Ministry of Oil while looters were allowed to ransack public institutions is an enduring source of anger." [more]

US to Privatize Iraqi State-Owned Firms

Will Dunham | Reuters | October 8, 2003

"Foley said he was 'fully confident' Iraq could become 'a thriving capitalist economy.' He said he believed estimates that placed Iraqi unemployment at 50 to 60 percent were too high." [more]

Turkish Troop Deployment Unleashes Iraqi Opposition

Ahmed Mukhtar | Iraq Today | October 15, 2003

"The [governing] council as a whole rejected the plan, insisting that Iraq's neighbors should not play a military role in the country. But Kurdish leaders went further, arguing that Turkey has a different agenda and would encourage other Iraqi neighbors to enter the fray." [more]

US Soldiers Bulldoze Iraqi Crops

Patrick Cockburn | Independent | October 12, 2003

"US soldiers driving bulldozers, with jazz blaring from loudspeakers, have uprooted ancient groves of date palms as well as orange and lemon trees in central Iraq as part of a new policy of collective punishment of farmers who do not give information about guerrillas attacking US troops." [more]

Analysis: New Rules for Israel and Syria

Neil MacFarquhar | New York Times | October 13, 2003

"The campaign against Damascus is rooted in the accusation that two groups labeled terrorist organizations by the United States and Israel, among others — Hamas and Islamic Jihad — are orchestrating suicide bombings from here. Few analysts expect that the elimination of their representatives here would do much to dent such operations." [more]

CBS Website Hacked by Kucinich Supporter

STAFF | CBS News | October 3, 2003

" 'According to the most recent CBSnews/nytimes poll [sic], 77% of Democrats do not know enough about Dennis Kucinich. Since we can not expect the media to provide this information I decided to help them out,' the hacker page read." [more]

Peace Group Alleges Police Scrutiny

Diana Marcum | Fresno Bee | October 3, 2003

"In a four-paragraph statement issued Thursday, [Fresno County Sheriff Richard Pierce] defended his department's legal right to send undercover officers to community meetings. 'For the purpose of detecting or preventing terrorist activities, the Fresno County Sheriff's Department may visit any place and attend any event that is open to the public, on the same terms and conditions as members of the public generally.' " [more]

US Extends Terrorism Blacklist to Internet

STAFF | Agence France-Presse | October 10, 2003

"Normally groups on the terrorism blacklist have their assets frozen and their members are subject to visa bans. In addition, US citizens and people under US jurisdiction are prohibited from giving contributions to those groups." [more]

White House Injecting Politics into Scientific Research

Raja Parasuraman, Peter Hancock, Robert Radwin and William Marras | Why War? | October 13, 2003

"The [Bush] administration has engaged in political screening of appointees to peer review study sections that are charged with evaluating the scientific merits of research proposals ... these activities go to the very heart of scientific independence. There is now mounting evidence of systematic attempts to infiltrate political opinion into scientific deliberation." [more]

After Shock

Yasmine Bahrani | Washington Post | October 5, 2003

"Americans are a mystery to many Iraqis, and Baghdad was awash in stories that reflected Iraqi ambivalence toward their new overlords. In Mansour, almost everyone thought the Americans had dropped a tactical nuclear bomb on the Saa restaurant in the effort to get Hussein." [more]

Army Probes Soldier Suicides in Iraq

Gregg Zoroya | USA Today | October 13, 2003

"Alarmed by the number of suicides among soldiers in Iraq, the Army has asked a team of doctors to determine whether the stress of combat and long deployments is contributing to the deaths. A psychiatrist at the Army's Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences ... is helping to investigate the suicides in Iraq. 'Is there something different going on in Iraq that we really need to pay attention to?' " [more]

Baghdad Suicide Bomber Aims for FBI and CIA

James Hider | Times of London | October 13, 2003

" 'If they can do that to the CIA and FBI, imagine what they can do to people like us,' one witness, who was too scared to give his name, said. 'This means the Americans are very weak.' " [more]

Another Day, Another Bomb: Eighty-Four Dates of Mayhem

Rory McCarthy | Guardian | October 13, 2003

"Since the fall of Saddam Hussein's regime, Iraq has been shaken by 84 major attacks, and countless smaller incidents and acts of sabotage, that have transformed America's promise of rapid reconstruction into an increasingly bloody guerrilla war." [more]

Iraq Soldiers Part of PR Effort

Ledyard King | USA Today | October 12, 2003

A series of letters to hometown newspapers, purportedly written by US soldiers in Iraq, contain identical language. The letters praise the US effort to rebuild the war-torn Mideast nation. [more]

US, Israel Hold Quiet Negotiations on Barrier

Mark Matthews | Baltimore Sun | October 11, 2003

"While U.S. officials say they aren't satisfied with the route changes made so far, the White House has held off on withholding foreign aid, a move that could cause domestic political damage to Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and provoke an uproar among Sharon's supporters in the United States." [more]

Peace Prize Awarded to Iranian Activist

Keith B. Richburg | Washington Post | October 11, 2003

"[Ebadi] criticized U.S. military intervention in Muslim countries. Asked about Iraq and Afghanistan, she said in English, 'In Iraq and Afghanistan — especially in Iraq — people do not have water and electricity. And it is very important for people. How can we talk about human rights and freedom?' " [more]

Elections Chief Tightens Vote Security

Keith Ervin | Seattle Times | September 25, 2003

"Critics of high-tech voting have questioned the propriety of Diebold Chief Executive Walden O'Dell's role as a prominent fund-raiser in President Bush's re-election campaign. O'Dell, whose company is marketing voting machines to its home state of Ohio, wrote to campaign contributors last month that he is 'committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president next year.' " [more]

Int'l Red Cross Calls Guantánamo Detentions 'Intolerable'

Neil A. Lewis | New York Times | October 10, 2003

A spokesperson "said that it was intolerable that the complex was used as 'an investigation center, not a detention center.' He said the International Red Cross was making the unusual statements because of a lack of action." [more]

US Told to Avoid Main Shia Area in Baghdad

Charles Clover | Financial Times | October 10, 2003

"A powerful Shia Muslim movement warned US troops on Friday not to enter Baghdad's largest Shia neighbourhood after a gun battle there on Thursday night killed two US soldiers and two Iraqis." [more]

More than 60 Afghan Fighters Killed or Wounded

STAFF | Reuters | October 9, 2003

"Fighters from the two factions have clashed repeatedly since the Taliban's overthrow by U.S.-led forces in late 2001. Past U.N.-brokered disarmament drives have failed. The violence has raised doubts about the ability of President Hamid Karzai's government to bring stability to the entire country." [more]

Opium Fuels Violence Against Afghan Aid Workers

Mark Fritz | Associated Press | October 3, 2003

"Aid groups are fleeing in terror. They blame much of their exodus from the southern third of the country on its drug crop, worth an estimated $1.6 billion Cdn, which purportedly finances Islamic extremist violence, ethnic blood feuds, warlord war chests, provincial property disputes and competing political movements." [more]

Afghanistan Reconstruction Caught at Chaotic Juncture

Andrew Maykuth | Philadelphia Inquirer | October 5, 2003

"Though U.S.-led coalition forces are stationed in hot zones, their sights are trained on terrorists rather than the local thugs, drug traffickers and bandits who make life for Afghans miserable. For many Afghans, the country is less secure today than it was before the coalition bombers arrived." [more]

Transcript: DoJ E-mails Express Concern Over Lindh's Rights

STAFF | Newsweek | June 15, 2002

These internal e-mails show that Justice Dept. lawyers concluded FBI plans to interrogate John Walker Lindh without the presence of a lawyer would violate the department's ethical guidelines and was "not authorized by law." [more]

US Can't Locate Missiles Once Held in Iraqi Arsenal

Raymond Bonner | New York Times | October 8, 2003

"Portable missiles were fired at incoming planes [in Iraq] several times in recent weeks, one senior official said. Most of those incidents have not been reported to the public." [more]

US Response to Israeli Attack on Syria Muted

Glenn Kessler and Mike Allen | Washington Post | October 5, 2003

"The Israeli attack on an alleged terrorist camp inside Syria yesterday helped punctuate a message the Bush administration has been sending to Syria for months — stop supporting terrorist organizations. But analysts said it could also lead to a widening of the Arab-Israeli conflict, thus threatening the administration's efforts to stabilize Iraq and foster peace between the Israelis and Palestinians." [more]

New Goals in War Zones: Streamlining

Wayne Washington and Robert Schlesinger | Boston Globe | October 7, 2003

" 'Almost two years after the fall of the Taliban and nearly six months after the fall of Baghdad, the White House is finally organizing itself to deal with the realities of postwar Afghanistan and Iraq," said Senator John Edwards. '[R]earranging flow charts is no substitute for leadership.' " [more]

Why the Bush Doctrine is Dead

Hugh White | Age | October 3, 2003

"Two years on, Americans remain deeply hurt by September 11, but the country is not transformed. This was not another Pearl Harbor, uniting the nation in a steely determination to do whatever it takes to defeat a clear enemy. The ambiguities and complexities of Iraq, the mixed success against al-Qaeda and confusion about domestic counter-terrorist efforts in the US itself have all deflated the spirit of 1942 that was invoked so often in the last months of 2001." [more]

Sharon Threatens to Hit Israel's Enemies Anywhere

Matt Spetalnick | Reuters | October 7, 2003

"Buoyed by U.S. backing for Israel's right to defend itself, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon said on Tuesday the Jewish state was ready to hit its enemies anywhere following an air raid deep inside Syria." [more]

Karzai Faces Revolt In Fragile Coalition

Pamela Constable | Washington Post | October 5, 2003

"Mansour and others associated with the Northern Alliance said the group has no intention of threatening violence against Karzai or of disrupting national elections, whenever they are held. But they said several recent moves by Karzai to weaken their power had made them 'rethink' their support for his government." [more]

Smart Dust

Thomas Hoffman | Computerworld | March 24, 2003

"'Smart dust' devices are tiny wireless microelectromechanical sensors that can detect everything from light to vibrations. Thanks to recent breakthroughs in silicon and fabrication techniques, these 'motes' could eventually be the size of a grain of sand." [more]

DoD Task Force Said Iraqi Oil Would Not Fund War

Jeff Gerth | New York Times | October 5, 2003

"The task force, which was based at the Pentagon as part of the planning for the war, produced a book-length report that described the Iraqi oil industry as so badly damaged by a decade of trade embargoes that its production capacity had fallen by more than 25 percent. Despite those findings ... Wolfowitz told Congress during the war that 'we are dealing with a country that can really finance its own reconstruction, and relatively soon.' " [more]

Jerusalem's Growing Web of Walls

Nicole Gaouette | Christian Science Monitor | October 6, 2003

"In the West Bank, the barrier's rapid construction is altering lives, the landscape and, critics say, foreclosing on the possibility of a viable Palestinian state — all factors that will deepen Palestinian anger and motivation to strike at Israel." [more]

Transcript: The Road to War

Robin Cook | Times of London | October 5, 2003

"I am haunted by the fear that Tony still sees [Iraq] as an issue of manipulating press and public opinion, and has not grasped that on the substance of the issue the public and he are so far apart that he cannot win this one ... I never doubted that No 10 believed in the threads of intelligence which were woven into the dossier. But that does not alter the awkward fact that the intelligence was wrong and ministers who had applied a sceptical mind could have seen that it was too thin to be a reliable basis for war." [more]

Ex-Minister Says Blair Knew Iraq Had No WMD

Warren Hoge | New York Times | October 5, 2003

"Prime Minister Tony Blair conceded privately that Iraq did not have the quickly deployable weapons of mass destruction that the British government cited as justification for war, former Foreign Secretary Robin Cook asserted today." [more]

Israeli Strike on Syria Sparks Emergency UN Talks

STAFF | British Broadcasting Corporation | October 5, 2003

"The attack was in retaliation for a devastating suicide bomb on a restaurant in the northern port of Haifa on Saturday, which killed 19 people. UN Secretary General Kofi Annan strongly deplored the Israeli air strike and expressed concern that this could lead to a further escalation of an already tense and difficult situation in the Middle East." [more]

Human Shield in Iraq Faces Jail in US

Fergal Parkinson | British Broadcasting Corporation | September 21, 2003

"This spring, the 62-year-old retired schoolteacher decided to travel to Iraq as a human shield. To many she is a humanitarian, but in the eyes of the US Government she is a criminal." [more]

Bush Approval Ratings Slip with Weapons Report

Tom Raum | Associated Press | October 3, 2003

"Kay's inability to find such weapons in three months of searching will make it even harder for the administration to continue to insist that Saddam was an imminent threat — the core argument the White House had made last winter for going to war." [more]

Defiant UN Chief Announces Rival Blueprint for Iraq

James Bone and Roland Watson | Times of London | October 4, 2003

"In a rare act of defiance, Kofi Annan dispatched a senior official to brief reporters on his alternative proposal, which is almost identical to that favoured by Germany and France. Mr Annan’s rejection of the US-British approach has stopped the coalition partners’ draft UN resolution dead in its tracks." [more]

Transcript: Former Ba'th Party Official's Views of Iraq's Future

Abd-al-Mun'im al-A'sam | World News Connection | October 2, 2003

"I believe that any visitor to Iraq now will himself discover that all of the Iraqi population, with all of its various nationalities, religions, and sects, is looking forward to the day when they will be rid of the occupation. This has significance." [more]

Master Key Copying Revealed

John Schwartz | New York Times | January 23, 2003

"A security researcher has revealed a little-known vulnerability in many locks that lets a person create a copy of the master key for an entire building by starting with any key from that building." [more]

US Expert Finds No Banned Weapons in Iraq

John J. Lumpkin | Associated Press | October 2, 2003

"[The US] team had found only limited evidence of any chemical weapons effort, [Kay] said, and there was almost no sign that a significant nuclear weapons project was under way." [more]

In US Setback, Judge Refuses to Drop Moussaoui Case

Kirk Semple | New York Times | October 2, 2003

"Prosecutors argued that Mr. Moussaoui has no right to question witnesses held overseas as enemy combatants. Court-appointed lawyers for Mr. Moussaoui had argued, and the judge agreed, that the prisoners might be able to offer testimony showing that he had no part in the conspiracy." [more]

Transcript: Al-Qa'ida's Abu-Muhammad al-Ablaj on Bin Ladin, Weapons, US Targets

Abu-Muhammad al-Ablaj | World News Connection | September 21, 2003

"The United States invaded the world with the magic of media exaggeration and controlled it by political acumen. Everyone agrees on that. We do not ignore its military power. But it is impossible and difficult for the United States to embroil itself in such wars. The United States was compelled to send its armies or enter into these battles that are exhausting its strength and economy." [more]

Iraq War's Human Toll Could Be Felt for Decades

Brad Knickerbocker | Christian Science Monitor | October 1, 2003

"Beyond fatalities, an average of eight American soldiers a day are wounded." [more]

Israel Seen as Likely to Approve Barrier

Greg Myre | New York Times | October 1, 2003

"Mr. Sharon on Monday expressed his support for building a barrier around the settlement, Ariel, which is about 15 miles inside the West Bank. The measure appears set to win cabinet approval at a session on Wednesday." [more]

FBI Bypasses First Amendment to Nail a Hacker

Mark D. Rasch | Register | September 29, 2003

"The FBI is demanding that reporters preserve every scrap of documentation about everything having to do with Adrian Lamo — and has expressly told them that if they fail to do this for at least three months, and perhaps longer, they can expect to be prosecuted for contempt of court." [more]

Clark Worked with Data Mining Company

Robert O'Harrow Jr. | Washington Post | September 29, 2003

"Retired Gen. Wesley K. Clark helped an Arkansas information company win a contract to assist development of an airline passenger screening system, one of the largest surveillance programs ever devised by the government." [more]

Nuclear Regulatory Agency Lax on Reactor Security

Matthew L. Wald | New York Times | September 29, 2003

"The auditors said that nationwide, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission tended not to issue formal citations and to minimize the significance of problems it found if the problems did not cause actual damage." [more]

Pentagon Agency Belittles Information Given by Iraqi Defectors

Douglas Jehl | New York Times | September 29, 2003

"An internal assessment by the Defense Intelligence Agency has concluded that most of the information provided by Iraqi defectors who were made available by the Iraqi National Congress was of little or no value." [more]

House Committee Concludes Iraq War Data Was Weak

Dana Priest | Washington Post | September 28, 2003

"Leaders of the House intelligence committee have criticized the U.S. intelligence community for using largely outdated, 'circumstantial' and 'fragmentary' information with 'too many uncertainties' to conclude that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction and ties to al Qaeda." [more]

DoJ Investigates White House Over Outing of CIA Operative

Mike Allen and Dana Priest | Washington Post | September 28, 2003

"The Justice Department is looking into an allegation that administration officials leaked the name of an undercover CIA officer to a journalist," with the intent of intimating others from speaking out about the intelligence scandal. [more]

US Uses Terrorism Law to Pursue Unrelated Crimes

Eric Lichtblau | New York Times | September 27, 2003

"The government is using its expanded authority under the far-reaching law to investigate suspected drug traffickers, white-collar criminals, blackmailers, child pornographers, money launderers, spies and even corrupt foreign leaders." [more]

Congress Hides Pentagon Spying Project in Other Agencies

Michael J. Sniffen | Associated Press | September 25, 2003

"The U.S. House of Representatives–Senate conference report on the bill and comments by Senate aides indicated the conferees moved some of the TIA software research and tools to other government agencies for use in gathering foreign intelligence — information about the intentions, plans and capabilities of foreign governments or groups." [more]

27 Israeli Reserve Pilots Refuse to Bomb Civilian Areas

Greg Myre | New York Times | September 25, 2003

" 'We refuse to participate in air force attacks on civilian populations,' said the letter, which was sent to the head of the air force, Maj. Gen. Dan Halutz. 'We refuse to continue harming innocent civilians.' " [more]

US Remains Leader in Global Arms Sales

Thom Shanker | New York Times | September 25, 2003

"The United States was the leader in total worldwide sales in 2002, with about $13.3 billion, or 45.5 percent of global conventional weapons deals, a rise from $12.1 billion in 2001. Of that, $8.6 billion was to developing nations, or about 48.6 percent of conventional arms deals concluded with developing nations last year." [more]

Toothless 'Interim Council' Roars Against the Press

Robert FIsk | Independent | September 24, 2003

"After telling the world that most Iraqis are delighted with their 'liberation' and forthcoming 'democracy', the authorities are obviously aware that many Iraqis don't feel that way at all." [more]

Another Day In The Bloody Death Of Iraq

Robert Fisk | Independent | September 21, 2003

"Often the children are there beside the cheap wooden coffins, screaming and crying and numb with loss. The families weep and they say that no one cares about them and, after expressing our sorrow to them over and over again, I come to the conclusion they are right. No one cares." [more]

Patriot Act Used in 16-Year-Old Deportation Case

R. Jeffrey Smith | Washington Post | September 23, 2003

"The Bush administration has decided to pursue a 16-year-old effort to deport two Palestinian activists who as students distributed magazines and raised funds for a group the government now considers a terrorist organization, despite several court rulings that the deportations are unconstitutional because the men were not involved in terrorist activity." [more]

US Charges Guantánamo Prison Worker With Espionage

Matt Kelley | Associated Press | September 23, 2003

"Espionage and aiding the enemy are military charges that can carry the death penalty, said Eugene Fidell, a civilian lawyer in Washington and president of the National Institute of Military Justice. The commanding general in charge of al-Halabi's case would have to decide whether military prosecutors could seek the death penalty in his case." [more]

Ashcroft Reducing Plea Bargain Discretion

STAFF | Associated Press | September 22, 2003

"The Ashcroft memo said prosecutors will have a 'general duty' to pursue the most serious crimes they feel confident of proving in court. Plea bargains involving lesser charges should be limited -- there are six specific exceptions -- and would frequently have to be approved in writing by a supervisor." [more]

Transcript: Interview with Chirac

STAFF | New York Times | September 22, 2003

"I think that the world is gradually moving towards major blocs, but I think that among these blocs, there are at least two such blocs - Europe and the U.S - that should show solidarity for each other, vis à vis the others, which have a different culture. This is because these two have the same overall culture, the same values and the same overall interests. So even if we are irritated by this or that, it can only be superficial, and the fact is we do share the same values, and as the world changes, it will be even more important tomorrow than today that there should be a strong degree of solidarity between Europe and the United States. Hence the importance I attach to trans-Atlantic ties." [more]

Australia Seeks Nukes

Lincoln Wright | Herald Sun | September 21, 2003

"Scientists working for Silex Systems Ltd, which leases space at the Commonwealth Government's Lucas Heights reactor near Sydney, are developing techniques to enrich uranium with lasers. " [more]

Pakistan President Comments on Export of Al-Khalid Tank

STAFF | World News Connection | September 13, 2003

"He described Al-Khalid and Al-Zarar as cheapest and fine fighting machines, which can be termed more battle-worthy than the western tank. 'I have talked to Turkish and Saudi leadership, as Al-Khalid mass production with a price tag of only $ 2 million, as compared to $ 7 million of any western tank, has started. The tank has already been inducted in the armoured corps.'" [more]

Analysis: Media Complain US 'Unilateralism' Hurting War on Terrorism

STAFF | World News Connection | September 12, 2003

"France's center-right Le Figaro said that on September 11 terrorists declared war on the entire West, and 'there can be no neutrality' despite the shortcomings of US policies. Even strongly antiwar, center-left Le Monde noted the threat for all democracies as it urged the US to 'listen to its allies.' " [more]

Pakistan, Saudi Arabia Need to Work on Common Plan to Thwart US Allegations

EDITORIAL | World News Connection | September 12, 2003

"In fact the entire Islamic World is the target of [Bush's] allegation[s]. Iran and Syria are facing US threats right after its occupation of Baghdad. Now the intensity of these threats against Iran has increased, especially with reference to its nuclear program. The United States is very much concerned with the presence of Islamist groups in Lebanon. Libya is yet to get a pardon from the United States, despite its acceptance of the Lockerbie air crash. Indonesia is also under tremendous pressure because of the Bali blasts. Turkey has tried its best to please the West, but none of the European countries is interested in making a member of the European Union." [more]

Pentagon to Pay Millions for Robot Soldiers

Neil Mackay | Sunday Herald | September 21, 2003

"Essential Viewing's technology has already been tested in the US by the military driving a robot around New York. Hardy said the robot looked like a multi-armed sophisticated bomb disposal vehicle, adding that the technology was down to 'some very scary maths'." [more]

Seeking Honesty in US Policy

Joseph C. Wilson IV | San Jose Mercury News | September 14, 2003

"By trying to justify the current fight in Iraq as a fight against terrorism, the administration has done two frightening things. It has tried to divert attention from Osama bin Laden, the man responsible for the wave of terrorist attacks against American interests from New York and Washington to Yemen. And the policy advanced by the speech is a major step toward creating a dangerous, self-fulfilling prophecy and reflects a fundamental misunderstanding of the facts on the ground." [more]

Iraqi Fear: 'Now We Have 100 Saddams'

Anna Badkhen | San Francisco Chronicle | September 21, 2003

"Killings appear to single out anyone from senior [Ba'ath] party officials to night guards and they have sown fear among party members, forcing some to go into hiding. Iraqi police, overwhelmed by the violence that has engulfed the country in the past few months, do not have the ability to sort out the various possible motives for the killings." [more]

How Not to Deal with Arafat

EDITORIAL | Sydney Morning Herald | September 22, 2003

"So, Yasser Arafat is the man responsible for the killing of Israeli civilians. Kill him, and the killing of Israeli civilians will stop. If only it were that simple. Terrorism must be met by forceful preventive measures, but it cannot be ended by responding with force alone, or wild threats." [more]

US Refuses Indonesia Access to Suspected Bali Bomber

Marian Wilkinson | Sydney Morning Herald | September 22, 2003

"The US decision to refuse access to Hambali came as The New York Times reported that Hambali ... had told CIA interrogators of plans to attack two US hotels and commercial airliners in Bangkok, in the lead-up to the APEC summit there next month." [more]

Iraq's Occupiers Suspected of Losing Touch with Reality

Robert Fisk | Independent | September 20, 2003

"An increasing number of journalists in Baghdad now suspect that US proconsul Paul Bremmer and his hundreds of assistants ensconced in the heavily guarded former presidential palace of Saddam Hussein in the capital, have simply lost touch with reality." [more]

Analysis: US-Israel-India: Strategic Axis?

Louise Tillin | British Broadcasting Corporation | September 9, 2003

"New lobbying groups dedicated to promoting India's interests in Washington, such as the US-India Political Action Committee set up in September 2002, are increasingly working with Jewish groups such as the American Jewish Committee to promote what they say are India and Israel's common concerns and values. The AJC is planning to open a permanent liaison office in India this year and has been helping to train Indian Americans in the art of lobbying." [more]

Guantánamo Base Chaplain in Detention

Coralie Carlson | Associated Press | September 20, 2003

"Yee is being held at a military brig in Charleston, S.C., Crosson said. That is the same place where officials are holding Yaser Esam Hamdi, an American-born Saudi who allegedly fought with the Taliban, and José Padilla, a former Chicago gang member charged with plotting to detonate a radioactive 'dirty bomb.' " [more]

White House Ambushed by Criticism from Military Community

Andrew Gumbel | Independent | September 20, 2003

" 'I once believed that I served for a cause: "To uphold and defend the Constitution of the United States." Now I no longer believe that,' Tim Predmore, a member of the 101st Airborne Division serving near Mosul, wrote ... 'I can no longer justify my service for what I believe to be half-truths and bold lies.' " [more]

Another Day, Another Death-Trap for US

Robert Fisk | Independent | September 19, 2003

"There were three separate ambushes in Khaldiya and the guerrillas showed a new sophistication. Even as I left the scene of the killings after dark, US army flares were dripping over the semi-desert plain 100 miles west of Baghdad while red tracer fire raced along the horizon behind the palm trees. It might have been a scene from a Vietnam movie, even an archive newsreel clip; for this is now tough, lethal guerrilla country for the Americans, a death-trap for them almost every day." [more]

US Soldier Kills Baghdad Tiger After Colleague Clawed

STAFF | Reuters | September 20, 2003

"The night watchman said the soldiers had arrived in military vehicles but were casually dressed and were drinking beer. At the tiger's cage, now empty, pools of blood showed that the soldier passed through a first cage intended only for keepers and stood next to the inner cage's narrow bars." [more]

Eight Civilians Killed in US Strike on Taliban

Sayed Salahuddin | Reuters | September 20, 2003

"The civilians died in their beds when a bomb landed on their tent in Naw Bahar district of the southern province of Zabul on Wednesday night." [more]

Saudis Consider Nuclear Bomb

Ewen MacAskill and Ian Traynor | Guardian | September 18, 2003

"Until now, the assumption in Washington was that Saudi Arabia was content to remain under the US nuclear umbrella. But the relationship between Saudi Arabia and the US has steadily worsened since the September 11 attacks on New York and Washington." [more]

Transcript: German Interior Minister on Deportations, Detainees, Iraqi Aid

Holger Stark and Georg Mascolo | Der Spiegel | September 15, 2003

"I certainly cannot make an offer of which Washington would take notice. The Americans listen to criticism and then act as they see fit. I think it is obvious that there must ultimately be a procedure through which an objective judicial entity decides whether a specific person constitutes a threat, and that such a person also needs legal counsel in that procedure. Otherwise fundamental principles are lost." [more]

Transcript: What is Happening is an Absolute Slaughter Every Night of Iraqi People

Robert Fisk | Democracy Now! | September 18, 2003

"I'm just watching two Apache helicopters as I speak to you now just flying over the buildings in front of me, on 'antiterrorist patrol', as it's called. There is a real guerilla war underway here, and when you are on the ground you realize it's moving out of control. Washington is still trying to present this as a success story and it's not, anymore than Afghanistan." [more]

Burning Man Counterculture Seeks Social, Political Influence

Don Thompson | Associated Press | September 1, 2003

"It's time to try to influence the very culture against which this year's record 30,500 Burning Man participants rebelled, the phenomenon's founder and resident visionary said in an interview." [more]

FBI Plans Counterterrorism Database

Dan Eggen | Washington Post | September 17, 2003

"The master watch list will be tapped by thousands of federal law enforcement officers and many others ? from small-town cops making traffic stops to airport workers screening passengers to personnel managers checking on applicants for jobs at nuclear plants." [more]

US May Be Detaining Americans, Britons in Iraq

STAFF | Reuters | September 17, 2003

"A spokesman in Iraq did not specify how many were being held but U.S. defense officials in Washington said six people claiming American nationality and two who said they were British were in detention at the Abu Ghraib prison west of Baghdad." [more]

US Considers 'Regime Change' for Syria

Timothy M. Phelps | Newsday | September 17, 2003

"Bolton testified that Syria and Libya had weapons of mass destruction programs that must be 'rolled back' and eliminated. [He] said diplomacy is the administration's preferred approach but that 'every tool in our nonproliferation toolbox' was an option. Bolton refused to rule out 'regime change' as an administration option in Syria." [more]

Senior US Official to Level Charges Against Syria

Judith Miller | New York Times | September 15, 2003

"The testimony also alleges that Syria has 'a stockpile of the nerve agent sarin that can be delivered by aircraft or ballistic missiles, and has engaged in the research and development of more toxic and persistent nerve agents such as VX.' Syria is not a party to the international treaty banning chemical weapons." [more]

Terrorism Law Nabs Common Criminals

STAFF | Associated Press | September 14, 2003

"In the two years since law enforcement agencies gained fresh powers to help them track down and punish terrorists, police and prosecutors have increasingly turned the force of the new laws not on al-Qaida cells but on people charged with common crimes." [more]

Lessons of a Catastrophe

Ariel Dorfman | Nation | September 11, 2003

"Thirty years ago, Chile was a democracy, yet tyranny triumphed—in the name of fighting terror." [more]

Bush's Unreality Show

EDITORIAL | Nation | September 29, 2003

"Bush did not mention [in his speech] that Saddam Hussein's ouster, rather than dealing a blow to Al Qaeda, was followed by a rise in terrorism in Iraq and an influx of jihadists primed to strike at the United States, or that the war may have succeeded in uniting Baathist secularists and Islamic fundamentalists, something even Saddam couldn't do." [more]

Dizzying Dive to Red Ink Poses Stark Choices for Washington

David Firestone | New York Times | September 14, 2003

"Congressional Republicans deny the Democratic charge that the deficit was deliberately created to shrink government, but nonetheless acknowledge that it will be a useful tool to achieve that goal." [more]

US Military Fears Exodus of Army Reserves in Wake of Iraq

Sarah Kershaw | New York Times | September 15, 2003

"Military officials [are] deeply worried about an exodus from the state-based National Guards and the reserves of the nation's armed forces. Since 9/11, hundreds of thousands of citizen soldiers have been mobilized at a level thought to be the highest since World War II." [more]

Israeli Vice Minister Says Killing Arafat 'One of the Options'

Greg Myre | New York Times | September 15, 2003

The vice prime minister's remarks "amounted to the most explicit description of options Israel is considering for dealing with Mr. Arafat since Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's government decided 'in principle' to remove him, leaving the timing and type of action deliberately vague." [more]

Angry Iraqi Town Buries Nine Police Killed by US

Suleiman al-Khalidi | Reuters | September 13, 2003

"Witnesses said a joint patrol of local police and a U.S.-trained security force were chasing thieves shortly after midnight on Friday when U.S. soldiers opened fire on them." [more]

Resolution on Iraq Delayed Over UN or US Rule

Steven R. Weisman | New York Times | September 13, 2003

"The United States and other leading nations on the Security Council held intensive discussions over the future governance of Iraq today but failed to break the impasse over France's insistence that Iraq's transition to self-rule be overseen by the United Nations rather than the American occupation." [more]

Al Jazeera Airs Scoops Despite Criticism

Sarah El Deeb | Associated Press | September 11, 2003

"The pan-Arab station, operating since 1996, was funded by the Qatari government but has shown an editorial independence and aggressiveness that were remarkable in a region where governments usually dictate what goes on the air." [more]

Two Lost Years

EDITORIAL | Guardian | September 11, 2003

"Just as there is a terrorist threat in Iraq where none previously existed, so the clash of civilisations predicted two years ago is more nearly a reality than it was then. Just as Mr Bush's cynical exaggeration of Iraq's WMD threat and 9/11 links has eroded trust in him at home, so has it shattered European and Arab confidence that the US can be a dependable friend, not a reckless juggernaut." [more]

India, Israel and US Part of 'Axis Against Terrorism'

Press Trust of India | Hindustan Times | September 10, 2003

"Israel on Wednesday said that an 'unwritten and abstract' axis with India and the United States has been created to combat international terrorism and make the world a more secure place for all." [more]

A Challenge that Remains Ungrasped

Rami G. Khouri | Daily Star | September 10, 2003

"The very different forces of Islamist terrorism and American militarism operate according to peculiarly similar criteria: They see the whole world as their legitimate battlefield; they paint their actions in a context of divine mandates and existential struggles for the triumph of good over evil; they cater explicitly to their public opinions and exaggerate fears and threats from the other and, most troublingly, they repeatedly misdiagnose the motives and miscalculate the reactions of the other." [more]

Bush Aides Admit Serious Mistakes on Iraq

Wayne Washington | Boston Globe | September 9, 2003

"Senior administration officials for the first time acknowledged that they vastly underestimated the damage to [Iraq's] infrastructure and greatly overestimated the amount of oil revenue that could be used to help rebuild the war-torn country. The disclosures ... mark the administration's strongest acknowledgment to date that it failed to fully comprehend the complexities of rebuilding Iraq." [more]

Scientists Refuse to Get Paid for Killer Ideas

Erik Baard | Village Voice | September 10, 2003

"Clusters of scientists shut the laboratory door on the military half a century ago in reaction to the horrors of atomic bombs, and again decades later in disgust with the Vietnam War. But today such refuseniks are rare and scattered—in large part, they say, because so many of their colleagues doing basic research are addicted to military money." [more]

A Path of Lies

Lakshmi Chaudhry and Christopher Scheer | AlterNet | September 9, 2003

"The 288 American soldiers and countless Iraqis who have since died in a pointless, bloody war will not be mentioned, nor will the administration's own responsibility in their deaths. Of all the lies this administration has told its people, one false promise resonated most deeply with frightened Americans — the promise that a war with Iraq would make us safer." [more]

Army Reservists in Iraq Ordered to Stay Up to One Year

Vernon Loeb and Steve Vogel | Washington Post | September 9, 2003

"The order comes after months of concern inside and outside the Army that an over-reliance on Guard and Reserve forces by the Bush administration in the war on terrorism could adversely affect retention and recruiting. Some officials have expressed concern that this could break the Guard and Reserve system, which augments the active-duty force with critical engineering, military police, civil affairs and psychological operations specialists." [more]

Costs of War in Iraq, Afghanistan Approach Levels of Vietnam

Dave Moniz | USA Today | September 7, 2003

"Lawmakers of both parties warned before the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq that stabilizing post-war Iraq could be far more expensive than waging war. For months, the Bush administration was reluctant to discuss the financial costs of the commitment, much as the Johnson administration seldom directly addressed the budget impact of Vietnam." [more]

Half-Trillion Dollar Deficit Still Not Enough to Fund Iraq

Warren Vieth and Esther Schrader | Los Angeles Times | September 8, 2003

"The White House acknowledged Monday that it substantially underestimated the cost of rebuilding Iraq, and that even the additional $87 billion it is seeking from a wary Congress will fall far short of what is needed for postwar reconstruction." [more]

Iraqi Weapons Report May Have Been True

STAFF | Agence France-Presse | September 9, 2003

"More than four months after US President George W. Bush declared victory in Iraq, former chief UN weapons inspector Hans Blix said facts presented by Iraq in the 12,000-page document may have been accurate." [more]

Iraq Takes Seat at Arab League Meeting

Salah Nasrawi | Associated Press | September 9, 2003

"Zebari, an Iraqi Kurd, sat down at the league's circular table behind little Iraqi flag, becoming Iraq's first envoy to the league since Saddam Hussein was overthrown in April." [more]

Iran Gets 'Last Chance' to Reveal Weapons Program

Louis Charbonneau | Reuters | September 9, 2003

"The draft resolution demand[s] Iran demonstrate full compliance with the Non-Proliferation Treaty, which Washington says Tehran has violated. The toughly-worded draft, circulated at a closed-door meeting of the governing board of the International Atomic Energy Agency's board of governors, also called on Iran to 'suspend all further uranium enrichment activities.' " [more]

Radical Webmaster Sentenced to Year in Federal Prison

Sherman Austin | Why War? | August 6, 2003

"Remember, fascism and a police state doesn't come all at once, it comes piece by piece. How far will we allow it go until we are all locked up in concentration camps? If we don't take matters into our own hands and do something about this now, then we are already prisoners of war." [more]

Transcript: Hard Talk On Labor Day

William Rivers Pitt | Truthout | September 1, 2003

"It can be argued that globalization is inevitable, especially given the incredible technological leaps forward we make, seemingly on an hourly basis. But if that globalization is allowed to continue without giving workers around the world the ability to unionize, to fight for a living wage, to strike for the right to improve their lot, workers here in America and around the world will reap the whirlwind, will find their backs broken at the expense of bosses who have been historically allergic to giving their employees the rights they so richly deserve." [more]

Coalition Forces Close in on Regrouped Taliban

Victoria Burnett and Peter Spiegel | Financial Times | September 1, 2003

"Despite a 22-month military campaign against the Taliban, the militant group has staged a series of increasingly audacious and brutal attacks on military and civilian targets that has alarmed the government of President Hamid Karzai and frustrated US officials. Afghan officials have been troubled by the resurgent group's ability to muster increasingly large forces in the remote hills that straddle the Afghan-Pakistani border, and Kabul's and Washington's patience with Islamabad has worn thin." [more]

Black-Ops Budget Increases Dramatically

Dan Morgan | Washington Post | August 27, 2003

"Classified spending next fiscal year will reach about $23.2 billion of the Pentagon's total request for procurement and research funding. When adjusted for inflation, that is the largest dollar figure since the peak reached during President Ronald Reagan's defense buildup 16 years ago." [more]

A Deadly Franchise

Naomi Klein | Guardian | August 28, 2003

"This appears to be the true message of Bush's war franchise: why negotiate with your political opponents when you can annihilate them? In the era of [the war on terrorism], concerns such as war crimes and human rights just don't register." [more]

Aid Agencies Evacuate Workers from Iraq

Julian Borger | Guardian | August 27, 2003

"The withdrawal came as the US death toll from the postwar occupation rose above the number killed in the invasion itself." [more]

Deepening Doubts on Iraq

EDITORIAL | Los Angeles Times | August 29, 2003

"Nearly 300 American personnel and dozens of British soldiers, plus U.N. officials and untold numbers of Iraqis, [may] have died due to incredibly bad or corrupted intelligence." [more]

Blue Man Group

Robert Lane Greene | New Republic | August 27, 2003

"Most people don't realize just how frequently the United Nations puts itself between trigger-happy combatants around the globe ... [yet] which do most people associate with the United Nations? The ones in which U.N. troops failed to prevent disaster." [more]

Eight Lies

Michael Tomasky | American Prospect | August 21, 2003

"Only one thing ever said by the White House is true, which is that Saddam Hussein was a brutal dictator. That he was. And so now, eight lies later, the administration falls back on this rhetoric, which is obviously the Republican National Committee's No. 1 talking point: Would you rather ... that Saddam Hussein still be in power butchering his people? This is the question of a demagogue, a shill or an idiot." [more]

Ailing Immigrant Wasted Away as a Federal Detainee

Alisa Solomon | Village Voice | August 27, 2003

"Congress passed harsh laws in 1996 that mandated detention for virtually all "criminal aliens"—noncitizens convicted of committing crimes—and also expanded the list of crimes deemed deportable offenses. That created a sudden surge in the numbers of detainees, who were crowded into jails that weren't always properly equipped to handle them. Post–9-11 crackdowns since then have made it even harder for detainees to win release." [more]

US May Have Been 'Totally Duped' on Iraqi Weapons Intelligence

Bob Drogin | Los Angeles Times | August 28, 2003

"Although senior CIA officials insist that defectors were only partly responsible for the intelligence that triggered the decision to invade Iraq in March, other intelligence officials now fear that key portions of the prewar information may have been flawed. The issue raises fresh doubts as to whether illicit weapons will be found in Iraq." [more]

Iraqi Civil War Brewing

William O. Beeman | Pacific News Service | August 29, 2003

"Shi'a fury will be directed at the Sunnis to the north. It will also be directed toward United States as the occupying force who both did nothing to prevent this tragedy, and further continued the British doctrine of Sunni favoritism by insisting that the Shi'a religious leaders would never be allowed to come to power. [T]he forces of retribution are about to be unleashed in a manner hitherto unseen in the region." [more]

The War After the War

Jack Beatty | Atlantic Monthly | August 21, 2003

"The U.S. occupation is too weak to restore order or maintain basic services, yet oppressive enough to kill, injure, and inflame Iraqi civilians. In the months since the war Baghdad has become 'another Beirut,' a blow to Iraqi pride for which Iraqis blame the United States. And the situation is likely to get worse." [more]

Fear Emptying Immigrant Enclaves

Gaiutra Bahadur | Philadelphia Inquirer | August 18, 2003

"The [Canadian] government provided Butt with an attorney to plead his asylum case, health benefits, and, until he finds work, a housing allowance. He has applied for three factory jobs. Asylum-seekers in the United States, by contrast, must wait six months to work, relying on charity in the meantime. Sometimes they end up in jail as their case winds through the courts." [more]

Congressional GOP Moves to Curb Ashcroft's Powers

Dan Eggen and Jim VandeHei | Washington Post | August 29, 2003

"Ashcroft has always been one of the Bush administration's most controversial figures ... but now the attorney general finds himself at odds with some fellow Republicans from Idaho to Capitol Hill who are troubled by the extent of his anti-terrorism tactics and angered by his unwillingness to compromise." [more]

At Least 95 Dead in Najaf Explosion

Anthony Shadid and Daniel Williams | Washington Post | August 29, 2003

"The death of [Ayatollah Mohammed Bakir Hakim], the most influential Iraqi cleric openly allied with the U.S.-led occupation, dealt a severe blow to U.S. efforts to build a representative postwar government ... [it] left a panorama of misery and devastation unparalleled since the fall of Hussein's government on April 9. The brick facades of shops were sheared away. Cars were flipped and hurled onto the sidewalk. Burned, mangled and dismembered bodies littered the street, trampled as others ran in confusion and panic for safety. " [more]

Halliburton's Iraq Awards Worth $1.7b

Michael Dobbs | Washington Post | August 28, 2003

"The size and scope of the government contracts awarded to Halliburton in connection with the war in Iraq are significantly greater than previously disclosed and demonstrate the U.S. military's increasing reliance on for-profit corporations to run its logistical operations." [more]

EPA Report Following Sept. 11 Censored by White House

Marc Kaufman | Washington Post | August 27, 2003

"The EPA inspector general said the agency was persuaded by the White House to omit cautionary language about the possible hazards from air pollutants such as asbestos, cadmium and lead after the World Trade Center towers fell. In addition, the report said the EPA omitted from early public statements guidance for the professional cleaning of indoor spaces, leading some people to return to their homes before they had been properly cleaned." [more]

A Weapons Cache We'll Never See

Scott Ritter | New York Times | August 25, 2003

"Today, with the tremendous controversy over the administration's pre-war assertions, it is impossible to overstate the importance of the archive that produced Iraq's 12,500 pages of claims that comprise the most detailed record of Iraq's weapons programs." [more]

An Unpatriotic Act

EDITORIAL | New York Times | August 25, 2003

"When the Patriot Act raced through Congress after Sept. 11, critics warned that it was an unprecedented expansion of the government's right to spy on ordinary Americans. The more people have learned about the law, the greater the calls have been for overhauling it." [more]

We Have Ways of Making You Talk

Christopher Dickey | Newsweek | August 22, 2003

"The United States figures it can get plenty out of the newly captured Chemical Ali. But how? And are these 'interrogation' techniques being readied for American citizens?" [more]

A Commitment and a True Coalition to Rebuild Iraq

Fareed Zakaria | Newsweek | September 1, 2003

"Washington’s Plan A clearly isn’t working. The fighting is far from over in Iraq. But there’s no walking away. The administration needs to have a clear, long-term commitment, the backing of the United Nations and more than a little help from its friends." [more]

Analysis: When is Enough Enough?

Jennifer Barrett | Newsweek | August 23, 2003

"Americans say they’re spending too much in Iraq with too little to show for it. And with the 2004 approaching, Bush is losing ground." [more]

King Rally Calls for Continued Social Justice

Lynette Clemetson and Steven A. Holmes | New York Times | August 24, 2003

"It is a movement that is more diverse, yet less integrated. It is desirous of new blood, yet often out of touch with younger people. It is embracing new political causes, yet fighting to maintain its political influence. And many of the issues on the current agenda are far more subtle and complex, less easy to package, than the right to register to vote without fear of injury or death." [more]

US Recruiting Hussein's Spies

Anthony Shadid and Daniel Williams | Washington Post | August 24, 2003

"The extraordinary move to recruit agents of former president Saddam Hussein's security services underscores a growing recognition among U.S. officials that American military forces — already stretched thin — cannot alone prevent attacks like the devastating truck bombing of the U.N. headquarters this past week." [more]

New Ashcroft Law Broadens Powers Further

Dean Schabner | ABC News | August 20, 2003

"The measure would give law enforcement increased subpoena powers and more leeway over wire-tap evidence and on classifying some drug offenses as terrorism. 'This bill would allow the government to prosecute most drug cases as terrorism cases,' [one congressional aide said]." [more]

Pilotless Plane to Fly Routinely in Civilian Airspace

Duncan Graham-Rowe | New Scientist | August 21, 2003

"Pentagon data on the number of crashes per hours flown show that the Global Hawk has a crash rate 50 times higher than the F-16 fighter, a plane that frequently flies more dangerous missions and at lower altitudes." [more]

Analysis: Security No Longer Safe Issue for Bush in '04

Dana Milbank and Mike Allen | Washington Post | August 22, 2003

"Bush ... made the peaceful transformation of the Middle East the main justification for war in Iraq. With the failure to find forbidden weapons in Iraq, Bush and his aides have said the invasion of Iraq will allow it to become the linchpin of a stable and democratic Middle East. As a result, continued violence in Iraq and the Middle East would deprive the administration of another key justification for the war." [more]

A Mission Imperiled

EDITORIAL | New York Times | August 20, 2003

"Yesterday's attack, the worst in U.N. history, was another sign that surly, chaotic postwar Iraq is becoming a magnet for terrorists. That is yet another consequence of the Iraq war that the Bush administration failed to anticipate, like the uncontrolled postwar looting, the delays in restoring water and electricity, the ambushes of American soldiers and the sabotage of infrastructure." [more]

IMF, World Bank 'to Quit Iraq'

Peter Spiegel and Farhan Bokhari | Financial Times | August 20, 2003

"The World Bank and the International Monetary Fund are to pull their staff out of Iraq after the devastating bomb attack on the UN headquarters in Baghdad. Some countries that had been considering sending peacekeeping troops to Iraq might heighten their reluctance after the bomb blast." [more]

Magnet for Evil

Maureen Dowd | New York Times | August 20, 2003

"The Bush team has now created the very monster that it conjured up to alarm Americans into backing a war on Iraq. Before the Iraq war, the Bush team inflated the threats to America; since the war, the Bush team has deflated the threats to America." [more]

Saudis in Iraq 'Preparing for a Holy War'

Mark Huband | Financial Times | August 19, 2003

"Saudis who have gone to Iraq have established links with sympathetic Iraqis in the northern area between Baghdad, Mosul and Tikrit, where they have hidden in safe-houses." [more]

How America Created a Terrorist Haven

Jessica Stern | New York Times | August 20, 2003

"America has created ... precisely the situation the Bush administration has described as a breeding ground for terrorists: a state unable to control its borders or provide for its citizens' rudimentary needs." [more]

The Two Cowards

Amos Oz | New York Times | August 19, 2003

"Public opinion surveys both in Israel and Palestine consistently show that a clear majority on both sides endorses the cease-fire, supports the road map to peace and favors the idea of a two-state solution, Israel next to Palestine." [more]

The Syrian Bet

Seymour M. Hersh | New Yorker | July 28, 2003

Did the Bush Administration burn a useful source on Al Qaeda? [more]

Killing of Journalist Prompts Calls for Inquiry of Military

Sarah Lyall | New York Times | August 18, 2003

"The cameraman was the second Reuters journalist to be killed in Iraq since the invasion began on March 20. His colleague died on April 8 when an American tank fired a shell at the Palestine Hotel in Baghdad, from which Mr. Protsyuk was filming the United States advance into the city center." [more]

Analysis: Behind the Hambali Hype, Tension Rises

Philip Bowring | International Herald Tribune | August 19, 2003

"Any arrest of genuine terror plotters reduces the likelihood of further attacks. But the decentralized nature of the cells and the variety of motives and objectives behind them suggests that the arrest of Hambali, while important symbolically, will of itself do little to reduce regional threats." [more]

Bush Revises Views On 'Combat' in Iraq

Dana Milbank and Bradley Graham | Washington Post | August 19, 2003

"The description of active combat in Iraq was one of several statements Bush made in the interview that differed with earlier administration positions." [more]

UN Envoy Killed in Baghdad Blast

Dexter Filkins and Richard A. Oppel, Jr. | New York Times | August 19, 2003

"Up to 50 people were wounded in the blast, and body parts were scattered around the rubble, a witness said. The witness added that he had seen bodies being dragged out of the rubble, and American soldiers sent to the scene pulling sheets over the faces of others lying on the ground." [more]

Analysis: What Is a Neo-Conservative Anyway?

Jim Lobe | Asia Times | August 13, 2003

"With all the attention paid to neo-conservatives in the international media nowadays, one would think that there would be a standard definition of the term. Yet, despite their now being credited with a virtual takeover of US foreign policy under President George W Bush, a common understanding of the term remains elusive." [more]

Not a Dress Rehearsal

EDITORIAL | Economist | August 14, 2003

"Osama bin Laden and Mullah Omar, the Taliban leader, remain unaccounted for, and the south of the country is getting more dangerous, not less. Major operations ... often result in coralling a few men, who may be terrorists or, just as easily, shepherds. Detainees are spirited off to the Bagram base, north of Kabul, and interrogated. Several have died there. But as major combat dies down, questions are sure to be asked about the cost-effectiveness of what the coalition is up to, given that the Americans are spending $10 billion or so a year on it." [more]

Manifest Destiny Warmed Up?

EDITORIAL | Economist | August 14, 2003

"People nowadays are not willing to bow down before an emperor, even a benevolent one, in order to be democratised. They will protest, and the ensuing pain will be felt by the imperial power as well as by its subjects. For Americans, the pain will not be just a matter of budget deficits and body bags; it will also be a blow to the very heart of what makes them American—their constitutional belief in freedom." [more]

US to Let Iraq Manage Own Oil

Warren Vieth | Los Angeles Times | August 18, 2003

"The move could disappoint those who viewed the ouster of Saddam Hussein as an opportunity to set Iraqi oil policy on a pro-American course, open the nation's oil sector to Western companies and reduce the influence of OPEC on world oil production and prices." [more]

Quashed DoD Report Urged Intervention in Liberia

Maggie Farley, Ann Simmons and Paul Richter | Los Angeles Times | August 17, 2003

"The team urged that the United States immediately deploy a 2,300-strong Marine Expeditionary Unit to stabilize the country and protect civilians amid a vicious civil war, said several U.S. officials familiar with the report. Two hundred Marines arrived in the country Thursday, five weeks after the call for urgent action." [more]

Shiite Clerics Urge Nonviolent Resistance

Drew Brown and Hannah Allam | Knight Ridder/Tribune Wire | August 16, 2003

" 'America did not come here to liberate Iraq, as some misguided people think,' said Sheikh Abdul Hadi al Daraji. 'The United States does not seek the goodwill of Muslims and Arab people. They did not come here for the interests of Iraqi people, but for their own designs.' " [more]

Foreign 'Crises' Show Limits of US Power

Howard LaFranchi | Christian Science Monitor | July 30, 2003

"The return of a multilateral tilt signifies a correction after the Iraq war, according to some analysts. These observers also say it reveals how the US has lost ground in some central goals, and is now playing catch-up. One of those buffeted priorities is the international war on terrorism." [more]

Pakistan Groups Rally for Jihad

Scott Baldauf | Christian Science Monitor | August 18, 2003

"For Pakistanis who support the US-led war on terrorism, and for Washington, [jihadist rallies are] a troubling sign that Pakistan remains a breeding ground for extremist groups and for an ideology of cultural war shared by Al Qaeda." [more]

Indonesian Terrorist Group Still Potent

Dan Murphy | Christian Science Monitor | August 18, 2003

"Thai officials say Hambali is currently in US custody, though the US refused to say where upon announcing his arrest last Thursday. US Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage ... said it would be 'foolish' to believe the threat has evaporated with Hambali's arrest." [more]

US to Send 'Sharp Signal' to N. Korea in Naval Exercise

Steven R. Weisman | New York Times | August 18, 2003

"[The] exercise would consist in part of ships and helicopters practicing the 'nonpermissive boarding' of ships suspected of carrying drugs, missile components, nuclear materials and other items that the United States says are being imported or sold by North Korea. Some diplomats are known to worry that [such] exercises ... might be seen as provocative by the government of Kim Jong Il in North Korea, and perhaps by China and Russia." [more]

Attacks in Iraq May Signal New Tactics

John Tierney and Robert F. Worth | New York Times | August 18, 2003

"A pipeline supplying much of Baghdad's water was blown up this weekend, a huge new fire was set off along an oil pipeline, and a mortar attack on a prison left 6 Iraqis dead and 59 wounded." [more]

Liberia Near Peace Accord

Edward Harris | Associated Press | August 18, 2003

"The deal would call for current President Moses Blah to cede power by October, handing control over to the interim government. That government would see Liberia through elections. The two rebel movements and the government would be shut out of the top administration posts of chairman and vice chairmanship." [more]

Army Admits Killing Cameraman

Tarek Al-Issawi | Associated Press | August 18, 2003

"[The cameraman] was the 17th news organization employee to be killed since the war began. The videotape in [his] camera showed two U.S. tanks coming toward him. Shots were fired, apparently from the tanks, and [he] fell to the ground. His body was taken away by a U.S. helicopter. 'There were many journalists around. They knew we were journalists. This was not an accident,' [a witness] said." [more]

Democracy Might Be Impossible, US Was Told

Bryan Bender | Boston Globe | August 14, 2003

"The CIA's March report concluded that Iraqi society and history showed little evidence to support the creation of democratic institutions, going so far as to say its prospects for democracy could be 'impossible,' according to intelligence officials who have seen it. The assessment was based on Iraq's history of repression and war; clan, tribal and religious conflict; and its lack of experience as a viable country prior to its arbitrary creation as a monarchy by British colonialists after World War I." [more]

Erecting a Barrier to Peace

Daniel Seidemann | Washington Post | August 14, 2003

"The barrier will leave 300,000 Palestinians on the 'Israeli' side of the wall. Twenty thousand Palestinian residents of Jerusalem — Israelis in the eyes of Israeli law — live outside the fence, denied virtually all municipal and governmental services." [more]

The Bush Deceit

Peter D. Zimmerman | Washington Post | August 14, 2003

"If the Bush administration had been wrong only about the Niger purchase, it would have indicated carelessness. But the references to nuclear weapons, taken as a whole, indicate dissatisfaction with the truth of the matter and a disregard for inconvenient facts." [more]

Pentagon Criticized Opposing Troop Pay Raise

Robert Burns | Associated Press | August 14, 2003

"Presidential contenders and congressional Democrats criticized the Pentagon on Thursday for opposing legislation that would extend an increase in combat pay for troops in Iraq and other war zones." [more]

Terror's Gains

EDITORIAL | Baltimore Sun | August 13, 2003

"Since the war, Iraq has started to look like a fertile ground for terrorists. The American invasion made this possible. The United States has created what it went to war to prevent." [more]

Indonesia to Further Tighten Restrictive Anti-Terrorism Laws

John Aglionby | Guardian | August 14, 2003

"A cabinet committee [will] assess how to toughen the law passed in the wake of last year's Bali bombing which allows detention for up to six months without charge based on intelligence reports." [more]

US Soldiers Fire Into Baghdad Crowd

Tarek Al-Issawi | Associated Press | August 14, 2003

"Video footage ... showed a Black Hawk helicopter hovering a few feet from the top of [a] tower and apparently trying to tear down [an Islamic] banner. Later, US Humvees drove by and the crowd threw stones at them. Heavy gunfire could be heard and demonstrators were seen diving to the ground." [more]

Liberians 'Liberate' Food Supplies

Rory Carroll | Guardian | August 14, 2003

"Entire districts of the Liberian capital were clogged with people who carried, dragged, pushed and wheeled what they could, as rebels fired in the air and waved knives in a vain effort to stop the chaos." [more]

Gamma-Ray Weapons Could Trigger Next Arms Race

David Hambling | New Scientist | August 13, 2003

"The effect of a nuclear-isomer explosion would be to release high-energy gamma rays capable of killing any living thing in the immediate area. This material could cause long-term health problems for anybody who breathed it in." [more]

Schwarzenegger No One-Dimensional Character

Terry M. Neal | Washington Post | August 13, 2003

"Recently, U.S. English [a group for which Schwarzenegger sits on the board of advisors] has come under the scrutiny of watchdog groups such as the Southern Poverty Law Center for its hiring of [James] Lubinskas in March. [He] has long ties to right-wing nationalist groups, such as American Friends of the British Nationalist Party. The Summer 2000 edition of the AFBNP newsletter describes a meeting in which Lubinskas shared a stage with former Louisiana Klansman David Duke." [more]

Navy Dolphins Swim Sentinel in Persian Gulf

Adnan Malik | Associated Press | August 11, 2003

" 'If there are any uninvited guests — swimmers and divers — trying to cause harm to U.S. and coalition naval assets, the dolphins can detect and locate them,' said Lt. Josh Frey, a spokesman of the 5th Fleet." [more]

US Military Pioneers Death Ray Bomb

David Adam and Suzanne Goldenberg | Guardian | August 14, 2003

"Such weapons would allow military commanders to increase firepower without being forced to push the nuclear button. Experts have warned that if the US scientists succeed in building a gamma ray bomb, it could force other countries to start nuclear programmes, or worse, encourage those who already possess nuclear weapons to use them." [more]

Study of Bush's Psyche Touches a Nerve

Julian Borger | Guardian | August 13, 2003

"One of the psychologists behind the study, Jack Glaser, said the aversion to shades of grey and the need for 'closure' could explain the fact that the Bush administration ignored intelligence that contradicted its beliefs about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction." [more]

US Families Want Troops Home

David Bamford | British Broadcasting Corporation | August 14, 2003

"The Pentagon has been making it increasingly clear that while the war is over in Iraq, the peace is far from won. But now some Americans have had enough, and have started the campaign to bring the troops home." [more]

Sixty-One Killed in Upsurge in Afghan Violence

Hamida Ghafour | Telegraph | August 14, 2003

"Pressure is growing to dispatch more soldiers from the international force to bring stability to the anarchic provinces outside Kabul." [more]

'Missile' Arrest Criticized as Setup

Brian Ross | ABC News | August 13, 2003

"The missile shipped into the New York area last month was not a real missile — just a mockup — arranged entirely by the government. The government also arranged the meetings at a New Jersey hotel and elsewhere, where Lakhani allegedly told undercover agents posing as al Qaeda terrorists about his support of bin Laden. 'One would have to ask yourself, would this have occurred at all without the government?' said [one] criminal defense attorney." [more]

The Parade of the Body Bags

Paul de Rooij | CounterPunch | August 9, 2003

"The first evidence that the home-team body count is being whitewashed has to do with the 'cause of death.' There are increasing reports that soldiers killed due to hostile action are listed by the Pentagon as killed in accidents." [more]

Analysis: Depiction of Threat Outgrew Supporting Evidence

Barton Gellman and Walter Pincus | Washington Post | August 10, 2003

"According to knowledgeable U.S. and overseas sources, experts from U.S. national laboratories reported in December to the Energy Department and U.S. intelligence analysts that Iraq was manufacturing copies of the [missle]. Not only [its] alloy, but also its dimensions, to the fraction of a millimeter, matched the disputed aluminum tubes." [more]

Bush to Sidestep Senate on Mideast Scholar

Adam Entous | Reuters | August 12, 2003

"Pipe's nomination has been stalled for months in the Senate, where key Democrats objected to his controversial statements and writings defending racial and religious profiling and suggestions that mosques in America should be targets of police surveillance." [more]

The Cancellation of Democracy

Bob Guldin | Baltimore Sun | August 8, 2003

"No matter how you rationalize it — budget shortfalls, election schedules or partisan politics — the prospect of multiple states calling off [primary] elections is deeply disturbing. The result is that in 2004, fewer Americans will get to participate in one of their country's most important political choices." [more]

'Human Shields' Face Fines from US

Jonathan Weisman | Washington Post | August 12, 2003

"[The US Treasury] has been contacting an undisclosed number of protesters who placed themselves in harm's way before the war, warning them that they face $10,000 fines for violating U.S. sanctions that forbade most travel to Iraq and commerce with Saddam Hussein's regime. If they don't pay, the human shields face up to 10 years in prison." [more]

US Troops Kill Police: Witness

STAFF | Age | August 11, 2003

"The third officer, who was uniformed, was shot as he got out from the front passenger seat and held his hands in the air, holding his coalition-issued yellow police badge and shouting 'police, police', said Nahi." [more]

Secret Talks With Iranian Arms Dealer

Knut Royce and Timothy M. Phelps | Newsday | August 8, 2003

"The senior administration official identified two of the Defense officials who met with Ghorbanifar as Harold Rhode, Feith's top Middle East specialist, and Larry Franklin, a Defense Intelligence Agency analyst on loan to the undersecretary's office." [more]

Military Warns Soldiers Against Public Criticism

Bradley Graham | Washington Post | August 8, 2003

" 'I don't believe that anyone who's wearing a uniform in this country in a public forum should be critical of the chain of command. Period,' [one] general said." [more]

Family Shot Dead by Panicking US Troops

Justin Huggler | Independent | August 10, 2003

"Doctors said the father and his two daughters would have survived if they had received treatment quicker. Instead, they were left to bleed to death because the Americans refused to allow anyone to take them to hospital." [more]

Analysis: NATO Enters Afghan Mire

Vladimir Simonov | Pravda | August 11, 2003

"Originally set up after World War II to fight communism, NATO has decided that now it is time to target international terrorism. In this way the alliance hopes to ease the sense of its own inaction, and even pointlessness, which has been haunting it since the break-up of the USSR." [more]

Violence in Iraq Continues to Spread

Gary Marx | Chicago Tribune | August 11, 2003

"British armored vehicles patrolled Basra's streets as crowds barricaded roads and hurled chunks of concrete at passing cars in a second day of demonstrations. British forces guarded gasoline stations and rationed fuel in an effort to contain the violence." [more]

Lawyers Pressed to Give Up Client Secrets

Jonathan D. Glater | New York Times | August 11, 2003

"Two years ago, the bar association rejected changes to its model code of conduct to permit lawyers more latitude in disclosing client confidences to prevent fraud. But the association seems to be more open to the idea now that the government may impose more stringent responsibilities on the profession." [more]

Let Iraqis Rebuild Their Own Country

Ghazi Sabir-Ali | Guardian | August 1, 2003

"In 1991, after the first Gulf war, although electricity generating stations, water purification plants and telecommunications were almost totally destroyed, the Iraqis — despite sanctions — rebuilt them." [more]

How Many Americans Will Die for Oil?

Kenneth Davidson | Age | August 4, 2003

"What would the occupying forces and their families make of Bush's executive order 13303, promulgated without fanfare in May, which gives sweeping powers to US oil companies operating in Iraq while granting immunity to them for the consequences of any of their actions in exploiting the oil?" [more]

US Admits to Using Napalm in Iraq Attacks

Andrew Buncombe | Independent | August 10, 2003

"A 1980 UN convention banned the use against civilian targets of napalm, a terrifying mixture of jet fuel and polystyrene that sticks to skin as it burns. The US, which did not sign the treaty, is one of the few countries that makes use of the weapon." [more]

The Diplomat, the Forgery and the Suspect Case for War

Raymond Whitaker | Independent | August 10, 2003

"On 7 March, Dr ElBaradei told the Security Council that UN and independent forensic experts had found that what purported to be Niger government documents, in which Mr Zahawie's name was mentioned, were 'not authentic'. That demolished a key pillar of the Anglo-American case for war, but by then it was too late." [more]

Riots Continue Over Fuel Crisis in Iraq's South

Richard A. Oppel Jr. and Robert F. Worth | New York Times | August 11, 2003

"The fuel shortages in southern Iraq have led to problems far more dire than gasoline lines. According to a report issued Wednesday by the Agency for International Development, the shortages 'are threatening security and some humanitarian operations.' They 'are endangering hospital patients' in hospitals that depend on generators, the agency said, adding that 'cold storage for medicines and vaccination programs are also affected.' " [more]

Americans Pay Price For Speaking Out

Kathleen Kenna | Toronto Star | August 9, 2003

"MSNBC hosts asked viewers to urge MCI to fire actor and anti-war activist Danny Glover as a spokesperson - the long-distance telephone giant refused to fire him despite the ensuing hate-mail campaign - and one host, former politician Joe Scarborough, urged that anti-war protesters be arrested and charged with sedition." [more]

N. Korea Next to Hear U.S. War Drum

Geoffrey York | Globe and Mail | August 7, 2003

"The plan would include 4,000 daily air strikes against North Korean targets, the deployment of cruise missiles and stealth aircraft to destroy the Yongbyon nuclear plant and other nuclear facilities, the stationing of U.S. Marine forces off the coasts of North Korea to threaten a land attack on Pyongyang, the deployment of two additional U.S. Army divisions to bolster South Korean troops in a land offensive against North Korea, and the call-up of National Guard and Reserve units to replace U.S. combat forces that are currently bogged down in Iraq and Afghanistan" [more]

The Degeneration of the Liberals

Anis Shivani | CounterPunch | January 18, 2003

"Hopes have been affixed to a revival of progressivism within the Democratic party, when it was the Democrats themselves who proposed the Homeland Security Department, endorsed the Patriot Bill for the most part, and earlier failed to stand up to a stolen election that was predictably going to usher in the dictatorial actions that we've seen this regime engage in." [more]

Why the US Needs the Taliban

Ramtanu Maitra | Asia Times | July 30, 2003

"The Bush administration has come to realize that it is impossible to keep Pakistan as a friend and simultaneously keep the Northern Alliance–backed government in power in Kabul ... either one has Pakistan as a friend with an Islamabad-backed Pashtun group in power in Kabul, or one gets Pakistan as an enemy. There should be no doubt in anyone's mind how the Bush administration would act when confronted with such a choice." [more]

Iraq War 'Boost' to Qaeda Fears

STAFF | British Broadcasting Corporation | July 31, 2003

"In its latest report, the House of Commons foreign affairs committee also argues that nearly two years on from the 11 September atrocity it cannot conclude the threat from al-Qaeda has diminished." [more]

Analysis: Preemptive Strike

Bob Thompson | Washington Post | July 27, 2003

"John Brady Kiesling may have a promising future as a trivia question. But for one brief, undiplomatic moment, his resignation from the Foreign Service crystallized the opposition to the Iraq war." [more]

Analysis: Qaeda Brand of Terror Wins Asian Recruits

Jane Macartney | Reuters | August 8, 2003

"Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network has been described by experts as a terror chain with franchises worldwide. But this week's Jakarta bombing, if it turns out to be the work of an al Qaeda affiliate, suggests that head office may not need a strong grip on its distant outposts." [more]

Pakistani Detainee to Face Terrorism Charge

Benjamin Weiser and William K. Rashbaum | New York Times | August 8, 2003

"The lawyer for a Pakistani man who has been detained in Manhattan since March as a material witness said he expected his client to be indicted on charges of providing support to a terrorist conspiracy whose goal included obtaining chemical weapons." [more]

Southern Afghanistan Suffers as Aid Groups Threatened

Owais Tohid | Christian Science Monitor | July 18, 2003

"By all appearances, insurgents have consciously turned against foreign aid workers despite work done during the days of the mujahideen resistance and Taliban rule. Attacks on their local helpers as well suggest that more than xenophobia is at work. Rather, the attacks seem part of a concerted effort to undermine the reconstruction work itself." [more]

Buried Stories Indicate Creeping Menace

Molly Ivans | Working for Change | August 7, 2003

"We now have the House Judiciary Committee threatening to investigate the sentencing records of every federal judge in the country for suspected 'political' bias. All this stems from the matter of James Rosenbaum, chief judge for the Minnesota Federal District Court, who thinks sentencing guidelines for low-level drug dealers are too harsh." [more]

The Rise of the New Global 'Empire'

Dean Kuipers | Los Angeles Times | October 1, 2001

"Hardt and Negri argue that a new global economic regime is emerging, which they call simply 'Empire.' It is a new form of imperial power defined partly by what it is not. It is not a nation-state. It is not an aligned superpower bloc. It is an empire, in the classic sense, but has no seat like the Roman Empire. It is a distributed network, like the Internet, created by international agreements binding nations big and small into relationships that none of them fully control." [more]

America is a Religion

George Monbiot | Guardian | July 29, 2003

"American soldiers are no longer merely terrestrial combatants; they have become missionaries. They are no longer simply killing enemies; they are casting out demons. The people who reconstructed the faces of Uday and Qusay Hussein carelessly forgot to restore the pair of little horns on each brow, but the understanding that these were opponents from a different realm was transmitted nonetheless. Like all those who send missionaries abroad, the high priests of America cannot conceive that the infidels might resist through their own free will." [more]

'Dr. Strangeloves' Meet to Plan New Nuclear Era

Julian Borger | Guardian | August 7, 2003

"While insisting that it has no plans to resume testing, the administration has asked Congress for funds for a project that would cut down the amount of time it would take for the cold war-era test site in Nevada to start functioning again." [more]

Iraqi Mobile Labs Not Involved in Germ Warfare

Peter Beaumont, Antony Barnett and Gaby Hinsliff | Guardian | June 15, 2003

"A British scientist and biological weapons expert [said]: 'They are not mobile germ warfare laboratories. You could not use them for making biological weapons. They do not even look like them. They are exactly what the Iraqis said they were — facilities for the production of hydrogen gas to fill balloons.' " [more]

Patriot Act Faces New Challenge In Court

Dan Eggen | Washington Post | August 6, 2003

"A legal advocacy group filed papers yesterday in federal court in Los Angeles challenging the constitutionality of the USA Patriot Act, the broad antiterrorism law that has come under increasing attacks in recent weeks in the courts and Congress. " [more]

Federal Information Collecting May Be Surpassed by States

Robert O'Harrow Jr. | Washington Post | August 6, 2003

"The system enables investigators to find patterns and links among people and events faster than ever before, combining police records with commercially available collections of personal information about most American adults. It would let authorities, for instance, instantly find the name and address of every brown-haired owner of a red Ford pickup truck in a 20-mile radius of a suspicious event." [more]

Transfer the Administration of Iraq to the UN

Stephen Zunes | Foreign Policy in Focus | July 31, 2003

"Public opinion polls published during the first week of July indicate that 60% of the American public believes that the United Nations should take leadership in post-war Iraq." [more]

First 7 US Soldiers Land Amid Uneasy Liberian Peace

Glenn McKenzie | Associated Press | August 6, 2003

"President Bush said Wednesday he sent the contingent to help clear the way for humanitarian relief, adding that he still expects Liberian President Charles Taylor to leave the country. Washington has said repeatedly it will play only a limited role." [more]

Neglecting Asia Feeds Extremist Monster

Marian Wilkinson | Sydney Morning Herald | August 7, 2003

"Despite Washington's public obsession with Saudi terrorists, this bombing proves yet again that South East Asia is a major front in the war against terrorism." [more]

Islamic Group Tied to Al Qaeda Linked to Jakarta Attack

Jane Perlez | New York Times | August 6, 2003

"The blast at the Marriott illustrated what had been known for months: that Jemaah Islamiyah, a group intent on achieving an Islamic state in Indonesia and other parts of Southeast Asia, consisted of many independent cells, each with the capacity to mount attacks." [more]

Some of Army's Civilian Contractors Are No-Shows in Iraq

David Wood | Newhouse News Service | July 31, 2003

"Though conditions have improved, the problems raise new concerns about the Pentagon's growing global reliance on defense contractors for everything from laundry service to combat training and aircraft maintenance." [more]

Transcript: The War According to Col. Hackworth

Jonathan Franklin | Salon | August 4, 2003

" 'When I examined the task organization, my estimate was totally contrary to this asshole Rumsfeld, who went in light and on the cheap, all based upon this rosy scenario. I never thought this would be a fight without resistance. And there was another guy who thought the same way I did; his name is Saddam Hussein.' " [more]

Army Stumped Over Pneumonia in Troops in Iraq, Afghanistan

Puline Jelinek | San Diego Union-Tribune | August 5, 2003

"The Army is telling troops to take precautions as it tries to figure out the cause of pneumonia cases, including two deaths, among forces in the Afghan and Iraqi campaigns." [more]

Officials Confirm Dropping Firebombs on Iraqi Troops

James W. Crawley | San Diego Union-Tribune | August 5, 2003

"American jets killed Iraqi troops with firebombs — similar to the controversial napalm used in the Vietnam War — in March and April as Marines battled toward Baghdad." [more]

Man Jailed for Linking to Bomb-Making Sites

STAFF | Associated Press | August 5, 2003

A federal judge sentenced a man to a year in prison Monday for creating an anarchist Web site with links to sites on how to build bombs. [more]

Transcript: The Media at War

Michael Wolff | New York Magazine | August 11, 2003

"John Donvan, correspondent, ABC News’ Nightline: Our car was literally looted in Safran the first day. The very first day, I reported that it was unstable in the place where just yesterday people were cheering. And our editors in New York were saying, 'Well, John, could you get us some of those pictures of people cheering?'" [more]

Stunts Involving 'Mob' Silliness Spreading

Aman Batheja | Forth Worth Star-Telegram | August 1, 2003

"While Rheingold said he was amused by the latest reincarnation of this phenomenon, he believes it is proof of a more significant movement. / 'The 2004 elections are going to be a watershed moment. The use of text messaging and mobile communications will be pivotal in get-out-the-vote drives. It will allow groups to disperse the resources most efficiently in the days before the election.'" [more]

Peace Activists Target War Profiteers

STAFF | Institute for Southern Studies | August 5, 2003

"Veterans for Peace, New York Labor Against the War, Global Exchange, United for Peace and Justice, Public Citizen’s Critical Mass Energy and Environment Program, and other groups have signed on to the campaign’s founding statement, as well as well-known activist authors Noam Chomsky, Jim Hightower, and Howard Zinn." [more]

Advertising Meets Activism

Felicia Feaster | Creative Loafing Atlanta | July 31, 2003

"Just as all spontaneous, renegade forms of expression are hijacked by corporate culture, jamming is now being appropriated by corporations in its efforts to sell product." [more]

Israeli Army Arrests 40 ISM Members

STAFF | Agence France-Presse | August 5, 2003

"The protestors were occupying the house in Mashah, near the town of Qalqiliya, in a bid to stop the Israelis bulldozing the Palestinian owner's garden to build the fence cutting off the West Bank from Israel." [more]

Helping Liberia Would Be No Sweat

Jesse Jackson | Chicago Sun-Times | August 5, 2003

"Salvation is at hand, but President Bush bizarrely has refused to order the U.S. forces into the country. With the UN, the regional allies and all factions of Liberians begging the United States to act, the president dithers." [more]

True Lies

John Stauber and Sheldon Rampton | CounterPunch | August 3, 2003

"The Bush administration had developed an uncommonly twisted way of discussing deception itself. In his own way, Rumsfeld is uncommonly candid about his willingness to deceive and about his techniques for doing so. But even the deceptions are delivered in a convoluted manner-usually through insinuations or evasive language games rather than outright falsehoods." [more]

I Was Detained by Airport Cops

Bruce K. Gagnon | CounterPunch | August 4, 2003

"They searched by bag and one officer found my copy of the constitution and asked if I always carried it with me. I told him 'Yes, you never know when you might need it.'" [more]

War Casualties Overflow Washington Hospital

Jon Ward | Washington Times | August 3, 2003

"Mr. Stueve could not specify how many soldiers are in hotels, but said Walter Reed is referring about 20 patients or their relatives to hotels each day. Hotels in Silver Spring, just across the D.C. line, offer discounted rates for outpatients and their families, and the military pays the bill." [more]

Analysis: Administration Shifts Rhetoric On Goals in Iraq

Dana Milbank and Mike Allen | Washington Post | August 1, 2003

"A Bush aide outlined a long-term strategy in which the United States would spread its values through Iraq and the Middle East much as it transformed Europe in the second half of the 20th century. As outlined, the U.S. commitment to Iraq and the Middle East would be far more expansive than the administration had described to the public and the world before the Iraq war." [more]

United States Cool to UN Vote on Iraq

Vernon Loeb and Colum Lynch | Washington Post | August 2, 2003

"The administration is not seeking a second resolution because it is satisfied with the financial and peacekeeping assistance it is getting from other countries willing to participate without a broader U.N. mandate." [more]

US May Send Hundreds of 'Advisers' to Afghanistan

David Brunnstrom | Reuters | August 3, 2003

The United States is in discussions with Afghanistan to send hundreds of advisers to government ministries in order to accelerate reconstruction there. Critics contend the system would be the beginning of a colonialization similar to Iraq. [more]

Wolfowitz or Rice Could Replace Powell in 2005

Glenn Kessler | Washington Post | August 4, 2003

"[National security adviser Condoleezza] Rice and Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz are the leading candidates to replace [Secretary of State Colin] Powell, according to sources inside and outside the administration. Another dark horse is former House speaker Newt Gingrich." [more]

America Silences Niger Leaders in Iraq Nuclear Row

David Harrison | Telegraph | August 3, 2003

"He said that Washington's warning was likely to be heeded. 'Mr Cohen did not spell it out but everybody in Niger knows what the consequences of upsetting America or Britain would be. We are the world's second-poorest country and we depend on international aid to survive.' " [more]

Blair Puts Religion at Center of Government

Kamal Ahmed | Guardian | August 3, 2003

"The Prime Minister, who this weekend becomes the longest continually serving Labour Prime Minister in history, has set up a ministerial working group in the Home Office charged with injecting religious ideas 'across Whitehall'. One expert on the relationship between politics and religion described the move as a 'blow to secularism.' " [more]

Qaeda Tape Threatens US Over Guantánamo Detainees

Ghaida Ghantous | Reuters | August 3, 2003

"Human rights groups have criticized Washington for refusing to give the detainees the rights accorded to prisoners of war under international treaties." [more]

Meet the Real WMD Fabricator

Alexander Cockburn | CounterPunch | August 2, 2003

"In fact Ekeus was perfectly well aware from the mid-l990s on that Saddam Hussein had no such weapons of mass destruction. They had all been destroyed years earlier, after the first Gulf war. Ekeus learned this in 1995 from the lips of General Hussein Kamel, who had just defected from Iraq, along with some of his senior military aides." [more]

The Fog of War Talk

John Stauber and Sheldon Rampton | AlterNet | July 28, 2003

"Like other examples of doublespeak, the concept of 'shock and awe' enables its users to symbolically reconcile two contradictory ideas. On the one hand, its theorists use the term to plan massive uses of deadly force. On the other hand, its focus on the psychological effect of that force makes it possible to use the term while distancing audiences from direct contemplation of the human suffering that force creates." [more]

Transcript: Nobel Laureate in Economics Calls US Budget 'A Form of Looting'

Matthias Streitz | Der Spiegel | August 3, 2003

"I think this is the worst government the US has ever had in its more than 200 years of history. It has engaged in extraordinarily irresponsible policies not only in foreign and economic but also in social and environmental policy. This is not normal government policy. Now is the time for people to engage in civil disobedience." [more]

Paying the Warlords to Tyrannize Afghan People

Isabel Hilton | Guardian | August 3, 2003

"When the Taliban fell, the US would not agree to the deployment of the International Security Assistance Force outside Kabul. Why? Because the US defence secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, was already planning the invasion of Iraq and did not want men tied down in peacekeeping." [more]

Afghan Political Violence on the Rise

April Witt | Washington Post | August 3, 2003

"Kandahar police also say they feel demoralized and targeted. In July alone, one district police chief was shot to death on his way home from work and another was killed along with five of his officers when a band of about 20 armed men stormed their compound, police officials said. This past week, five or six government officials were ambushed and killed along the same isolated road where a Red Cross water engineer was executed in late March." [more]

US Anti-War Activists Hit By Secret Airport Ban

Andrew Gumbel | Independent | August 3, 2003

"It is impossible to know for sure who might be on the list, or why. The ACLU says a list kept by security personnel at Oakland airport ran to 88 pages. More than 300 people have been subject to special questioning at San Francisco airport, and another 24 at Oakland, according to police records. In no case does it appear that a wanted criminal was apprehended." [more]

'I Did Not Want to Be a Collaborator'

Isam al-Khafaji | Guardian | July 28, 2003

"Sadly, the vision for a transitional government and democratic elections put forward by Wolfowitz seems to have been forgotten in the everyday pressures of postwar Iraq." [more]

Terrorism Law Applied to Meth Case

STAFF | Citizen Times | July 15, 2003

"A Watauga County prosecutor is using a law intended to combat terrorism to fight the spread of methamphetamine laboratories in northwest North Carolina." [more]

Wolfowitz the Censor

Robert Fisk | Independent | August 1, 2003

"The history of mutual antagonism between Washington and Al-Jazeera goes back to the 2001 bombardment of Afghanistan when, after the Arab station showed videotape of Osama Bin Laden, an American Cruise missile exploded in their Kabul bureau. Then in the last days of the invasion of Iraq this year, after the channel beamed pictures of Iraqi civilians mutilated by US air raids and tape of American prisoners in Iraqi hands, a US jet targeted the station's Baghdad bureau, killing one of its senior reporters." [more]

US Fostering Sinister Sort Of Democracy

Robert Fisk | Independent | August 1, 2003

"When Iraqi ex-soldiers demonstrated outside Bremer's office at the former Presidential Palace, US troops shot two of them dead. When Falujah residents staged a protest as long ago as April, the American military shot 16 dead. Another 11 were later gunned down in Mosul." [more]

Aide: Hussein Got Rid of WMD

Slobodan Lekic | Associated Press | August 1, 2003

"According to the aide, by the mid-1990s 'it was common knowledge among the leadership' that Iraq had destroyed its chemical stocks and discontinued development of biological and nuclear weapons." [more]

US Bartering Arms for Soldiers in Iraq

Thalif Deen | Asia Times | August 1, 2003

"The administration of President Bush has intensified efforts to seek troops from India, Pakistan and Turkey in order to bolster a multinational force that now includes troops mostly from former Soviet republics and Latin American nations." [more]

US Scraps Nuclear Weapons Watchdog

Julian Borger | Guardian | July 31, 2003

"Hawks in the Pentagon and the energy department are pushing for the development of tactical nuclear weapons with yields of less than 5 kilotons and hardened 'bunker buster' nuclear bombs, designed to penetrate deeply buried targets, where enemy leaders or weaponsmay be hidden." [more]

Scientists Still Deny Iraqi Arms Programs

Walter Pincus and Kevin Sullivan | Washington Post | July 31, 2003

"So far, the United States has discovered no undisputed physical evidence that Hussein had stocks of chemical or biological weapons or was reconstituting his nuclear weapons program." [more]

Do Not Use 45-Minute Claim, CIA Said

Richard Norton-Taylor and David Leigh | Guardian | July 31, 2003

"The disclosure by the Foreign Office makes it plain the CIA's objections went far beyond the well-aired dispute over whether Iraq was seeking uranium from the west African state of Niger." [more]

Sidestepping on Iraq

EDITORIAL | New York Times | July 31, 2003

"The president and his advisers obviously still believe that the constant repetition of several simplistic points will hypnotize the American people into forgetting the original question." [more]

Muslims Challenge Constitutionality of Patriot Act

Eric Lichtblau | New York Times | July 31, 2003

"The lawsuit comes after months of increasingly sharp political debate in Washington and around the country over the act. In May, Democrats beat back a move to extend the law past 2005, and last week, the House voted to scale back a 'sneak and peak' provision in the law." [more]

'Combatant' Loses Bid for Freedom

Richard A. Serrano | Los Angeles Times | July 29, 2003

"The judge was clearly irritated about how Al-Marri was abruptly transferred to South Carolina and that neither he nor the defense lawyers know for certain whether his alleged offenses occurred in Peoria or elsewhere, because the government has not said exactly why Al-Marri is an enemy combatant." [more]

Planned Patriot Act II Losing Audience

Richard B. Schmitt | Los Angeles Times | July 29, 2003

"The Justice Department already seems to be adjusting its sights. One person familiar with the department's agenda said the original Patriot II proposal is now 'dead.' " [more]

White House Refuses to Release Sept. 11 Report

Ken Guggenheim | Associated Press | July 29, 2003

"The top Republican senator on the 9-11 inquiry, Richard Shelby, said Sunday that 95 percent of the classified pages could be released without jeopardizing national security. Bush ignored a reporter's question on Shelby's assessment." [more]

Anti-War Groups Say Ire Over Iraq Claims Increasing

Evelyn Nieves | Washington Post | July 22, 2003

"For organizations that opposed the war, these are busy days. Not since hundreds of thousands of people across the country marched in antiwar rallies in the weeks before the U.S.-led invasion has the rationale for the preemptive war come under such fire." [more]

US Troops Turn Botched Saddam Raid Into Massacre

Robert Fisk | Independent | July 28, 2003

" 'The Americans didn't try to help the civilians they had shot, not once,' a witness said. 'They let the car burn and left the bodies where they lay, even the children. It was we who had to take them to the hospitals.' " [more]

Lawyers to Sue Blair for Iraq War in ICC

Richard Galpin | British Broadcasting Corporation | July 28, 2003

The lawyers "said the war in Iraq breached international treaties such as the Charter of the United Nations, the Geneva Conventions and the ICC's own Statute." [more]

US Adopts Aggressive Tactics in Guerrilla War

Thomas E. Ricks | Washington Post | July 28, 2003

"Thousands of suspected Iraqi fighters were detained over the six-week period, many temporarily, in hundreds of U.S. military raids, most of them conducted in the dead of night. In the expansive region north of Baghdad patrolled by the 4th Infantry Division, more than 300 Iraqi fighters were killed in combat operation, the military officials said. Continuing casualties ... are the direct result of the intensified U.S. offensive." [more]

Iraq Magnet for Foreign Terrorists, General Says

Andrew Marshall | Reuters | July 27, 2003

The general, "whose troops usually blame the attacks on die-hard Saddam loyalists, said the sophistication of the raids had increased over the last 30 days." [more]

US Seeks New Afghan Aid Amid Criticism of Reconstruction

Vernon Loeb and Glenn Kessler | Washington Post | July 27, 2003

Funds "would go toward highway and school construction, other infrastructure initiatives, police training, beefed-up development of the Afghan national army, education projects and programs to help women enter the workforce." [more]

Immigrants Fear Deportation as Expulsions Rise

Nurith C. Aizenman and Edward Walsh | Washington Post | July 28, 2003

"With little public notice outside immigrant communities, the government is moving to deport the largest number of visitors from Middle Eastern and other Muslim countries in U.S. history." [more]

Battle-Weary Liberia Braces for More Killing

Matthew Tostevin | Reuters | July 27, 2003

"Hunching down to sprint across road junctions, ducking the ever-whistling bullets, has become a way of life for people who have no choice but to move in an often futile hunt for food and clean water." [more]

Analysis: US Strategy, Perception vs. Deception

STAFF | Strategic Forecasting | July 21, 2003

"The media loves the trivial and can't grasp the significant. If the United States fabricated evidence about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq as critics are claiming, the question is not whether it did so. The question is: Why did it do so? In other words, why was invading Iraq important enough to lie about — if indeed it was a lie, which is far from clear." [more]

Humpty Dumpty Will Fall

Howard Zinn | Progressive Magazine | July 26, 2003

"Think of how in 1965 two-thirds of Americans supported the war in Vietnam, and a few years later two-thirds opposed the war. What happened in between? A gradual realization of having been lied to, an osmosis of the truth, of information seeping more and more through the cracks of the propaganda system. That is beginning to happen now. Today, all over the country, there is a growing awareness of the shortage of teachers, of nurses, of medical care, of affordable housing, of cuts in human services in every state of the union." [more]

Anti-War Nuns Sentenced to 2 1/2 Years

Judith Kohler | Associated Press | July 25, 2003

"The Roman Catholic nuns cut a fence and walked onto a Minuteman III silo site last October, pounding the silo with hammers and painting a cross on it with their blood. Officials said they caused at least $1,000 in damage." [more]

Greens Call for Impeachment of Bush, Withdrawal of Troops

STAFF | Green Party | July 21, 2003

"At the Green Party's national meeting, state delegates endorse resolutions calling for impeachment and an end to the U.S. occupation of Iraq." [more]

E-Voting Flaws Risk Ballot Fraud

Alan Boyle | MSNBC | July 24, 2003

" 'A 15-year-old computer enthusiast could make these counterfeit cards in a garage and sell them,' Rubin said. 'Then even an ordinary voter, without knowing anything about computer code, could cast more than one vote for a candidate at a polling place that uses this electronic voting system.' " [more]

Liberia Faces Human Disaster as Battles Rage

Matthew Tostevin | Reuters | July 24, 2003

"Secretary of State Colin Powell said Bush was examining the options and was still considering sending combat troops. But the Pentagon was believed to be reluctant to commit soldiers." [more]

Ugandan Children March for Peace

STAFF | British Broadcasting Corporation | July 14, 2003

"Officials say the LRA has abducted hundreds of children in northern Uganda in recent years, forcing them to fight as child soldiers if they are boys, or to become sex slaves for rebel commanders if they are girls." [more]

Guerrilla War in Iraq Out of Control

Robert Fisk | New Zealand Herald | July 22, 2003

"But the message of all this information — most of it unreported by the media — is that the Americans are no longer safe anywhere in Iraq: not at Baghdad airport, which they captured with so much fanfare in early April, not at their military bases nor in the streets of central Baghdad, nor in their helicopters nor on the country roads." [more]

His Sons Are Dead But Saddam Lives

Robert Fisk | New Zealand Herald | July 23, 2003

"But the guerrillas who are killing US troops every day are also being attacked by a growing Islamist Sunni movement which never had any love for Saddam. Much more importantly, many Iraqis were reluctant to support the resistance for fear that an end to American occupation would mean the return of the ghastly old dictator." [more]

A Kind of Fascism is Replacing Our Democracy

Sheldon S. Wolin | Newsday | July 18, 2003

"Like previous forms of totalitarianism, the Bush administration boasts a reckless unilateralism that believes the United States can demand unquestioning support, on terms it dictates; ignores treaties and violates international law at will; invades other countries without provocation; and incarcerates persons indefinitely without charging them with a crime or allowing access to counsel." [more]

House Repeals Secret Searches

Andrew Clark | Reuters | July 22, 2003

"The move would block the Justice Department from using any funds to take advantage of the section of the act that allows it to secretly search the homes of suspects and only inform them later that a warrant had been issued to do so." [more]

Iraqis Accuse US Forces of Torture

Cynthia Johnston | Reuters | July 23, 2003

"Amnesty staff heard complaints that included prolonged sleep deprivation and detainees being forced to stay in painful positions or wear hoods over their heads for long periods. Detainees also said U.S. troops had shot some captives." [more]

Analysis: The Peace Movement Plans for the Future

Mark LeVine | Middle East Report Online | July 24, 2003

"Naomi Klein expressed concern about the focus on anti-imperialist discourse, because 'it's no longer about the US building empire in a traditional sense, but rather a multinational imperialism. Europe is laughing at empire discourse because it lets them off the hook. They enjoy the idea that they're a counter-power — Chirac playing the hero of the oppressed — when what Europe is doing on the international stage is 90 percent the same as the US. What we need is an analysis of empire that understands that the forces are genuinely transnational. They can't be tied to the nation-state, and the class of global managers within the developing world are part of the same class as their northern counterparts.' " [more]

Pentagon Admits War Planning Mistakes

Jamie McIntyre | Cable News Network | July 24, 2003

"Among the things Wolfowitz says the U.S. guessed incorrectly was the assumption that some Iraqi Army units would switch sides; that the Iraqi Police would help maintain security; that regime remnants would not resort to guerrilla tactics ... [and he] says it also had no idea how badly Iraq's infrastructure had been neglected over the past three decades." [more]

Foreign Troops Attempt to Quell Anarchy in Solomon Is.

Peter O'Connor | Associated Press | July 24, 2003

"The Solomon Islands government is nearly broke and issued an appeal to its neighbors this month to help rein in armed militants and criminals who are killing at will, taking hostages and extorting money." [more]

Pentagon Unveils Plan to Bolster Forces in Iraq

Vernon Loeb | Washington Post | July 24, 2003

"With more than 60 percent of the Army's active-duty combat force deployed in Iraq, Army planners were forced to abandon six-month tours for most overseas deployments in favor of year-long assignments to sustain a force of that size. The last time the Army used year-long deployments was Vietnam, except for one peacekeeping rotation in the Balkans in 1995." [more]

CIA Memos Show Senior Officials Knew Falseness of Africa Claim

Dana Milbank and Walter Pincus | Washington Post | July 22, 2003

"The information ... significantly alters the explanation previously offered by the White House. The CIA warned the White House early on that the charge, based on an allegation that Iraq sought 500 tons of uranium in Niger, relied on weak evidence." [more]

Analysis: Truth Behind 'Sexed Up' Claims

Claire Cozens | Guardian | July 22, 2003

"[Andrew] Gilligan never actually uttered the phrase he has become famous for — in fact, the first mention came from John Humphrys." [more]

Cartoon Prompts Inquiry by Secret Service

STAFF | Los Angeles Times | July 22, 2003

"Goller said she met with the Secret Service agent, Peter J. Damos, in the newspaper's security office and told him he could not speak to Ramirez. After some discussion, Damos left." [more]

UN Debates Iraqi Self-Rule Resolution

STAFF | British Broadcasting Corporation | July 22, 2003

"A report prepared by the UN special representative in Iraq calls for a clear timetable for the return of sovereignty to the Iraqi people. It also says that UN involvement will be essential in any process intended to give legitimacy to a new government." [more]

Court Order

Benjamin Lessing | American Prospect | July 21, 2003

"On July 1, the White House unexpectedly announced that it would be immediately cutting off all military aid to certain countries unless their leaders signed bilateral agreements guaranteeing the total immunity of all Americans (military and civilian) before the International Criminal Court." [more]

Wolfowitz: Weapons Issue Secondary In Iraq

Robert Burns | Associated Press | July 22, 2003

" 'I'm not concerned about weapons of mass destruction,' Wolfowitz told a group of reporters traveling with him. 'I'm concerned about getting Iraq on its feet. I didn't come [to Iraq] on a search for weapons of mass destruction.' " [more]

A Bloody Peace in Iraq

EDITORIAL | New York Times | July 21, 2003

"Most of the administration's critics predicted that Washington would win the war but botch the peace, and so far they have turned out to be disturbingly prescient. Everything about the American plan, including the size and composition of occupying military forces, was misconceived." [more]

Intelligence Report Said Defeated Hussein a Larger Threat

Walter Pincus | Washington Post | July 21, 2003

The report "shows the intelligence services were much more worried that Hussein might give weapons to al Qaeda terrorists if he were facing death or capture and his government was collapsing after a military attack by the United States." [more]

Bombs Kill 60 in Liberia as US Marines Arrive

Matthew Tostevin | Reuters | July 21, 2003

"An angry crowd laid 18 bodies, one of them headless, in front of the U.S. embassy and hurled abuse at the mission for not intervening to stop the fighting in a country founded by freed American slaves in the 19th century." [more]

Peaceful Warrior

Chris Strohm and Ingrid Drake | TomPaine.com | July 14, 2003

"Voices of dissent from military personnel and families are surfacing every day. One of the most poignant so far comes from a young Marine — he was killed in late June, fighting a war he didn't believe in." [more]

US Allowed Weapons to Flood Iraq

Roger Atwood | Mother Jones | July 17, 2003

"In the crucial weeks after Saddam disappeared, American officials stood back and let a flood of guns wash over Iraq." [more]

Keep the Global Ideal Alive

Todd Gitlin | Mother Jones | July 14, 2003

"Instead of shouting 'US Out,' those who opposed Washington's unilateral war must get serious about creating an international vision of their own." [more]

Bremer Adds Voice to Calls for UN Involvement in Iraq

Tim Harper | Toronto Star | July 21, 2003

"There are those within the Bush inner circle known to be resisting the [UN] option, arguing it would be a humiliation to head back to the international body, which the government shunned in its zeal to remove Saddam Hussein from power, particularly if it was needed to bring war opponents France and Germany into the equation." [more]

Iraqi Unrest Grows as More Soldiers Die

Vivienne Walt | Boston Globe | July 21, 2003

"Two American soldiers were killed yesterday in northern Iraq and thousands of Shi'ites protested angrily, as hostility toward the US presence in Iraq jumped religious and regional boundaries, expanding far beyond Saddam Hussein's loyalist base." [more]

Officials Debate Whether to Seek a Bigger Military

Thom Shanker | New York Times | July 21, 2003

"'I was much more comfortable with end-strength during the cold war than I am today,' said the Republican, James M. Inhofe of Oklahoma. He said reducing the size of the military after the collapse of communism left America's ground force 'in near crisis' as it was stretched to deal with expanding global commitments in the battle against terrorism." [more]

No Answer

Peter Beinart | New Republic | July 21, 2003

"If the greatest injustice in the world is U.S. imperialism, the world's greatest injustices must be found where U.S. imperialism is strongest. And, here, Africa poses a problem. Africa, after all, has less contact with the United States than any other part of the world ... the United States has avoided acting like an empire in post-cold-war Africa, and, thus, the hard left has found little cause for moral concern." [more]

Transcript: Anyone But Bush

Laura McClure | Salon | July 19, 2003

"Everybody on the left should go listen to Republicans and try to figure out what makes them tick. I would tell people, 'Good God, most people are not like you!' I'm reminded of people in 1972 in Manhattan who said, 'Jesus, but I didn't know anyone who voted for Nixon.' Wake up! Parochialism is never a platform for understanding, and this is another kind of parochialism." [more]

The Vanishing

Bob Drogin | New Republic | July 14, 2003

"Iraqi scientists I met insist that the combination of U.S. bombing, U.N. inspections, disarmament efforts, unilateral destruction by Iraqi officials, and stiff U.N. sanctions had indeed eliminated Saddam's illicit weapons by the mid-'90s." [more]

Thousands of Children Killed or Wounded by Abandoned Weapons in Iraq

STAFF | Agence France-Presse | July 17, 2003

A UNICEF official said that "the casualties were the result of handling arms, ammunition and cluster bombs dumped at several hundred sites around Iraq. Hundreds of surface-to-air missiles abandoned by the now-disbanded Iraqi army, many of them damaged and unstable, also pose a serious threat." [more]

Analysis: No Kharabba at the End of the Tunnel

Pepe Escobar | Asia Times | July 19, 2003

"As the Americans retreat into siege mode, they are cutting themselves entirely off from a populace that was not hostile when they arrived as glorious invaders. The US arguably lost this war in the first days after the 'fall' of Baghdad on April 9. Those days of widespread looting in April are deeply ingrained in Iraqi minds. There would be a lot more respect for a victor able to preserve the riches of a conquered country. And now the talk in the Iraqi street is still of those days in June when there was no electricty but oil exports had resumed." [more]

Analysis: Britain Tried First. Iraq Was No Picnic Then.

John Kifner | New York Times | July 20, 2003

"It is perhaps instructive to look back on that earlier effort by the leading Western power to remake the Middle East as the American occupation of Iraq appears increasingly beset." [more]

Where the Enemy Is Everywhere and Nowhere

Daniel Bergner | New York Times | July 20, 2003

"The best chance at killing or capture may have been deep in the past. Below the white peaks of the Spin Ghar near the Pakistani line, Osama bin Laden was spotted. The American high command believed this was it but didn't want to put its soldiers in severe danger; didn't want British special forces to claim the war's greatest prize; and couldn't compel Pakistan to close off the frontier." [more]

New Pentagon Plan May Spark Korean War

Bruce B. Auster and Kevin Whitelaw | US News & World Report | July 21, 2003

"Some officials believe the draft plan amounts to a strategy to topple Kim's regime by destabilizing its military forces. The reason: It is being pushed by many of the same administration hard-liners who advocated regime change in Iraq." [more]

Anti-War Students Rock the Vote

Liza Featherstone | Nation | August 4, 2003

"Protests against Bush's war on Iraq drew more students than any other recent protest movement, and they were younger, more working-class and more racially and geographically diverse. Now it looks as if that protest energy may provide momentum for the 2004 elections." [more]

Analysis: The Web Rewires the Movement

Andrew Boyd | Nation | August 4, 2003

"[Feb. 15, 2003] sent a clear message about the grassroots organizing power of the net: It enabled the antiwar movement to turn out its base quickly and cheaply, do an end run around corporate-controlled media and reach into the politically disaffected American mainstream." [more]

Body 'Matches' Iraq Expert

STAFF | British Broadcasting Corporation | July 18, 2003

"Dr Kelly, 59, had been caught up in a row between the BBC and the government about the use of intelligence reports in the run-up to the war with Iraq." [more]

Reading the Wrong Thing in Public Can Get You in Trouble

Marc Schultz | Creative Loafing Atlanta | July 18, 2003

" 'I'll tell you what, Marc. Someone in the shop that day saw you reading something, and thought it looked suspicious enough to call us about. So that's why we're here, just checking it out. Like I said, there's no problem. We'd just like to get to the bottom of this. Now if we can't, then you may have a problem. And you don't want that.' " [more]

Afghan Women Still Being Arrested for 'Moral' Crimes

Kimberly Sevcik | Mother Jones | July 18, 2003

"In Zebak province, in the country's northeast, regional commanders are forcing women into marriage, threatening their families' lives if they decline. And although the central government insists that women are no longer being arrested for "moral" crimes, police continue to jail women for adultery and eloping, often without trial or even so much as a witness against them." [more]

Boulder Activists Find Planted GPS Trackers On Their Cars

Joel Warner and Pamela White | Boulder Weekly | July 17, 2003

" 'They are putting some money into it,' says Johnson about the systems, which he estimates could cost about $2,000 each." [more]

Lack of Planning Contributed to Chaos in Iraq

Jonathan S. Landay and Warren P. Strobel | Knight Ridder/Tribune Wire | July 12, 2003

"The officials didn't develop any real postwar plans because they believed that Iraqis would welcome U.S. troops with open arms and Washington could install a favored Iraqi exile leader as the country's leader. The Pentagon civilians ignored CIA and State Department experts who disputed them, resisted White House pressure to back off from their favored exile leader and when their scenario collapsed amid increasing violence and disorder, they had no backup plan." [more]

Analysis: Rumsfeld's Personal Spy Ring

Eric Boehlert | Salon | July 16, 2003

"The defense secretary couldn't count on the CIA or the State Department to provide a pretext for war in Iraq. So he created a new agency that would tell him what he wanted to hear." [more]

Transcript: CIA Official Believes Bush Risks US's Security

Mark Follman | Salon | July 18, 2003

"A CIA veteran says a growing faction of the U.S. intelligence community is furious over the way the administration corrupted the system — and that the nation's security is at grave risk." [more]

From Heroes to Targets?

Michelle Goldberg | Salon | July 18, 2003

"The U.S. occupation of Iraq has turned into a daily debacle, say experts, because the Washington ideologues who planned the war were living in a fantasy." [more]

Analysis: John Bolton vs. the World

Nicholas Thompson | Salon | July 16, 2003

"His job is to keep a hawk eye on dovish Colin Powell. And he's helped turn Bush foreign policy into an ideological hammer." [more]

Analysis: Guess Who's Sustaining Iraq?

Barbara Crossette | United Nations Wire | July 14, 2003

"Nine U.N. agencies are now operating in Iraq, doing many of the jobs the U.S. military was apparently not prepared to tackle." [more]

Body Count

Alexander Gourevitch | Washington Monthly | June 1, 2003

"Federal prosecutors across the country are turning in creative anti-terrorism records to their superiors in Washington, who are under enormous pressure to produce results and have little incentive to double-check them. The result is an epidemic of phony reporting ... Like Robert McNamara's generals, who inflated enemy body counts so politicians could claim the Vietnam War was going better than it actually was, federal prosecutors are giving us a false sense of security." [more]

Opium Addiction on Rise in Afghanistan

Todd Pitman | Associated Press | July 2, 2003

"Opium use among all age groups is on the rise in Afghanistan, which produces more of the drug than any other nation, according to the United Nations. But in a poor country where anti-narcotics efforts are focused on combating supply, not demand, there are few places to treat addicts who need help." [more]

Hostages of the Empire

Andrew Murray | Guardian | July 1, 2003

" 'We are going to fight them and impose our will on them and we will capture or ... kill them until we have imposed law and order on this country,' [Bremer] declared at the weekend. 'We dominate the scene and we will continue to impose our will on this country.' " [more]

Bush's Vietnam

John Pilger | New Statesman | June 23, 2003

"The Americans call the guerrillas '[Hussein] loyalists' and 'Ba'athist fighters,' in the same way they used to dismiss the Vietnamese as 'communists.' Recently in the Sunni heartland of Iraq, it was clearly not the presence of Ba'athists or Saddamists, but the brutal behaviour of the occupiers, who fired point-blank at a crowd, that inspired the resistance." [more]

US Facing Guerrilla War, General Admits

Robert Schlesinger | Boston Globe | July 17, 2003

"[A] soldier's death raised the number of combat fatalities in the Iraq war to 146, one shy of the combat death toll of US soldiers in the 1991 Gulf War." [more]

North, South Korea Exchange Fire Over DMZ

Christopher Torchia | Associated Press | July 17, 2003

"Tension on the Korean Peninsula is high over North Korea's suspected development of nuclear weapons, and such shooting incidents in the DMZ are rare. In recent years, however, negotiations and reconciliation efforts have moved forward despite such outbreaks of violence." [more]

Inconvenient Facts...

Harold Meyerson | Washington Post | July 17, 2003

"The point is not that an apology is in order, though it plainly is. The point is that ... the vice president dismissed [contradictory] information out of hand and disparaged its source. He did not, however, refute it. Refutations plunge you into the realm of facts, where this administration is exquisitely uncomfortable." [more]

Protest Storm Gathers Over Sao Tome Coup

Abel Veiga | Reuters | July 16, 2003

"Troops on the archipelago seized power Wednesday in a dramatic escalation of bubbling political turmoil on the mountainous archipelago, fanned by arguments over what may be rich oil reserves lying near its shores." [more]

Senate to Kill Pentagon Surveillance Bill

Michael J. Sniffen | Associated Press | July 16, 2003

"No funds appropriated or otherwise made available to the Department of Defense ... or to any other department, agency or element of the federal government, may be obligated or expended on research and development on the Terrorism Information Awareness program." [more]

Marooned Soldiers: 'Our Morale is Gone'

Tom Lasseter and Drew Brown | Knight Ridder/Tribune Wire | July 16, 2003

"Soldiers who were among those who took Baghdad [were] first told they would head home May 1. Instead, they were shipped to Fallujah. Word came that they would be gone July 1. Didn't happen. Then July 18 was the date to circle. Then Aug. 1." [more]

Analysis: The Impact of Bush Linking Iraq With Sept. 11

Linda Feldmann | Christian Science Monitor | March 14, 2003

"Bush never pinned blame for the attacks directly on the Iraqi president. Still, the overall effect was to reinforce an impression that persists among much of the American public: that the Iraqi dictator did play a direct role in the attacks." [more]

Analysis: Beating Around the Bush

Julian Borger | Guardian | July 16, 2003

"Under fire for the CIA's handling of intelligence on Iraq, the agency's chief passes the buck back to the White House." [more]

The Cult of Rajavi

Elizabeth Rubin | New York Times | July 13, 2003

"The Pentagon has seen the fatal flaw of hitching itself to volatile groups like the Islamists who fought the Soviets in Afghanistan and, more recently, the Iraqi exile groups who had no popular base at home. It seems dangerously myopic that the U.S. is even considering resurrecting the Rajavis and their army of Stepford wives." [more]

US to Defy Court Order in Terrorism Case

Philip Shenon | New York Times | July 15, 2003

"The department acknowledged that its decision could force a federal judge to dismiss the indictment against Mr. Moussaoui. Officials have said for months that if the indictment were dismissed, his prosecution would almost certainly be moved to a military tribunal." [more]

Transcript: Rumsfeld Stumbles on ABC

George Stephanopoulos | Federal News Service | July 14, 2003

"...we just have to be patient. It's been 10 weeks now. We've got a wonderful team of people working on the problems. They are intelligent, they are serious, they are purposeful, and they are going to keep looking..." [more]

Analysis: A Rogue's Gallery of War Profiteers

Todd Tavares | Dollars and Sense Magazine | July 14, 2003

"After USAID gave SSA the Iraq contract, its security office discovered that the firm did not have the necessary security clearance. Instead of revoking the contract and awarding it to a company with the correct clearance credentials, USAID waived the requirement." [more]

Iraq Policy Is Broken

Fareed Zakaria | Newsweek | July 14, 2003

"There is one group of nations with large numbers of well-trained troops, experienced in peacekeeping and in working with the United States Army. It's called NATO. The problem for the Bush administration is that calling on NATO means bringing France and Germany back into the fold. My suggestion: get over it." [more]

Transcript: Scott Ritter and Iraq's WMD

Wolf Blitzer | Cable News Network | July 13, 2003

"So the president again has misled the American public and indeed the world. When, a month ago, he was in Poland and said, the fact that we had these two labs is proof that we have weapons of mass destruction. It's proof of nothing more than the president has mislead, has fabricated, we don't have a weapons of mass destruction program in Iraq to justify this war. What we have is a quagmire with Americans dying on almost a daily basis and no end in site." [more]

Blair Made Fundamental Mistake, Blix Says

Paul Lashmar | Independent | July 13, 2003

"The theory that WMD were destroyed just before the invasion is, however, unlikely. The Iraqis did not seem capable of the organised destruction, which would have been no small task. Places where such destruction would have taken place show no sign of recent use." [more]

Accidental Anarchist

Steven Mikulan | Los Angeles Weekly | July 11, 2003

"Much of the Internet is a cricket chorus of disaffected voices, and Raisethefist.com, which Austin still operates, is no different from any other of the woollier one-man sites on the left and right. Perhaps, in another time, the feds would have merely regarded Sherman Austin as a minor irritant, marginally worth watching. But then 9/11 hit, and the rest, as they say, is hysteria." [more]

Analysis: Trading On Fear

Sheldon Rampton and John Stauber | Guardian | July 12, 2003

"Selling 'Brand America' abroad was an abject failure; but at home, it worked. Manufacturers of 4x4s, oil prospectors, the nuclear power industry, politicians keen to roll back civil liberties — all seized the moment to capitalise on the war." [more]

Florida Man Says US Piping Iraqi Oil Through Kuwait

Billy Cox | Florida Today | June 3, 2003

" 'Maybe all they're doing is building a highway to put in McDonald's and sell hamburgers. But why go that way? I think we're in bed with Kuwait. I think we're pumping oil out of Iraq to pay for this war.' " [more]

'Organized Resistance' Worries US in Iraq

Molly Moore | Washington Post | July 11, 2003

"U.S. officials are increasingly concerned that Iraqis loyal to former president Saddam Hussein may be organizing guerrilla operations against occupation forces and financing them with money set aside before the war, according to senior commanders and field officers here." [more]

Senate Asks Bush to Employ NATO, UN in Iraq

Vicki Allen | Reuters | July 10, 2003

"The measure said administering and rebuilding Iraq likely will cost tens of billions of dollars over several years, and projected Iraqi oil revenues will not meet those costs." [more]

Troops Plan for Up to Four Years in Iraq

Barry Scheweid | Associated Press | July 10, 2003

"There are nearly 150,000 U.S. troops in Iraq, some of them under fire from anti-U.S. forces. 'We need to not develop an expectation that all of these difficulties will go away in one month or two months or three months,' Franks testified." [more]

Transcript: Al-Qa'ida Training Official Threatens to Clip Wings of US Eagle

STAFF | World News Connection | June 22, 2003

"I swear to you, my brother, that the strike is coming. As I said earlier, you don't use the winning card at anytime. The strike must be well prepared. This means that it must be timed to occur when the giant starts staggering in his blood." [more]

Transcript: Saddam's July 8th Speech

Saddam Hussein | World News Connection | July 8, 2003

"I address you brothers from inside proud Iraq to say: Your main task now -- as Arabs, Kurds, and Turkmen; Shiites and Sunnis; Muslims and Christians; and under all titles and of all religions and denominations -- is to expel the invaders from our country." [more]

Blair Aides Don't Expect to Find Iraqi Weapons, Reports Say

Warren Hoge | New York Times | July 10, 2003

"Senior officials in Prime Minister Tony Blair's government say they no longer believe weapons of mass destruction will be uncovered in Iraq, British news organizations reported today." [more]

Intelligence Official Says White House 'Lied' About Iraqi Threat

Julian Borger | Guardian | July 10, 2003

"Donald Rumsfeld, told the Senate the US had not gone to war against Iraq because of fresh evidence of weapons of mass destruction but because Washington saw what evidence there was prior to 2001 'in a dramatic new light' after September 11." [more]

Non-Fatal Strikes in Iraq Rattle GIs But Go Uncounted

Rajiv Chandrasekaran | Washington Post | July 9, 2003

"Military officials are worried that a barrage of non-fatal attacks — estimated by officials at more than a dozen a day in Baghdad — will sap troop morale and cause people to reevaluate official pronouncements that armed resistance to the U.S. occupation is small and militarily insignificant." [more]

Iraq Civilian Body Count Surpasses 6,000

STAFF | Reuters | July 9, 2003

" 'Then there are the deaths by malnutrition and dehydration as a consequence of the war which we haven't even started talking about,' Sloboda added." [more]

Are We Committing War Crimes in Iraq?

Dennis Jett | Miami Herald | July 7, 2003

"Americans attacked an Iraqi village several miles away where the convoy had stopped earlier in the evening. Several houses were destroyed and a number of villagers injured. Two were killed — Hakima Khalil and her one-year-old daughter Maha. The residents of the village could not understand why they had become targets as they claimed the convoy was just a group of livestock smugglers." [more]

British MPs Furious at Secret US Trials of 'Terror' Britons

Nicholas Watt and Vikram Dodd | Guardian | July 8, 2003

"The two men face a trial where US military officers will serve as judge, jury and prosecution. The men can nominate their defence lawyer, but the lawyers have to get special US clearance." [more]

Guerilla Attacks Spreading to Western Civilian Targets

STAFF | Associated Press | July 9, 2003

"US troops patrolling the capital and other areas have been attacked several times a day. Iraqi police and civilians perceived to be working with the occupying forces have also been targeted." [more]

'No Death Penalty' For Guantánamo Britons

John Innes | Scotsman | July 8, 2003

"The [British] government was 'fundamentally opposed' to the use of the death penalty and would raise the strongest possible objections if there was any chance of this being applied in these cases." [more]

Heat On Australian PM Over Iraq War Motive

Josh Gordon | Age | July 8, 2003

"Opposition foreign affairs spokesman Kevin Rudd said that given the level of intelligence co-operation between Australia and the US, it was 'downright unbelievable' that no one from the Australian Government was in any way aware that the earlier reports from the US were flawed." [more]

'Easter Egg Hunt' For WMD Is Abandoned

Patrick Cockburn | Independent | July 8, 2003

"The silence of Saddam's inner circle on the topic so far tends to confirm the story told by General Hussein Kamel, the son-in-law of Saddam Hussein who fled to Jordan in 1995 ... General Kamel said Saddam had ordered the destruction of weapons of mass destruction in 1991, but had also issued instructions that plans, designs and equipment to start the programme again, when possible, should be secretly retained." [more]

Transcript: An Interview With Gene Sharp

Metta Spencer | Peace Magazine | July 9, 2003

"There is a naivete among some advocates of nonviolent means. They think that if you've had one nonviolent struggle, you are not going to have any more serious problems. I have heard people say that all the nonviolent struggles for independence in India and all of Gandhi's work was a waste. They still have the caste system, they still have poverty, they have an Indian Army, and so forth. As though one series of struggles for independence from a colonial power could have possibly solved all these problems! That's nonsense. They set much higher standards for evaluating effectiveness and success of nonviolent struggle than for violent struggle." [more]

Bush Reverts to Liberal Rationale for Iraq War

Terry M. Neal | Washington Post | July 9, 2003

"The administration that had 100 percent certainty that there were weapons of mass destruction has zero percent certainty as to where they are now. The White House and the president's defenders have reverted to their fall-back humanitarian position — that the removal of Hussein was justification enough for the war." [more]

Shootings of Three US Soldiers Mark Escalation of Resistance

Patrick Cockburn | Independent | July 7, 2003

"Attacks on US soldiers are becoming increasingly frequent and are now taking place in the capital and other cities where previously there had been little resistance to the occupation." [more]

Bush Receives Cool Reception in S. Africa

Dana Milbank and Emily Wax | Washington Post | July 9, 2003

" 'Sure, Bush is coming to visit our AIDS clinic — and he will be here for a whole four hours,' said Walfula Oguttu, editor-in-chief of Uganda's independent newspaper. 'But we all know it all has to do with fighting terrorism. His AIDS money is trying to buy Africa.' " [more]

Safety Match

Seth Green | American Prospect | June 27, 2003

"Governments that abuse their own citizens, or allow corporations to abuse their citizens, promote environments conducive to terrorism. Far from undermining our security, then, the U.S. legal system's ability to enforce basic human rights standards has the potential to ward off terrorism by bringing to justice the malicious despots that create the illiberal conditions in which terrorism thrives." [more]

What I Didn't Find in Africa

Joseph C. Wilson IV | New York Times | July 9, 2003

"If the information was ignored because it did not fit certain preconceptions about Iraq, then a legitimate argument can be made that we went to war under false pretenses ... At a minimum, Congress, which authorized the use of military force at the president's behest, should want to know if the assertions about Iraq were warranted." [more]

Blair On Offensive Over Missing WMD

Andrew Grice | Independent | July 9, 2003

"Mr Blair refused to apologise for inadvertently 'misrepresenting' the dossier issued in February as 'intelligence' when large parts of it were culled from an article in a Middle East journal based on a PhD thesis." [more]

Bush Claim on Iraq Had Flawed Origin

David E. Sanger | New York Times | July 8, 2003

"[Bush's] statement was apparently primarily based on American intelligence ... but many analysts did not believe those reports at the time, and were shocked to hear the president make such a flat, declarative statement." [more]

Analysis: Did Bush Exaggerate the Iraqi Threat?

Wolf Blitzer | Cable News Network | July 8, 2003

"Intelligence reports suggesting Saddam Hussein's regime was attempting to obtain uranium from the African nation of Niger were based on false information, including forged documents. What's even more embarrassing is that the Central Intelligence Agency and the State Department had themselves earlier concluded the reports were almost certainly not true." [more]

Liberia's Taylor Accepts Nigerian Asylum Offer

David Clarke | Reuters | July 7, 2003

"Bush set Taylor's departure as a first condition for bringing stability to Liberia and necessary before he would agree to send peacekeepers to the West African country wrecked by nearly 14 years of violence. But the former warlord has said he wants a peacekeeping force in place first to prevent rebels or his own volatile fighters from running wild." [more]

UK, EU to Protest US Military Tribunals

Jim Lobe | OneWorld | July 7, 2003

"The three known defendants are being held with as many as 680 other foreign captives at Camp X-Ray at Washington's Guantánamo Bay naval base in Cuba where, according to a series of court decisions, none of them enjoys the basic due-process rights required by the U.S. Constitution." [more]

US-Turkish Ties Hit New Low With Arrest of Soldiers

Jeffrey Donovan | Radio Free Europe | July 7, 2003

"Once a model of stability in a chaotic region, Turkish-American relations are going from bad to worse. Over the weekend, ties between the NATO allies hit a new low after U.S. forces in northern Iraq arrested 11 Turkish military officials reportedly suspected of plotting to kill an Iraqi Kurdish leader. Ankara and Washington have since been trying to control the damage, but the wounds could be lasting." [more]

Baghdad Council Begins, But Has Small Role in Gov't

Andrew Gray | Reuters | July 7, 2003

"Delegates held the inaugural session on Monday of a new Baghdad city council, hailed by the United States as a major step towards democracy in Iraq even though it has only an advisory role." [more]

Blair 'Misrepresented' Intelligence But Did Not 'Mislead'

Katherine Baldwin | Reuters | July 7, 2003

"Tony Blair and his government did not mislead parliament or doctor evidence to justify the war on Iraq, a parliamentary committee concluded on Monday. The government, though, did get its knuckles wrapped over its dossiers on Iraq's weapons." [more]

Bush Presses for More Nukes, End to Test Ban

Tom Squitieri | USA Today | July 7, 2003

"The matter-of-fact way in which Rumsfeld suggested [nuclear weapons'] possible role [in US combat] was a rare public sign of a growing effort by the administration to end the decade-long ban on developing and testing new nuclear bombs." [more]

Karzai Angry Over Musharraf's Comments

Sayed Salahuddin | Reuters | July 7, 2003

"The Afghan foreign ministry says Musharraf, during a recent trip to Europe, questioned Karzai's influence across Afghanistan, spoke of a power vacuum and said the government was not representative of all ethnic groups." [more]

Thousands Protest at Dedication of Constitution Center

Martha Woodall | Philadelphia Inquirer | July 5, 2003

"A huge puppet of Bush feeding the Bill of Rights into a paper shredder was stationed at the rally-site entrance with a sign reading: 'Defend our rights, repeal the Patriot Act now.' " [more]

Nothing But Lip Service

EDITORIAL | Army Times | June 30, 2003

"President Bush and the Republican-controlled Congress have missed no opportunity to heap richly deserved praise on the military. But talk is cheap — and getting cheaper by the day, judging from the nickel-and-dime treatment the troops are getting lately." [more]

Troop Morale in Iraq Hits 'Rock Bottom'

Ann Scott Tyson | Christian Science Monitor | July 7, 2003

" 'Faced with continued resistance, Department of Defense now plans to keep a larger force in Iraq than anticipated for a period of time,' Maj. Gen. Buford Blount, commander of the 3rd Infantry Division, explained in a statement to families a month ago. 'I appreciate the turmoil and stress that a continued deployment has caused,' he added." [more]

Monitors to Track Civilian Deaths

Duncan Campbell | Guardian | July 3, 2003

"Operating under the auspices of the American anti-war coalition, United for Peace and Justice, the group intends to publish details of contracts obtained by corporations such as Halliburton and Bechtel and act as a clearing-house for information on allegations of civil rights abuses." [more]

Transcript: How Bush Got Bounced from the Carlyle Board

Suzan Mazur | Progressive Review | June 30, 2003

"We put [George W. Bush] on the board and [he] spent three years. Came to all the meetings. Told a lot of jokes. Not that many clean ones. And after a while I kind of said to him, after about three years — you know, I'm not sure this is really for you. Maybe you should do something else. Because I don't think you're adding that much value to the board. You don't know that much about the company." [more]

How 'Liberation' Brought Anarchy to Kabul, Baghdad

Robert Fisk | Independent | July 2, 2003

"The one demand almost all Afghans make — that international troops should be deployed in other cities, not just in Kabul, and hoover up the millions of rifles and rocket-propelled grenades — is denied them by the United States. Why? The Americans are keen to confiscate weapons in Iraq. Why not in Afghanistan as well?" [more]

MIT to Provide Google-Type Gov't Site

Justin Pope | Associated Press | July 3, 2003

Government Information Awareness "hopes to create a self-sustaining community where, as occurs with popular Web sites eBay and Google, the users keep it running and credible." [more]

UN Likely to Pressure N. Korea on Nuclear Issue

Hiroki Fukuda | Asahi Daily News | June 28, 2003

"Washington tried to have the Security Council adopt a statement putting pressure on Pyongyang in April. But the plan was shelved because Beijing and Moscow — permanent members of the council with veto power — disapproved." [more]

'Soft Walls' Could Keep Hijacked Planes at Bay

Anil Ananthaswamy | New Scientist | July 3, 2003

"If a plane was flying with a no-fly-zone to the left, and the pilot started banking left to enter the zone, the avionics would counter by banking right. Lee's system, called 'soft walls', would first gently resist the pilot, and then become increasingly forceful until it prevailed." [more]

$25m Offered by US for Capture of Hussein

Jim Krane | Associated Press | July 3, 2003

"The reward for Saddam matches the $25 million that Washington is offering for its other top fugitive: Osama bin Laden, the al-Qaida leader missing since U.S. forces helped dislodge the Taliban regime in Afghanistan." [more]

US Planning for Intervention in Liberia

Pauline Jelinek | Associated Press | July 3, 2003

"Bush said he would not be rushed into making a decision before he leaves Monday evening for a five-country African tour. He called anew on President Charles Taylor to resign and leave the country, steps that U.S. officials have hinted are a condition for dispatching American troops." [more]

Analysis: In Afghanistan, US Shooting in the Dark

Syed Saleem Shahzad | Asia Times | June 28, 2003

"The hard truth is that US intelligence simply does not really know what is going on in the Taliban and al-Qaeda camps. This is evidenced by the countless raids that have been launched in recent times, none of which have resulted in the capture of anyone in Afghanistan." [more]

Shiites Feel Betrayed by Americans

Salah Nasrawi | Associated Press | July 2, 2003

"A leader of a prominent Shiite group accused the Bush administration on Wednesday of reneging on pledges to hand over power to local political groups in Iraq and blamed Americans for failing to secure Iraq after Saddam's fall and 'plunging the country into an unending cycle of violence.' " [more]

Overseer in Iraq Seeks US Reinforcements

Jonathan S. Landay and Warren P. Strobel | Philadelphia Inquirer | July 2, 2003

"Bremer's request for more U.S. troops and civilian help underscores how difficult it has been for his small civilian staff and about 158,000 U.S.-led troops to meet the demands of Iraqis for security and other basic needs." [more]

US Suspends $47m in Aid Over Int'l Criminal Court Dispute

STAFF | Agence France-Presse | July 2, 2003

"The United States put monetary muscle behind its vehement opposition to the International Criminal Court, suspending more than 47 million dollars in military aid to 35 countries for their failure or refusal to give US citizens immunity from the tribunal." [more]

US Blames Blast on Bomb Class as Iraqi Ire Simmers

Daniel Trotta | Reuters | July 2, 2003

"The U.S. military said a bomb-making class inside a mosque triggered a deadly explosion that enraged the Iraqi town of Falluja, where residents vowed Wednesday to wage holy war against U.S. occupiers." [more]

US-Based Missiles to Have Global Reach

Julian Borger | Guardian | July 1, 2003

"The ultimate goal would be a 'reusable hypersonic cruise vehicle ... capable of taking off from a conventional military runway and striking targets 9,000 nautical miles distant in less than two hours.' " [more]

How Bush Wealth is Linked to The Holocaust

Toby Rogers | Clamor Magazine | June 1, 2002

"Throughout the Bush family's decades of public life, the American press has gone out of its way to overlook one historical fact — that through Union Banking Corporation, Prescott Bush and his father-in-law, George Herbert Walker, along with German industrialist Fritz Thyssen, financed Adolf Hitler before and during World War II." [more]

US Develops Urban Surveillance System

Michael J. Sniffen | Associated Press | July 2, 2003

"Though insisting CTS isn't intended for homeland security, DARPA outlined a hypothetical scenario for contractors in March that showed the system could aid police as well as the military." [more]

Bush 'Indicted' Over War Crimes

STAFF | Japan Times | July 1, 2003

"The charges against Bush, according to the indictment, include aggression, attacks against civilians and nonmilitary facilities and the torturing and execution of prisoners." [more]

Analysis: A Truce of Sorts

STAFF | Economist | June 30, 2003

"For Palestinians in Gaza, the key test of whether the new agreement is working will be whether they can resume moving around freely." [more]

Questions Over Int'l Force for Iraq

Judy Dempsey, James Politi and Jean Eaglesham | Financial Times | June 30, 2003

"Questions were growing on Monday over the funding and composition of the 30,000 additional international troops the US expects to see deployed in Iraq by September." [more]

US Strikes at Iraqi Resistance

STAFF | British Broadcasting Corporation | June 30, 2003

Paul Bremer: "We are going to fight them and impose our will on them and we will capture or, if necessary, kill them until we have imposed law and order on this country." [more]

In the Land of Guantánamo

Ted Conover | New York Times | June 27, 2003

"A surreal society has emerged at the tip of Cuba in which rules are the only common language and prisoners and guards alike feel marooned." [more]

Iraqi Scientist Ignored, Jailed

William Douglas and Knut Royce | Newsday | June 27, 2003

"An Iraqi scientist who has provided what the White House yesterday called key components and blueprints for an illicit nuclear program was initially ignored by the Pentagon and jailed by U.S. military forces in Baghdad as he tried to get the materials into American hands." [more]

Analysis: Headlines Over the Horizon

STAFF | Research and Development | July 1, 2003

Analysts lay out ten international-security developments that aren't getting the attention they deserve. [more]

State Dept. Disputes That Trailers Were Weapons Labs

Douglas Jahl | New York Times | June 26, 2003

"The State Department's intelligence division is disputing the Central Intelligence Agency's conclusion that mysterious trailers found in Iraq were for making biological weapons." [more]

Hundreds of Iraqis Killed by Faulty Grenades

Thomas Frank | Newsday | June 22, 2003

"The consequences of failure rates are magnified by the numbers of grenades used: To destroy one air-defense system covering 100 square yards requires 75 rockets, each carrying 644 grenades — a total of 48,300. The 16 percent failure rate listed by the Pentagon produces 7,728 unexploded grenades, scattering them over 600 square yards." [more]

Israel Arrests 250 Palestinians

STAFF | United Press International | June 25, 2003

"Palestinian sources have acknowledged 70 of the 250 arrested were members of the Islamic resistance group Hamas but questioned why a large number of minors and university students were detained." [more]

Shi'as Angered at British Search for Arms

Charles Clover | Financial Times | June 25, 2003

"Violence [has] served notice that an aggressive weapons confiscation campaign, begun throughout Iraq on June 15, could have serious consequences in the conservative rural Shi'a areas." [more]

Liberia Truce Near Collapse as Rebels Advance on Monrovia

Michael Peel | Financial Times | June 25, 2003

"Aid agencies urged the warring parties to reinstate the truce and warned of serious humanitarian problems as thousands fled the centre of the capital to seek refuge in the embassy of the US, with which Liberia has close historical links." [more]

Wolfowitz Granted Authority for Tribunals

Barbara Starr | Cable News Network | June 24, 2003

"Under an order that President Bush issued in November 2001, military tribunals can be used to try non-citizens accused of terrorist acts. Individuals brought before the tribunals would have no right to a jury trial, no right to confront their accusers and no right to judicial review of trial procedures or sentences, which could include death." [more]

Taliban Form 'Resistance Force'

STAFF | Reuters | June 24, 2003

"Mullah Omar called on the Taliban to make sacrifices to drive out U.S. and other foreign troops and the "puppet" government of U.S.-backed President Hamid Karzai." [more]

A Nation of Victims

Renana Brooks | Nation | June 12, 2003

"To create a dependency dynamic between him and the electorate, Bush describes the nation as being in a perpetual state of crisis and then attempts to convince the electorate that it is powerless and that he is the only one with the strength to deal with it. He attempts to persuade people they must transfer power to him, thus crushing the power of the citizen, the Congress, the Democratic Party, even constitutional liberties, to concentrate all power in the imperial presidency and the Republican Party." [more]

'Free Speech Zones' Shouldn't Squelch Right to Disagree

John Leo | Townhall.com | May 5, 2003

"Turley thinks the District of Columbia police deliberately encircled large numbers of protesters for mass arrests at last September's World Bank-International Monetary Fund demonstration in Washington. The goal, he thinks, was to break the protest by removing as many people as possible from the streets without giving them a chance to disperse." [more]

US Convoy Attack May Have Been Inside Syria

STAFF | Agence France-Presse | June 24, 2003

"A US defense official with knowledge of the intelligence that led to the strike, said reports that Saddam or his sons were hit were 'wishful thinking.' " [more]

Explosion in Central Baghdad

STAFF | Agence France-Presse | June 23, 2003

"Residents of Karrada Dakhel commercial street said the explosion occurred in a large garbage bin which caught fire." [more]

Mayor's Office Attacked in Iraqi City

Chris Tomlinson | Associated Press | June 24, 2003

" 'I don't think the American people fully appreciate just how long we are going to be committed here and what the overall cost will be,' said Senator Joseph Biden, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee." [more]

US Troops Attacked at Fallujah Power Station

STAFF | Agence France-Presse | June 24, 2003

"The conservative Sunni Muslim town has been a flashpoint since US troops shot dead at least 16 Iraqis at a demonstration in late April." [more]

Guerrilla Attacks On Rise In Iraq

Mark MacKinnon | Globe and Mail | June 24, 2003

" 'Get me out of here,' said one female U.S. soldier stationed in central Baghdad when told about the latest grenade attack. 'This place is too dangerous.' " [more]

Analysis: The First Casualty

John B. Judis and Spencer Ackerman | New Republic | June 19, 2003

"Foreign policy is always difficult in a democracy. Democracy requires openness. Yet foreign policy requires a level of secrecy that frees it from oversight and exposes it to abuse. As a result, Republicans and Democrats have long held that the intelligence agencies—the most clandestine of foreign policy institutions—should be insulated from political interference in much the same way as the higher reaches of the judiciary. As the Tower Commission, established to investigate the Iran-Contra scandal, warned in November 1987, 'The democratic processes ... are subverted when intelligence is manipulated to affect decisions by elected officials and the public.' " [more]

US Troops to Be In Iraq At Least Five Years

STAFF | Reuters | June 23, 2003

"Leading U.S. senators said on Monday they believed American troops could be in Iraq for at least five years and knowing the fate of Saddam Hussein and his sons was key for the future stability of the country." [more]

America Brings Democracy: Censor Now, Vote Later

David Rohde | New York Times | June 22, 2003

"The United States isn't perceived as a cultivator of democracy in Iraq. It is seen as a military occupier that supports democracy and free speech when they serve its interest, but suppresses both when they don't." [more]

The Empire Expands Wider and Still Wider

Eric Hobsbawm | CounterPunch | June 11, 2003

"The emptiness of the policy is clear from the way the aims have been put forward in public relations terms. Phrases like 'axis of evil', or 'the road map' are not policy statements, but merely sound bites that accumulate their own policy potential. The overwhelming newspeak that has swamped the world in the past 18 months is an indication of the absence of real policy. Bush does not do policy, but a stage act." [more]

'I Just Pulled The Trigger'

Bob Graham | Evening Standard | June 19, 2003

The GIs spoke of shooting civilians at roadblocks. Sgt Meadows said: "When they used white flags we were told to stop them at 400 metres out and then strip them down naked then bring them through. Most obeyed the order. We knew about others who had problems with [Iraqis] carrying white flags and then opening up on our guys. We knew about every trick they were trying to do. Then they'd use cars to try and drive at us. They were men, women and children. That day we shot up a lot of cars." [more]

US Soldier Killed in Drive-By Baghdad Attack

Patrick E. Tyler | New York Times | June 18, 2003

"An American soldier was killed and another was wounded today in a drive-by shooting in central Baghdad, the latest in a series of assaults on the United States military." [more]

Is Lying About The Reason For War An Impeachable Offense?

John W. Dean | FindLaw | June 6, 2003

"Perhaps most troubling, the President has failed to provide any explanation of how he could have made his very specific statements, yet now be unable to back them up with supporting evidence. Was there an Iraqi informant thought to be reliable, who turned out not to be? Were satellite photos innocently, if negligently misinterpreted? Or was his evidence not as solid as he led the world to believe?" [more]

Bush Aide Takes Aim at 'War on Terror'

Laura Blumenfeld | Washington Post | June 16, 2003

"The focus on Iraq has robbed domestic security of manpower, brainpower and money, [the counterterrorism adviser] said. The Iraq war created fissures in the United States' counterterrorism alliances, he said, and could breed a new generation of al Qaeda recruits. Many of his government colleagues, he said, thought Iraq was an 'ill-conceived and poorly executed strategy.' " [more]

War Poll Uncovers Fact Gap

Frank Davies | Philadelphia Inquirer | June 14, 2003

"A third of the American public believes U.S. forces have found weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, according to a recent poll. Twenty-two percent said Iraq actually used chemical or biological weapons." [more]

A Broken Body, a Broken Story, Pieced Together

Dana Priest, William Booth and Susan Schmidt | Washington Post | June 17, 2003

"An investigation reveals that Pvt. Lynch — still in the hospital after 67 days — suffered bone-crushing injuries in a crash during the ambush." [more]

Analysis: Pressure Mounts on Nuclear Iran

William M. Reilly | United Press International | June 16, 2003

"Diplomats at the United Nations see the latest International Atomic Energy Agency annual report seeking Iran's cooperation on nuclear plant inspections as yet another sign of mounting pressure on Tehran." [more]

US Anti-Guerrilla Campaign Draws Iraqi Ire

Ilene R. Prusher | Christian Science Monitor | June 16, 2003

"[T]here are signs that operations such as this one, code-named 'Spartan Scorpion,' may be creating as many problems as it solves. Here in Fallujah, lately the hub of anti-US resistance, locals say they are seeing far too few signs of promised reconstruction — and far too many of an outright occupation." [more]

Blair Accused of Deception in Iraq Weapons Threat

Pete Harrison | Reuters | June 17, 2003

"Two former senior British ministers accused Prime Minister Tony Blair of deceiving the public at the start of a parliamentary inquiry on Tuesday into the government's justification for launching a war with Iraq." [more]

Liberian Rebels, President Sign Truce

STAFF | Agence France-Presse | June 17, 2003

"Liberian rebels signed a long-awaited ceasefire with President Charles Taylor's government to end a devastating four-year civil war which has spread havoc across west Africa." [more]

Hunt for WMD Runs Out of Targets

Dafna Linzer | Associated Press | June 10, 2003

"US military units assigned to track down Iraqi weapons of mass destruction have run out of places to look and are getting time off or being assigned to other duties even as pressure mounts on US President George W. Bush to explain why no banned arms have been found." [more]

Detainees' Names May Be Withheld

Ted Bridis | Associated Press | June 17, 2003

"A federal appeals court ruled Tuesday that the Bush administration is not obligated to publicly identify the 762 foreigners it detained in the weeks and months after the Sept. 11 terror attacks." [more]

Tales of Despair From Guantánamo

Carlotta Gall with Neil A. Lewis | New York Times | June 17, 2003

"Afghans and Pakistanis who were detained for many months by the American military at Guantánamo Bay in Cuba before being released without charges are describing the conditions as so desperate that some captives tried to kill themselves." [more]

A Lifetime in Limbo

Chisun Lee | Village Voice | June 4, 2003

"Why the 'dirty bomber' case threatens everyone's rights." [more]

Forged Evidence

Rep. Henry Waxman | TomPaine.com | June 10, 2003

"Since March 17, 2003, I have been trying without success to get a direct answer to one simple question: Why did President Bush cite forged evidence about Iraq's nuclear capabilities in his State of the Union address?" [more]

Information and the Fusion of Spatialites

Aharon Kellerman | Center for Urban Technology | January 1, 1996

"Information has been defined as a 'compromise between presence and absence', since it represents a 'form of something without the thing itself' (Latour 1987, p. 243). Communication is, thus, 'being; persons literally occupy the media they use; their existence cannot be separated from these symbolic systems' (Adams 1995)." [more]

Surveillant Simulation and the City: GIS and Urban Panopticism

Stephen Graham | Center for Urban Technology | January 1, 1996

"The result in advanced industrial cities seems to be the emergence of urban landscapes made up of many superimposed layers of surveillant simulation. Each layer has its own finer and finer mosaic of socio-spatial grids; its own embedded assumptions and criteria for allocating and withdrawing service access; its own definitions for specifying the "acceptable" presence of individuals in different "cellular" spaces; and its own cybernetic loops of system feedback, within which systems of surveillance become ever more integrated into systems of simulation. the broad result is the development of social control systems of unprecedented intensity and power which are virtually invisible and unregulated. What is most worrying is that the more disturbing aspects of these trends tend to be virtually ignored within public debates about cities and technology. In fact, many are actually being welcomed under the banners of "improved customer service" or the use of technologies to provide technical quick fixes to the complex urban social problems of crime and alienation." [more]

Parasitic Media: Creating Invisible Slicing Parasites and Other Forms of Tactical Augmentation

Nathan M Martin | Carbon Defense League | June 12, 2003

"The tactics of appropriation have been co-opted. Illegal action has become advertisement. Protest has become cliché. Revolt has become passé. These disputes have reached the definition of rhetoric. They are the usual suspects. Having accepted these failures to some degree, we can now attempt to define a parasitic tactical response. We need a practice that allows invisible subversion. We need to feed and grow inside existing communication systems while contributing nothing to their survival; we need to become parasites. We need to create an anthem for the bottom feeders and leeches. We need to echo our voice through all the wires we can tap but cloak our identity in the world of non-evidence, and the hidden." [more]

Hacking, Slashing and Sniping in the Empire of Signs

Mark Dery | New Press | January 1, 1993

"This techno-voodoo rite constitutes the symbolic obliteration of a one-way information pipeline that only transmits, never receives. It is an act of sympathetic magic performed in the name of all who are obliged to peer at the world through peepholes owned by multinational conglomerates for whom the profit margin is the bottom line." [more]

The Art & Science of Billboard Improvement

Blank DeCoverly and R.O. Thornhill | Billboard Liberation Front | January 1, 1990

"Computers with desktop publishing software offer many advantages to the modern billboard liberator. Fonts and colors can be matched precisely, professional-looking graphical elements can be added to your text message, and scale and spacing become much easier to calculate. There are many software packages suitable for producing overlays, including PageMaker, Quark Xpress, Illustrator, Freehand, CorelDraw, and various CAD programs. Adobe Photoshop gives you the additional flexibility of being able to preview your hit - just scan in a photograph of the original board and apply your modification over it as an independent layer." [more]

Pentagon Had No WMD Intelligence on Iraq Before War

Robert Burns | Associated Press | June 6, 2003

"The Pentagon's intelligence service reported last September that it had no reliable evidence that Iraq had chemical agents in weaponized form." [more]

Iraq's Clear, Present Danger

Dion Nissenbaum | San Jose Mercury News | June 8, 2003

"In the small town of Hit, soldiers responded to a rocket-propelled grenade attack two weeks ago by staging a house-to-house search for weapons. The raids unleashed a furor in the religiously conservative area, as men expressed outrage over soldiers' barging into homes where the women were, in the Iraqis' view, immodestly dressed. That was all it took to spark a furious attack on the local police station, where Army officials were meeting. Before it was over, two soldiers were wounded by a grenade tossed into the compound and Army reinforcements fought their way in to rescue the injured; after they left, demonstrators ravaged the abandoned compound." [more]

War in Iraq Was 'Right Decision,' Bush Says

Dana Milbank | Washington Post | June 10, 2003

"Bush spoke of Iraq's weapons program, rather than its weaponry, and referred to it in the past tense. Asked to clarify Bush's remarks, White House press secretary Ari Fleischer said Bush did not intend to make a distinction between weapons and weapons programs. 'The president, in saying programs, also applies that to weapons,' the spokesman said. Fleischer also said Bush believed Iraq had weapons when the war began." [more]

Toll Grows as Attacks on Troops Get Smarter

William Booth and Daniel Williams | Washington Post | June 11, 2003

"On Monday, officers recalled the assault as sophisticated and organised. 'They were definitely not some kids with pistols. It was well planned and well executed. They knew where we were in the building. They had done reconnaissance,' said Major George Pitt." [more]

Clarifying the Occupation Lexicon

Amira Hass | Ha'aretz | June 12, 2003

"The original intention was to extend settlements during the Oslo process, without being stopped. Meanwhile, most have been legalized whether de jure or de facto. People forget that. Using the term "illegal" makes people forget the fact that international law prohibits all the settlements in the West Bank and Gaza because international law prohibits the occupying power from moving its population into the occupied territory." [more]

3,240 Civilian Deaths in Iraq, Tally Concludes

Niko Price | Associated Press | June 10, 2003

"The AP excluded all counts done by hospitals whose written records did not distinguish between civilian and military dead, which means hundreds, possibly thousands, of victims in Iraq's largest cities and most intense battles aren't reflected in the total." [more]

Greens, the Anti-War Movement and 2004

Tom Gorman | CounterPunch | June 11, 2003

"The 'Nader factor' then, is akin to the antiwar movement of the last year in that they both robbed the 'victors' of moral legitimacy. Nader drove Democrats to get out the vote and kept Bush from winning election outright, much like the antiwar movement in the US, and much more so around the world, kept the UN from giving legal sanction to the Iraq invasion. Nader didn't stop Bush, but he helped put a cloud of illegitimacy over him; the antiwar movement didn't stop the war (which was unlikely in any event), but made Bush go ahead with it despite the opposition of practically the entire world." [more]

'Unauthorized' Settlement Outposts

STAFF | Electronic Intifada | June 10, 2003

"Many of the outposts that are actually removed are in fact uninhabited or 'dummy outposts' — empty outposts erected by the settler movement to use as a tool for negotiations or public relations. Only four of the 15 outposts Israel has slated for dismantlement are inhabited." [more]

Analysis: US Media Ignore Israeli Violence After Aqaba Summit

Ali Abunimah | Electronic Intifada | June 10, 2003

"Dr. Samir Abu Zarzur, the head of the casualty department at Rafiah hospital in Nablus, said that his department treated 32 people injured by the Israeli army on Tuesday, the day President Bush was meeting the Palestinians' Mahmoud Abbas and other Arab leaders in Sharm Al-Sheikh and urging them to join a struggle against 'terrorism.'" [more]

Israel Prevents Relief Management from Meeting

STAFF | United Nations | June 11, 2003

"Security procedures enforced today at the Erez checkpoint out of Gaza prevented Peter Hansen, UNRWA's Commissioner-General and an Under-Secretary General of the United Nations, taking his senior management team from Gaza to a meeting of the Agency's directors in Amman, Jordan. It is the first time in the 53-year history of UNRWA that its quarterly management meeting has had to be cancelled because the Agency's freedom of movement has been curtailed in this way." [more]

Wrangles Over Int'l Court Highlight Transatlantic Rift

STAFF | Deutsche Welle | June 11, 2003

"After a year of trying to negotiate accords with governments around the globe, the United States has so far signed agreements with 37 countries – primarily poor, small ones in Africa, Asia, Latin America and Eastern Europe." [more]

Thailand Tiptoes in Step With American Antiterror Effort

Raymond Bonner | New York Times | June 7, 2003

" 'It is not enough to be with us in the war on terrorism, but you have to trumpet it,' explained an American official in Southeast Asia. Washington would prefer that leaders behave like President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo of the Philippines, who has publicly pledged her allegiance to the United States in the campaign against terrorism." [more]

Backing Off the DMZ

Fred Kaplan | Slate | June 9, 2003

"If Bush is contemplating a pre-emptive airstrike—on North Korea's nuclear facilities or a wider strike against a range of military targets—he would have to worry about the possibility of retaliation from thousands of North Korean artillery tubes, including 500 long-range tubes within range of Seoul. Therefore, he might want to get U.S. troops outside of that range." [more]

Drug Addiction, Dealing See Boom In Baghdad

Aws Al-Sharqy | Islam Online | June 2, 2003

"[T]he Muslim Youth Society championed a campaign to raise the awareness of Iraqis to the threats of drugs and 'erase all traces of occupation that destroyed the cohesiveness of the Iraqi society.' " [more]

Transcript: American Public Diplomacy in the Islamic World

Andrew Kohut | Pew Research Center | February 27, 2003

"[B]acklash against the U.S.-led war on terror is also a big part of the problem. Unlike in much of the rest of the world, the war on terrorism is opposed by majorities in 10 of the 11 countries predominantly Muslim country surveyed by Pew. This includes countries outside the Middle East/Conflict Area, such as Indonesia and Senegal where majorities still held favorable opinion of the US. While they still like us, they don't like our war on terrorism. The principal exception is the overwhelming support for America's anti-terrorist campaign found in Uzbekistan, where the United States currently has troops stationed." [more]

Analysis: Worse than Watergate?

John Dean | FindLaw | June 9, 2003

"Before asking Congress for a Joint Resolution authorizing the use of American military forces in Iraq, [Bush] made a number of unequivocal statements about the reason the United States needed to pursue the most radical actions any nation can undertake — acts of war against another nation. Now it is clear that many of his statements appear to be false." [more]

Barrels Looted at Nuclear Site Raise Fears for Iraqi Villagers

Patrick Tyler | New York Times | June 8, 2003

"For nearly three weeks, hundreds of villagers who live in the shadow of the high earthen berm and barbed wire fences that surrounded the labyrinth of the Iraqi nuclear program here bathed in and ingested water laced with radioactive contaminants from the barrels." [more]

Analysis: Amplifying Officials, Squelching Dissent

Steve Rendall and Tara Broughel | Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting | June 1, 2003

"Nearly two thirds of all sources, 64 percent, were pro-war, while 71 percent of U.S. guests favored the war. Anti-war voices were 10 percent of all sources, but just 6 percent of non-Iraqi sources and 3 percent of U.S. sources. Thus viewers were more than six times as likely to see a pro-war source as one who was anti-war; with U.S. guests alone, the ratio increases to 25 to 1." [more]

US Control of Baghdad and Its Crude May Signal New Assault on OPEC

Ed Blanche | Daily Star | June 7, 2003

"With that kind of output, with low production costs attracting consumer states away from higher-cost regions like the North Sea, an Iraqi oil industry managed by US-based companies would have the capacity 'to bring OPEC to its knees,' according to Chalabi." [more]

Iraq Shi'ite Group Vows to Shun US-Named Council

Wafa Amr | Reuters | June 7, 2003

"'We said at the meeting that we want an elected political council and an elected constitutional council,' Hamed Bayati of the Iranian-backed Shi'ite Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution (SCIRI) told Reuters. 'We will not participate in an administration that would be appointed by ambassador Bremer.' " [more]

Bomber Attacks Peacekeepers in Afghanistan

Todd Pitman | Associated Press | June 7, 2003

"Since the United States broadened its anti-terrorism campaign to include Iraq, there has been a surge in violence against Westerners in the Islamic world. A May 12 attack on housing complexes in Saudi Arabia killed at least 23 people, bombings in Morocco killed 31 victims, and there have been continued guerrilla assaults on U.S. troops in Iraq." [more]

Forty-Eight Hours in Pakistan

Mani Shankar Aiyar | Times of India | June 8, 2003

"The prevailing military regime with a civilian facade is the optimal combination for us to strike a deal with. The Indian illusion needs to be buried once for all: that a democratic government, as we understand it, can ever be conjured into existence in Pakistan. The army is the largest political party by far and it has conquered the only country it is capable of conquering — its own." [more]

Some Analysts of Iraq Trailers Reject Germ Use

Judith Miller and William J. Broad | New York Times | June 7, 2003

"American and British intelligence analysts with direct access to the evidence are disputing claims that the mysterious trailers found in Iraq were for making deadly germs. In interviews over the last week, they said the mobile units were more likely intended for other purposes and charged that the evaluation process had been damaged by a rush to judgment." [more]

More Than 13,000 May Face Deportation

Rachel L. Swarns | New York Times | June 7, 2003

"More than 13,000 of the Arab and Muslim men who came forward earlier this year to register with immigration authorities — roughly 16 percent of the total — may now face deportation, government officials say." [more]

Empowering the New Media Elite with Unacceptable Levels of Influence

Michael J. Copps | Federal Communications Commission | June 2, 2003

"Commenters addressed the need to require more independent programming on our airwaves so that a few conglomerates do not act anti-competitively to control all of the creative entertainment that we see. These proposals should have received the serious attention they deserve in this decision. Over the past decade, we have witnessed a substantial increase in the amount of programming owned by the networks. Where once independent production accounted for much of what we saw, we now have huge vertically-integrated conglomerates that own the vast majority of the programming they deliver." [more]

A Dark Storm Cloud Looming Over the Future of American Media

Jonathan S. Adelstein | Federal Communications Commission | June 2, 2003

"This is a sad day for me, and I think for the country. I'm afraid a dark storm cloud is now looming over the future of the American media. This is the most sweeping and destructive rollback of consumer protection rules in the history of American broadcasting." [more]

Senators Move to Restore FCC Limits on the Media

Stephen Labaton | New York Times | June 5, 2003

"Only 5 members of the 23-member Senate committee offered any support for the commission; most of the rest, Democrats and Republicans alike, expressed deep dissatisfaction with at least some aspect of the new rules. While a majority of the Democrats on the committee criticized most of the package adopted by the commission, elements of it were also challenged by such Republicans as Ted Stevens, Conrad Burns, Kay Bailey Hutchison, Olympia J. Snowe and Trent Lott." [more]

Fear Alters Missile Defense Plan

STAFF | Asahi Daily News | June 6, 2003

"This ... bad behavior by the North Koreans has resulted in negative public opinion in Japan, providing the agency with an opening to speed up acquisition of an 'off-the-shelf' missile defense system. Additionally, Washington has been pushing its East Asia allies hard to establish missile defense systems in concert with the United States." [more]

Court Rules for Police in Miranda Case

Gina Holland | Associated Press | May 27, 2003

"The case tied up the court longer than any other this year. When justices heard arguments in December, they worried over its implications in terrorism cases. The ruling could have implications for counterterrorism interrogations, when building a criminal case may be less important than gathering intelligence." [more]

UK Dossier on Iraq Weapons 'Unreliable'

Al Webb | United Press International | May 29, 2003

"An unidentified expert in Britain's intelligence network told the BBC the 50-page document contained unreliable information and was 'transformed' on instructions from Blair's office in the week before its release last September, to make it 'sexier.'" [more]

US Plans Death Camp

STAFF | Herald Sun | May 26, 2003

"The Mail on Sunday reported the move is seen as logical by the US, which has been attacked worldwide for breaching the Geneva Convention on prisoners of war since it established the camp at a naval base to hold alleged terrorists from Afghanistan." [more]

Protesting? Atlanta PD is Watching

Dan Chapman | Atlanta Journal-Constitution | May 31, 2003

"The Atlanta Police Department routinely places under surveillance anti-war protesters and others exercising their free-speech rights to demonstrate, police officials acknowledged this week." [more]

Philadelphia Council Condemns PATRIOT Act

STAFF | Reuters | May 29, 2003

"[Philadelphia] City Council passed a resolution calling on local members of Congress to work for the repeal of the federal law that granted the Justice Department broad new police powers for Washington's so-called war on terrorism." [more]

Hawaii, Alaska, Philadelphia Newest 'Civil Liberties Safe Zones'

Nat Hentoff | Village Voice | May 30, 2003

"These resolutions are directed at the Bush-Ashcroft war on the Bill of Rights. [Yet] the undeterred Attorney General is planning to introduce in Congress USA Patriot Act II, which would much more radically reduce individual liberties in the holy name of national security." [more]

DoJ Officials Unrepentant Over Detentions

Edward Alden | Financial Times | June 3, 2003

"US Justice Department officials on Monday defended their decision to detain for months more than 750 illegal immigrants in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks, and said similar powers were still being used to hold suspected terrorists." [more]

The Abusive Detentions of Sept. 11

EDITORIAL | New York Times | June 3, 2003

"It was vital after the terrorism of Sept. 11 that the nation protect itself, arresting and investigating those who might have had a role. But it was equally vital that it avoid doing things we would later regret, like failing to grant detainees due process or abusing them either mentally and physically. Sadly, such caution was not exercised, according to a frank and blistering report by the inspector general of the Justice Department." [more]

DoJ Discarded Policies to Hold Immigrants

Curt Anderson | Associated Press | May 30, 2003

"The government ignored long-standing immigration practices so it could hold dozens of foreigners for long periods following the Sept. 11 attacks, the Justice Department inspector general has concluded." [more]

Nonviolence Starting to Matter in the Middle East

Ira Chernus | Common Dreams | May 13, 2003

"The order was to close down the television station in Mosul, because it sometimes broadcasts Al-Jazeera. The TV station was the only means of public communication for a very large city. Major Means said she could not in good conscience close it down, just to suppress free speech. Her superiors could not ignore that. They relieved her of duty and flew her out of Mosul, right away." [more]

Recovering the Power of the Global Grassroots in the Anti-War Movement

Cindy Milstein | Nadir | June 2, 2003

"By making use of inclusive structures that allowed diverse individuals to collectively reclaim social and political space, the direct action wing of the anti-globalization movement had forged a desire for self-organization. Even after the anti-capitalist movement's promise seemed to be eclipsed by a draconian 'war on terror' and a top-down antiwar movement in response, the decentralist sensibility was not forgotten." [more]

FCC Votes to Relax Rules Limiting Media Ownership

Kenneth N. Gilpin | New York Times | June 2, 2003

"As expected, the commission said a single company could now own television stations that reach 45 percent of American households, up from 35 percent. The major networks wanted the cap eliminated entirely." [more]

Intelligence on Iraqi Weapons 'Wrong'

Greg Miller | Los Angeles Times | May 31, 2003

"The top Marine commander in Iraq said Friday that U.S. intelligence was 'simply wrong' in its assessment that Saddam Hussein intended to unleash chemical or biological weapons against U.S. forces during the war, but he stopped short of saying there was an overall intelligence failure." [more]

DoJ Investigation Faults Immigrant Round-Ups

Dan Eggen | Washington Post | May 31, 2003

"The report found that 54 of the 762 detainees were held for more than three months, despite objections from officials in the former Immigration and Naturalization Service that they should be released with 'reasonable dispatch.' " [more]

US to Appoint Council in Iraq

Rajiv Chandrasekaran | Washington Post | June 2, 2003

"The U.S. occupation authority has decided to handpick between 25 and 30 Iraqis to serve on an interim political council to advise U.S. officials on day-to-day governance issues rather than convene a large assembly where Iraqi delegates would debate the form and membership of their transitional administration, a senior U.S. official said today." [more]

'I Was a Human Shield'

Billie Moskona-Lerman | Electronic Intifada | May 1, 2003

"Here [I have] a photo of Rachel standing determined in front of the bulldozer, here she stands on the mound of earth. And here she disappears, she lies on the ground, her mouth open as if trying to say something, Alice crouches over her (later, Alice would quote what she said with her last strength: "My back is broken"), she draws in her two legs, the body lies like a lifeless sack. Rachel is dead." [more]

Abbas Hopeful of Hamas Ceasefire Agreement

STAFF | Guardian | May 29, 2003

"[A] senior Hamas leader in Gaza, Ismail Abu Shanab, had outlined three conditions for a ceasefire: that Israel stops operations against Palestinians, frees Palestinian prisoners, and withdraws from the West Bank and Gaza." [more]

Transcript: FCC Ownership Rules

STAFF | Center For Public Integrity | May 29, 2003

To be reviewed by the FCC: "Newspaper/Broadcast Cross-Ownership Prohibition (1975) Television broadcast companies may not buy newspapers in communities where they own stations." [more]

Poverty Doesn't Create Terrorists

Alan B. Krueger | New York Times | May 29, 2003

"The stereotype that terrorists are driven to extremes by economic deprivation may never have held anywhere, least of all in the Middle East. New research by Claude Berrebi, a graduate student at Princeton, has found that 13 percent of Palestinian suicide bombers are from impoverished families, while about a third of the Palestinian population is in poverty. A remarkable 57 percent of suicide bombers have some education beyond high school, compared with just 15 percent of the population of comparable age." [more]

A Road Map to the Oslo Cul-de-Sac

Adam Hanieh and Catherine Cook | Middle East Report Online | May 15, 2003

"Sharon's public statements during and following Powell's visit cast doubt upon Israel's willingness to adhere to the settlement freeze. Ha'aretz quoted Sharon as telling Powell, 'What do you want, for a pregnant woman to have an abortion just because she is a settler?' In an interview this week, Sharon reinforced his commitment to the maintenance of settlements in the West Bank, asserting that Jewish settlers will continue to live there under Israeli sovereignty." [more]

US Uncovers Own 'Doomsday' Weapons

STAFF | Online.ie | May 28, 2003

"The Pentagon has finally discovered evidence of weapons of mass destruction — buried in a US Army base 50 miles from Washington DC." [more]

Sharon, Abbas to Talk Peace, Violence Spirals Upward

STAFF | Agence France-Presse | May 27, 2003

"Israel's unprecedented recognition of Palestinian statehood aspirations, with its acceptance Sunday of the so-called roadmap, cleared the way for Bush to host a June summit between Sharon and Abbas." [more]

DR Congo to Get UN Peacekeepers

STAFF | Agence France-Presse | May 28, 2003

"UN peacekeepers will be sent to the Democratic Republic of Congo starting next week. According to diplomatic sources, the United States would vote in favor of a resolution forming a peacekeeping force and would support it but would not participate." [more]

Human Rights, Religious Groups Push UN Involvement in Iraq

STAFF | Reuters | May 21, 2003

"The coalition demanded that the United Nations play the lead role in rebuilding Iraq, while safeguarding human rights and being allowed to send its weapons inspectors back into the country." [more]

Protests Over, Anti-War Activists Look for New Focus

Jeff Donn | Associated Press | May 27, 2003

"Many acknowledge feeling powerless and weary after standing up against a military campaign that rolled over both Iraqi defenses and the antiwar movement. However, many are already rechanneling their energy into other social causes or party politics, often with a mind to unseating President Bush in next year's election." [more]

Amnesty: Iraq War Increased Fear, Insecurity

Gideon Long | Reuters | May 28, 2003

"If the war on terror was supposed to make the world safer, it has failed, and has given governments an excuse to abuse human rights in the name of state security, [Amnesty's report] said." [more]

Northern Iraq Could Become Second Palestine

Masanori Naito | Asahi Daily News | May 28, 2003

"By agreeing to [Turkish] conditions, the U.S. government essentially took control of the region around the oil fields. Even if Kurdish self-rule takes root and expands, in other words, the area would remain under strong U.S. influence. From the viewpoint of Middle Eastern nations, the United States appears to be positioning itself to seize oil rights and dominate the north under the guise of supporting the Kurds." [more]

Reviewing Intelligence on Iraq

EDITORIAL | New York Times | May 26, 2003

"The failure so far to find any weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, the prime justification for an immediate invasion, or definitive links between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda has raised serious questions about the quality of American intelligence and even dark hints that the data may have been manipulated to support a pre-emptive war." [more]
This website is a tribute to Why War?, one of the nation's first and most innovative post-9/11 student antiwar organizations. Born on October 22, 2001 at Swarthmore College, we were a handful of freshmen and sophmores who vocally opposed the wars in Afghanistan, Iraq and elsewhere. And now, seven years later, we are retiring this website as we focus our efforts on new directions. We hope that it continues to serve future activists and we remain confident that humanity is on the verge birthing a better world.
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