contributions

by Humberto Marquez
CARACAS - Some 100,000 social activists from across the Americas and the world will soon be arriving in the Venezuelan capital, where they will condemn war and imperialism, and lend their support — although not unconditionally — to the changes introduced in this country by President Hugo Chavez.
The sixth annual World Social Forum (WSF) is being held at several different sites this year, instead of one centralised forum as in the first five editions. In addition to (…)

BusinessWeek travels to Colombia to speak with labor leaders, politicians, workers and others who can shed light on the controversy
To shed more light on the conflicting claims in the Colombia Coca-Cola (KO ) controversy, BusinessWeek sent Mexico City-based Latin America Correspondent Geri Smith to Colombia for a week in late October. She interviewed more than a dozen people, including labor unionists, academics, diplomats, economists, current and former Coke workers, and the country’s (…)

by Nick Robinson
Workers at Wal-Mart and other big-box retail chains-like workers in any mostly nonunion industry with low pay and tense, dreary working conditions-are generally a disgruntled lot. In central Florida, Wal-Mart workers are fighting and sometimes winning campaigns using collective action to solve both shop floor and larger industry-wide problems.
In one rural Florida town, over 20 percent of workers in the local Wal-Mart had their hours cut. In response, workers went into (…)

By Carol D. Leonnig
The Bush administration argued yesterday that the president has inherent war powers under the Constitution to order warrantless eavesdropping on the international calls and e-mails of U.S. citizens and others in this country, offering the administration’s most detailed legal defense to date of its surveillance program.
The Justice Department’s lengthy legal analysis also says that if a 1978 law that requires court warrants for domestic eavesdropping is interpreted as (…)

Why did it take so long? 01/19/2006 17:15
It was not surprising to discover that George W. Bush chose to illegally spy on American citizens
I only have one question: Why did it take so long? In previous Pravda.Ru articles (Bush vs. Hitler, The Great American Treason, Articles of Impeachment and Indictment for High Crimes and Misdemeanors, The Death of the Bill of Rights, Parts I and II, and others), I warned of the clear and present danger the Bush dictatorship represents to America’s (…)

by Monica Benderman
Have you forgotten? We are people.
Have you forgotten? There are feelings inside.
Have you forgotten?
We are fighting for our lives. We are fighting for the right to live in peace, as we choose. We are fighting to live by what we believe, in the hope that others will be allowed the same opportunity, even as they choose to live differently than what we have chosen.
Have you forgotten the purpose - while you fight so hard for the cause?
We gave more than you (…)

by Wayne Besen
A few years ago, I had the privilege of meeting a gay professional basketball player for the Utah Jazz. He desperately wanted to come out of the closet, but feared reprisals and career suicide. The man relayed to me the great difficulty of having an active social life in conservative Utah. As a gigantic, well-known black man in lilywhite Mormon Country, it wasn’t as if could slip into a gay bar unnoticed.
There were teammates who were aware of his sexual orientation and (…)

by William Fisher
With the billions of dollars appropriated by the U.S. for Iraqi reconstruction almost all spent, Japan, Australia and other nations in President George W. Bush’s “coalition of the willing” are likely to be asked to shoulder much of the burden for funding the large number of unfinished projects.
Getting others to take up the slack is reportedly high on Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice’s agenda when she visits the Far East in March. Her trip, originally scheduled for (…)

1/19: EXPLOSIVE INTEL BRIEFING TONIGHT AT 8 P.M. EST, THURSDAY, JANUARY 19, 2006
"Al Qaeda is nothing more than an extension of the operatus linked to U.S. intelligence that was allowed, by script, to remove itself as a rogue break away entity of the U.S. government; allowed to de-compartmentalize from oversight, and was run instead by Gary Best rogue black ops specialists for scripted activity outside of the U.S. government, with its funding being orchestrated through the Pakistani secret (…)

By Remi Kanazi
Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon suffered a severe stroke resulting in a cerebral hemorrhage on January 4, 2004. Paramedics rushed Sharon from his ranch in the Negev Desert to a Jerusalem hospital for life saving surgery. From the early news feeds and doctor’s comments things are not looking good. Internal bleeding after six hours of surgery led to another three hours in the operating room. After the second surgery doctors said his vital signs are stable, although his (…)