contributions

by MARK SHERMAN
WASHINGTON (AP) - The Justice Department will seek dismissal of lawsuits from more than 300 Guantanamo Bay detainees fighting the legality of their confinement, using a new law that the Bush administration says sharply limits existing challenges. Advocates for detainees quickly registered their opposition Tuesday.
The measure, part of the Defense Appropriations Act that President Bush signed last week, was intended to allow detainees at the U.S. naval base in Cuba to (…)

By Rupert Cornwell
Lobbying is Washington’s grubby secret. Some say lobbying is part of the democratic process. Others claim it is legalised bribery, even corruption. But love it or loathe it, it is the way Washington works.
Usually you hear little about the quiet meetings, the lavish lunches and junkets that lubricate American politics. But every once in a while something comes along to open the system to what it hates most: daylight. The case of Jack Abramoff, influence-peddler (…)

by Brian Whitaker and agencies in Baiji
Between six and 14 members of an Iraqi family were reported dead yesterday after US warplanes obliterated a house in the northern oil town of Baiji. Enraged local officials described the attack as unjustified and said it had killed an innocent family, including one member who worked for the Iraqi police.
"I absolutely confirm there were no terrorists in this house," police chief Colonel Sufyan Mustafa told Reuters. "Even if there had been, why (…)

by Charles Sullivan
Peak oil is most likely a term most readers have not heard before. That is about to change. The concept is slowly making its way onto the mainstream stage. It is intruding into the fringes of the public conscience and soon it may occupy the greater part. When that time comes, as it inevitably will, and probably sooner than you think, the world as we know it will end.
Oil is the lifeblood not only of the U.S. economy-especially its terrible military capability-it is in (…)

Hitler had the brownshirts- his Gestapo that went around the country taking out dissenters. The New "Patriot" Act creates a new American Gestapo: (Section 605)
There is hereby created and established a permanent police force, to be known as the `United States Secret Service Uniformed Division’. Subject to the supervision of the Secretary of Homeland Security...
The new USSSUD will be in DC, but also everywhere Bush travels, or former Presidents, or heads of state, or even at events (…)

"You’re like an ambassador for peace," a Spanish journalist told me as we finished one of the dozens of interviews I gave in Europe. I did this interview right before I went to urge the Spanish Deputy Minister for Foreign Affairs to oppose the war more strenuously.
In reality, I did feel like an ambassador for peace as I traveled around Europe for 16 days in December.
The Mayor of London held a reception in honor of our peace efforts at the new and very modern City Hall, near the (…)

Bush Impeachment Inquiry Has 8 House Co-Sponsors
By Matthew Cardinale, Atlanta Progressive News (January 01, 2006)
A total of eight US House members have co-sponsored Resolution 635 to create a select committee to investigate the grounds for impeaching President Bush, Atlanta Progressive News has learned.
The co-sponsors are Rep. Lois Capps (D-CA), Rep. John Conyers (D-MI), Rep. Sheila Jackson-Lee (D-TX), Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-CA), Rep. Donald Payne (D-NJ), Rep. Charles Rangel (D-NY), (…)

By William Fisher
My editors, as well as many friends around the world, have been urging me to write something about how I think about George W. Bush as 2005 ends and a new year begins.
I was reluctant because I have been reading dozens of year-enders on this subject, and wondering if I had anything to add.
What I have to add is not exactly new. Many others have expressed similar views. To which I will now add my own perspective.
As I thought about our president, I wondered: Do I (…)

by Monica Benderman
His name was Earl. He spent his days in a wheel chair, hand propelled, sitting along the sidewalks of the seawall in a Victorian city along the coast. He kept all of his possessions in a shopping cart, while his valuables hung from the handles of his chair. I met him one night while walking on the beach. I walked past a hollowed out part of the rocky seawall, and something moved. It was Earl, and a blanket. After going across the street and returning with cups of (…)

by Mary MacElveen
In answering the terrorists back who attacked the United States on September 11th, 2001, George W. Bush was quoted as saying: "They (the terrorists) hate us for our freedoms."
Well, those freedoms can be found in the United States Constitution.
Contained within the Constitution and the Bill of Rights are the very laws that separate us from those we have always abhorred. By enacting the Patriot Act, we told Osama bin Laden and others just like him, that they won. (…)