contributions

By Khaled El-Masri
KHALED EL-MASRI, a German citizen born in Lebanon, was a car salesman before he was detained in December 2003.
THE U.S. POLICY of "extraordinary rendition" has a human face, and it is mine.
I am still recovering from an experience that was completely beyond the pale, outside the bounds of any legal framework and unacceptable in any civilized society. Because I believe in the American system of justice, I sued George Tenet, the former CIA director, last week. What (…)

By JIM TANKERSLEY, JOSHUA BOAK, AND CHRISTOPHER D. KIRKPATRICK BLADE STAFF WRITERS
First of three parts
President Bush’s corporate champions see the spoils of his administration in coal. And timber. And credit-card payments, Afghan electric lines, Japanese bank transfers, and fake crab.
America’s business leaders supplied more than $75 million to return Mr. Bush to the White House last year - and he has paid dividends.
Bush Administration policies, grand and obscure, have financially (…)

The son of Woody Guthrie knew exactly how to revive the musical heritage of the Big Easy. He took a train ride from Chicago all the way down south.
By Andrew Buncombe
But all the towns and people seem to fade into a bad dream, And the steel rail still ’ain’t heard the news. The conductor sings his song again, The passengers will please refrain: This train has got the disappearin’ railroad blues.
More than 30 years ago Arlo Guthrie, son of the late folk legend Woody, sat in a now (…)

by Katrina vanden Heuvel
"This shocking revelation ought to send a chill down the spine of every American."
Senator Russell Feingold, December 17, 2005
As reported by the New York Times on Friday, "Months after the September 11 attacks, President Bush secretly authorized the National Security Agency (NSA) to eavesdrop on Americans and others inside the United States to search for evidence of terrorist activity without the court-approved warrants ordinarily required for domestic (…)

By House Judiciary Committee Minority Staff
The Downing Street minutes and deception, manipulation, torture, retribution, and coverups in the Iraq war.
Full Report: www.truthout.org/3.122005ConRes.pdf
Executive Summary
This Minority Report has been produced at the request of Representative John Conyers, Jr., Ranking Member of the House Judiciary Committee. He made this request in the wake of the President’s failure to respond to a letter submitted by 122 Members of (…)

By Uri Avnery
SOME 721 YEARS ago, the town of Hamelin in Germany was suffering from a plague of rats. A citizen called Bunting offered to get rid of them for an agreed fee. When he played on his flute, the entranced rats came out of their holes and followed him to the river where they drowned. But when the piper presented his bill to the town fathers, they wouldn’t pay him.
The piper wrought a terrible revenge. He played his pipe once again, and this time all the children of the town (…)

by Jane Smiley
Is Bush in a bubble? Is Bush a dry drunk? Is Bush a drunk drunk? Is Bush a narcissist? Is Bush an idiot? Is Bush a madman? Does Bush have an “Authority Problem”? Theories abound about why Bush does the things he does, but most of them assume that he is making mistakes that he could or would correct if he understood how misguided he was.
On Monday, there was an editorial in the New York Times lamenting the apparent indifference of the Bush administration to the rebuilding (…)

At last count, there were more than 100 prisoners aged 60 and older on America’s death rows.
By Earl Ofari Hutchinson
Clarence Ray Allen is old, sick, and disabled. He suffers from just about every physical ailment imaginable. But Allen is a condemned killer, and he could be executed at California’s San Quentin prison on January 17.
Septuagenarians are not aberrations on America’s death rows. A reporter who interviewed death row prisoner Stanley Tookie Williams shortly before his (…)

By David Bacon
The House of Representatives has just passed HR 4437, by Wisconsin Republican James Sensenbrenner, incredibly with the votes of over 30 Democrats. It is the most repressive immigration bill in decades, and would deprive immigrants of important due process rights, divide families, criminalize undocumented status, and drive those without papers even further underground. Other Congressional proposals are even more extreme. Some, like Colorado Representative Tom Tancredo, (…)

by JOHN HORGAN
Last spring, a magazine asked me to look into a whistleblower case involving a United States Fish and Wildlife Service biologist named Andy Eller. Eller, a veteran of 18 years with the service, was fired after he publicly charged it with failing to protect the Florida panther from voracious development. One of the first species listed under the Endangered Species Act, the panther haunts southwest Florida’s forests, which builders are transforming into gated golf communities. (…)