contributions

by Henryk M. Broder Iranian President Mahmud Ahmadinedshad’s suggestion to move Israel to Germany is not as absurd as it sounds. If you consider the idea impartially, you can see a historic land reform concept which can be advantageous to all parties. Everyone is attacking the Iranian president again because he suggested moving Israel from the Middle East to Germany, or Austria. Even those who were not outraged about Mahmud Ahmadinedschad’s demand "to wipe Israel off the map" are (…)

STICK TO A GOOD LIE
By Peter Fredson
December 10, 2005
Condi Rice, Bush’s attack dog, the Black Angel of Death, has been high-stepping around Europe lately with the fancy shoes that she bought as Katrina killed many people. I’m surprised she doesn’t wear hip-height rubber boots to wade knee-deep in all the crap she is spreading on European leaders. But she finds time to lecture Syria and Iran and constantly threaten them because that was the neocons plan years ago. She also, following (…)

A human being is a human being whether he is an American, a British, or an Iraqi. His Wrights must be respected by all governments as those Wrights are guaranteed by all religions and man-made constitutions. The people in Iraq has long suffered from the unjustified embargo which has led to the death of more than 1 million Iraqis. The USA invasion and subsequent occupation of Iraq has resulted in hundreds of thousands of deaths and injuries. Added to all of these inhuman conditions, that the (…)

The much-belated, poll-prompted outcry of a few American elected officials against the widespread use of torture by the Bush Administration - following years of silent acquiescence in the face of incontrovertible evidence of deliberate atrocity - is a welcome development, of course. But it has left an even more sinister aspect of Bushist policy untouched, one that likewise has been hidden in plain sight for years.
On September 17, 2001, George W. Bush signed an executive order authorizing (…)

by Der Spiegel
US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice may have left Berlin, but her visit has left all sorts of bad tastes in the mouths of Germans. Nobody seems terribly convinced by her claim that America doesn’t torture. And what is "torture" anyway?
US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice may have left Berlin, but her lightening visit on Tuesday is still splashed across the headlines on Wednesday. Nobody, of course, expected the issues raised by Rice’s visit to disappear as soon as (…)

By Andrew Buncombe in Montreal
A detailed and disturbing strategy document has revealed an extraordinary American plan to destroy Europe’s support for the Kyoto treaty on climate change.
The ambitious, behind-the-scenes plan was passed to The Independent this week, just as 189 countries are painfully trying to agree the second stage of Kyoto at the UN climate conference in Montreal. It was pitched to companies such as Ford Europe, Lufthansa and the German utility giant RWE.
Put (…)

By Camila Piñeiro Harnecker
I arrived in Caracas in July 2005 with a few contacts at different cooperatives, anxious about how I would sort through the more than 70,000 cooperatives that the Superintendencia Nacional de Cooperativas (National Superintendence of Cooperatives — SUNACOOP) had referred to in its recent press statements. Indeed, I found cooperatives everywhere. Between one night and the next morning, I stumbled on cooperatives in some rather unexpected places: a group of (…)

By Patrick Cockburn in Baghdad
The British government is trying to stall an investigation into the theft of more than $1.3bn (£740m) from the Iraqi Ministry of Defence, senior Iraqi officials say.
The government wants to postpone the investigation to help its favoured candidate Iyad Allawi, the former prime minister, in the election on 15 December. The money disappeared during his administration.
The UK’s enthusiasm for Mr Allawi may have led it into promoting a cover-up of how the (…)

By MICHAEL SLACKMAN
DAMASCUS, Syria, Dec. 6 - The United Nations investigation into the assassination of the former Lebanese prime minister, Rafik Hariri, is beginning to show some cracks: one witness is dead, another is in jail and still another has recanted his testimony with a fantastic story of abduction, drugging and bribery.
In a case that has begun to sound more and more like a fictional spy thriller, with charges of Soviet-style intimidation tactics and a witness who died when (…)

As soon as you’re born they make you feel small By giving you no time instead of it all Till the pain is so big you feel nothing at all A working class hero is something to be A working class hero is something to be
They hurt you at home and they hit you at school They hate you if you’re clever and they despise a fool Till you’re so fucking crazy you can’t follow their rules A working class hero is something to be A working class hero is something to be
When they’ve tortured and scared (…)