contributions

We, the European Left, gathered in Athens on the 29th and 30th of October, 2005, acknowledge that the crisis currently afflicting Europe has no borders, and that the neo-liberal policies decided upon in Brussels and by the national governments are to blame for it. These choices have been made over a period of many years, and the result is in front of our eyes, now.
We also acknowledge that the peoples of Europe, who have suffered most from these policies, are fighting against them and (…)

By Derrick Z. Jackson
PRIDE MUST go before he falls. This is why Samuel Alito hopped to liberal burrows on Capitol Hill to proclaim the burial of his conservative ideology. In his 1985 application to a senior post in the Reagan administration, Alito wrote:
’’I am particularly proud of my contributions in recent cases in which the government has argued in the Supreme Court that racial and ethnic quotas should not be allowed and that the Constitution does not protect a right to an (…)

Venezuela and Argentina signed Monday in Puerto Ordaz several bilateral accords which lock the two countries into a tight strategic alliance targeted at converting Mercosur into the clear alternative to any trade agreement involving the hemisphere.
Argentine president Nestor Kirchner hailed the occasion as “historic” and “unprecedented” and said the “bilateral relation has given a qualitative forward leap and I leave Venezuela absolutely gratified”.
The one day talks with President Hugo (…)

Facing growing criticism about the Iraq war from high-level politicians as well as from the public (a just-released Zogby poll found that 53 percent of people surveyed favored impeachment if Bush lied about the reasons for going to war with Iraq), the Bush regime has been snarling back. Vice President Cheney said that the charge that the Bush administration "purposely misled the American people on prewar intelligence is one of the most dishonest and reprehensible charges ever aired in this (…)

By BC Co-Publishers Glen Ford and Peter Gamble
Only three Democrats voted on the issue of the Iraq war, last Friday. The rest followed Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi’s directives, a continuation of her "strategy" of insulating the pro-war wing of the party, centered in the Democratic Leadership Council (DLC), from the wrath of the party’s base, which is now overwhelmingly anti-war. For the DLC’s sake, Pelosi smothers the party’s progressive wing - of which she was once a proud member. Thus, (…)

Ordinance Limits Parking, Camping
By Rosalind S. Helderman
CRAWFORD, Tex., - About a dozen antiwar protesters, including Daniel Ellsberg and the sister of Cindy Sheehan, were arrested Wednesday morning while camping on a roadside near President Bush’s ranch in violation of a new county ordinance.
The group returned this week as Bush arrived at his Texas home to celebrate Thanksgiving with his family. They came in hopes of reigniting the international attention they attracted in August, (…)

by Jeff Cohen "Part of my job is being a good listener," Hillary Clinton wrote, in the first line of her letter received today. As a New Yorker, I’m represented by Hillary in the U.S. Senate. Along with her two-page fundraising letter, I received a four-page "2005 Critical National Issues Survey."
But something was missing — something Hillary obviously doesn’t want to hear about: IRAQ. Nowhere in the letter or the questionnaire was that four-letter word.
Hillary’s first question asked (…)

by Robert Scheer
You’ve got to hand it to Dick Cheney; no other modern politician has come so close to perfecting the theater of the absurd. Even as he protests his innocence of lying about matters of state, he lies about matters of state.
In speeches Friday and Monday, the vice president, who has long insisted Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda were allies, Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, we would be greeted as liberators in Baghdad, and that the Iraqi insurgency is in its ’’last (…)

Urgent action is needed to tackle domestic violence against women, which is widespread, deep-rooted and largely hidden in a wide range of societies, a study by the UN health agency said.
The study conducted by the World Health Organisation (WHO) in 10 countries found that between 15 percent (Japan) and 71 percent (Ethiopia) of the women interviewed had been subjected to physical or sexual violence by an intimate male partner during their lifetime.
From about one-fifth of women in (…)

Max Fuller has written the most disturbing and thought provoking article of the year. In his “Crying Wolf: Media Disinformation and Death Squads in Occupied Iraq”, (Global Research) Fuller painstakingly lays out the details and documentation to prove that the United States intelligence agencies are behind the vast incidents of murder and torture being carried out in Iraq today. If Fuller’s thesis is correct, then the War on Terror, that mighty engine of imperial carnage, is nothing more than (…)