contributions

WHAT MANY PEOPLE DON’T KNOW
By Peter Fredson
November 18, 2005
It is on the record that many of the GOP war hawks, that still insist war on Iraq was necessary, were draft dodgers. They sought deferments from military service until danger of losing blood or limb was over, or they joined a National Guard unit which rarely forced them to quit a job. So, with this vast military experience, most of the GOP Senators pontificate at length about war strategy, casualties, preemption, Shock and (…)

“I think it would be a good idea” - Mahatma Gandhi, when asked what he thought about Western civilization by: Gabriele Zamparini on: 19th Nov, 05
Ann Clwyd is the Prime Minister Blair’s Human Rights Envoy in Iraq. On November 15th, 2005, interviewed by Jeremy Paxman at BBC 2 Newsnight, she said:
“We have been trying to train the Iraqis in human rights. We’ve set up conferences for the Iraqis on human rights with all the NGOs. We’ve been trying our very best to get human rights into the (…)

by William Bowles • Friday, 18 November 2005 Finally, the ‘white phosphorus’ obscenity made it into the BBC’s main news, at least for a couple of days before being relegated into the Beeb’s dustbin of ‘allegations’ which of course, at least according the BBC, is where the story belongs. Of course, ‘making it into the news’ is a bit of a misnomer as it took the BBC nearly two weeks for the story to actually ‘break’ into its mainstream news coverage, no doubt because it was us non-entities, (…)

– Ministers launch inquiry after detainees found Shia paramilitaries now control force, say Sunnis
by Ewen MacAskill and Rory McCarthy in Beirut Michael Howard
Seif Saad, an Iraqi guard, showed no remorse yesterday for the detention and alleged abuse of 173 prisoners in Baghdad. "We placed sacks on their heads and tied their hands behind their backs," he said of their arrests, but, as far as he was concerned, they were suspected terrorists.
He was standing in a watchtower overlooking (…)

by Robert Scheer
At a time when approximately 57 percent of Americans polled believe that President Bush deceived them on the reasons for the war in Iraq, it does seem a bit redundant to deconstruct the President’s recent speeches on that subject. Yet, to fail to do so would be to passively accept the Big Lie technique—which is how we as a nation got into this horrible mess in the first place.
The basic claim of the President’s desperate and strident attack on the war’s critics this past (…)

In less than a week Amir Peretz has revitalised the Israeli peace camp and brought a rare optimism to the Middle East
by Jonathan Freedland
In the Middle East, the sensible position is pessimism. No one ever lost a bet by gambling that Israelis and Palestinians would keep fighting each other rather than make peace. The smart money says that remains true, that progress is impossible, that there are too many obstacles in the way.
And yet the last few days have brought an optimism that is (…)

We speak with Octavia Butler, one of the few well-known African-American women science fiction writers. For the past thirty years, her work has tackled subjects not normally seen in that genre such as race, the environment and religion. [includes rush transcript] The Washington Post has called Octavia Butler “one of the finest voices in fiction period. A master storyteller who casts an unflinching eye on racism, sexism, poverty and ignorance and lets the reader see the terror and beauty of (…)

By Roberto Lovato
Halliburton and its subcontractors hired hundreds of undocumented Latino workers to clean up after Katrina — only to mistreat them and throw them out without pay.
Arnulfo Martinez recalls seeing lots of hombres del ejercito standing at attention. Though he was living on the Belle Chasse Naval Base near New Orleans when President Bush spoke there on Oct. 11, he didn’t understand anything the ruddy man in the rolled-up sleeves was saying to the troops. Martinez, 16, (…)

by Jim Adams
TUCSON, Ariz. - Vine Deloria Jr., the intellectual star of the American Indian renaissance, passed on Nov. 13, after struggling for several weeks with declining health. His immeasurable influence became immediately apparent in an outpouring of tributes from all corners of Indian country.
’’I cannot think of any words I could possibly say that even begin to capture the significance of this man and his work among Native people and on our behalf for the past half century,’’ (…)

By Harry Kelber
In 1997, the AFL-CIO established the American Center for International Labor Solidarity to develop organizing strategies for international campaigns and cooperative relations with labor federations in other countries.
Solidarity Center replaced the four regional institutes under former President Lane Kirkland , whose staffs, operating in some 80 countries, had been involved with CIA agents to destabilize democratically-elected governments in the Dominican Republic, Brazil (…)