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REASONS WHY BUSH INVADED IRAQ
By Peter Fredson
George Bush and most of the Republicans in Congress were alarmed by public reaction to the Bush and FEMA inaction during Katrina. They came up with a strategy to take some of the blame away. They said that everybody was to blame: city, county, state officials and maybe, perhaps, even the President may have incurred a tiny bit of blame.
Today they have reworked this strategy to take the growing heat off of the Bush administration for (…)

(Topeka, Kansas, USA) Across the plains of Kansas the destroyed, radioactive 140,000 lb Abrams Tanks perched on railroad flat cars and rolled towards an uncertain future. Only one thing was certain. They would be radioactive forever. This would be their everlasting Death Mask. RADIOACTIVE The Pentagon deceptively calls it "depleted uranium." The Abrams Tanks are constructed with a layer of radioactive uranium metal plates. The big Tanks fire a giant uranium dart at 2,100 mph, much faster (…)

Tony Blair knew full well before he went to war that he could face criminal charges for ‘waging a war of aggression’, which is is not only illegal in international law but it is the most serious criminal offence known to mankind. 100,000 deaths later and he still isn’t behind bars.
by Chris Coverdale
When the Prime Minister and the Attorney General announced that the war with Iraq would be legal, they betrayed the trust of the British people.
Waging a war of aggression is not only (…)

by Mary MacElveen
I first want to thank Mark Parent and LiveJournal.com for bringing this video feed to the attention of many (English Version from Italian TV): US Chemical Weapons Attack on Iraqi Civilians.
But before you watch this video which is 27 minutes in length, I want to strongly caution you that what you are about to see is so horrific and if you have children, under no circumstances are they to view this feed.
While I have seen graphic photos of the “Bush War” in Iraq, I (…)

Singers and staff take drastic action in protest at budget cuts
by Barbara McMahon in Rome
Opera lovers in Italy this season may notice something different about the performers. Many of them are looking distinctly svelte after going on hunger strike to protest about proposed cuts to the country’s arts budget. Living on only water, fruit juice and coffee, singers’ weights have shrunk.
Barbara Vignudelli, a soprano at the famed La Scala opera house in Milan, has had no solid food for two (…)

By Dan Eggen
The Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, which has enforced the nation’s anti-discrimination laws for nearly half a century, is in the midst of an upheaval that has driven away dozens of veteran lawyers and has damaged morale for many of those who remain, according to former and current career employees.
Nearly 20 percent of the division’s lawyers left in fiscal 2005, in part because of a buyout program that some lawyers believe was aimed at pushing out those who did (…)

By E.J. Graff
Isteeled myself as the camera panned slowly over a vast, sprawling mine operation. I’d come to see the new Charlize Theron movie, "North Country," which is supposed to be based on a real story of sexual harassment at the Eveleth Taconite Co., in Minnesota’s Iron Range. I was expecting the film to bring alive the hostile environment the women hired there in the 1970s and ’80s had endured. If it was at all true to life,the moviecould be rough going. But I hoped it would expose (…)

By Maria Sacchetti and Jenna Russell
More than 5,000 high school students in five of the state’s largest school districts have removed their names from military recruitment lists, a trend driven by continuing casualties in Iraq and a well-organized peace movement that has urged students to avoid contact with recruiters.
The number of students removing their names has jumped significantly over the past year, especially in school systems with many low-income and minority students, where (…)

by JANE MAYER
At the end of a secluded cul-de-sac, in a fast-growing Virginia suburb favored by employees of the Central Intelligence Agency, is a handsome replica of an old-fashioned farmhouse, with a white-railed front porch. The large back yard has a swimming pool, which, on a recent October afternoon, was neatly covered. In the driveway were two cars, a late-model truck, and an all-terrain vehicle. The sole discordant note was struck by a faded American flag on the porch; instead of (…)

By Lily Galili and Roni Singer, Haaretz Correspondents, and Haaretz Service
U.S. Sen. Hillary Clinton said Sunday that she supports the separation fence Israel is building along the edges of the West Bank, and that the onus is on the Palestinian Authority to fight terrorism.
"This is not against the Palestinian people," Clinton, a New York Democrat, said during a tour of a section of the barrier being built around Jerusalem.
"This is against the terrorists. The Palestinian people have (…)