contributions

Mammoth crimes go unpunished as personal squabbles distract attention from real issues
by Paul Joseph Watson
The rumor mill tells us indictments are going to be handed down on Thursday but the constant guessing game should be brushed aside in favor of a serious consideration about whether we are being sold on a story that in reality has no significant consequences.
While the left are transfixed by the issue, the lunatic fringe of the Internet have seized on this story, like they do (…)

By David Swanson, October 26, 2005
The first reason I’m going to lie down, refuse to move, and wait to be arrested outside the White House today is my belief that massive civil disobedience is needed if we are going to end the war and forestall the next war. The power of nonviolent sacrifice has been tried and tested. It may not work this time, but nothing else seems remotely likely to do the job, not even my most extravagant hopes for indictments. I’m being as practical as I know how to (…)

by Bob Rosen
For the first time in two weeks, public schools in British Columbia were open for business yesterday. Teachers had voted over the weekend by a 77% margin to accept a mediated settlement to the dispute recommended by arbitrator Vince Ready. In the wake of the decision, there is much public debate and discussion, including among the ranks of teachers, about what was achieved in the struggle.
Last Thursday, Ready released his proposed settlement. It included an award of $40 (…)

By Oliver Teves
Separate assassination attacks in the northern Philippines killed a union chief at a sugar plantation owned by former President Corazon Aquino’s family and a provincial official from a leading left-wing party, police and party leaders said Wednesday.
Ricardo Ramos, president of the workers’ union at the Hacienda Luisita plantation in Tarlac province, was shot by an unknown assailant with an M-14 rifle late Tuesday as he talked with other unionists near his home. (…)

Protesters across the United States have taken part in hundreds of vigils and rallies to mark the 2,000th US military death in Iraq.
Anti-war activists say their movement is rapidly growing in strength and now speaks for a majority of Americans who believe President George W Bush’s decision to invade Iraq was a mistake.
The death last weekend of a soldier, wounded in combat in the southern Iraqi city of Samarra earlier this month, pushed the toll to 2,000.
"We’re seeing rapid (…)

Argentine soccer hero Diego Armando Maradona appears to have landed a big interview in his new career as TV showman: Cuban President Fidel Castro.
An employee at a Havana health retreat where Maradona lived for four years struggling against cocaine addiction said the football legend was back in town with a team of producers to interview the Cuban leader.
"Maradona arrived yesterday and looks like a young boy he is so thin," said the source at La Pradera health spa.
The man once hailed (…)

A fire broke out early today in a prison complex for drug smugglers and illegal immigrants at Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport, killing 11 people and injuring 15, a police spokesman said.
The identity of the dead was not immediately known. Officials said a number of detainees escaped during the fire.
A prisoner told the Dutch television station NOS that guards initially did not take prisoners’ warnings of a fire seriously and told them nothing was wrong.
"They didn’t open the door. They (…)

As a legal noose appears to be tightening around the Bush/Cheney/Rove inner circle, a shocking government report shows the floor under the legitimacy of their alleged election to the White House is crumbling.
The latest critical confirmation of key indicators that the election of 2004 was stolen comes in an extremely powerful, penetrating report from the General Accounting Office that has gotten virtually no mainstream media coverage.
The government’s lead investigative agency is known (…)

By STEFAN NICOLA
KEHL AM RHEIN, Germany — Never was Germany’s opposition at the same time so diversified and so small — it will have the difficult job of playing the parliamentary watchdog while resisting future coalition flirtations.
It was a sign how unwelcome the new kid on the block really is: When Germany’s Bundestag, the lower house of parliament assembled for the first time earlier this week, most of Germany’s 614 lawmakers refused to accept a left-wing politician as the deputy (…)

We speak with Rep. John Conyers (D-Michigan), who worked with Parks for over a decade. Conyers remembers Parks’ life and speaks about the possibility of a state funeral and a national ’Rosa Parks day.’
Rep. John Conyers, (D-Michigan)
AMY GOODMAN: Civil rights pioneer Rosa Parks has died at the age of 92. It was 50 years ago this December that she refused to give up her seat to a white man aboard a city bus in Montgomery, Alabama. She was arrested and convicted of violating the state’s (…)