contributions

by Rosalio Muñoz
LOS ANGELES - Latino immigrant rights leaders are responding to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s veto of SB 60 with a joint mobilization to defeat all Schwarzenegger-backed propositions in the Nov. 8 election. The bill would provide driver’s licenses for over 2 million undocumented workers here.
Shortly after Schwarzenegger vetoed the license measure on Oct. 7, Los Angeles Democratic leaders, state Sen. Gil Cedillo and Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez called on immigrant rights (…)

by Rick Wolff
There is no precedent in US — or any other — history for the level of personal debt now carried by the American people. Consider the raw numbers. In 1974, Federal Reserve data show that US mortgage plus other consumer debt totaled $627 billion. By 1994, the total debt had risen to $4,206 billion, and by 2004, it reached $9,709 billion. For the second quarter of 2005, the Fed announced that the nation’s debt service ratio (debt payments as a percentage of after-tax income) (…)

By Eric Hellweg
IBM once set one of its Linux commercials on a basketball court. But other than that, the worlds of Big Blue and professional basketball have rarely crossed lanes. This month, though, they were linked by what promises to become one of the most volatile workplace issues of the next decade: genetic testing.
After it was revealed that Chicago Bulls star center Eddie Curry had a heart arrhythmia, the Bulls said he’d have to take a DNA test before the organization would tender (…)

by Brian McAfee
Earlier this year President Bush enacted an energy bill into law that gave $85 billion dollars to big oil and gas companies, and this month the Republican controlled House of Representatives gave billions more in tax breaks to the oil industry while doing nothing to lower gas prices.
Despite this windfall for the already rich stockholders and their friends, President Bush has proposed cutting funds to help the poor heat their homes this winter. The nation’s 37 million (…)

Former Premier Prodi Wins Italian Primary, Will Face Berlusconi in Next Year’s Election
By ALESSANDRA RIZZO
Former Italian premier Romano Prodi won a sweeping victory in a nationwide primary, according to near-final results released Monday, and will challenge conservative Premier Silvio Berlusconi in next year’s election.
The results showed Prodi, the center-left candidate who also is a former European Commission president, won 74.4 percent of the vote. More than 99 percent of votes (…)

THE Army officer in charge of investigating abuse of civilians by British forces in Iraq has been found dead, it was revealed yesterday.
Royal Military Police Captain Ken Masters, 40, is believed to have killed himself. His body was found on Saturday evening.
An army colleague is said to have made the grim discovery in Waterloo Lines camp within the main British military base at Basra airport.
Ministry of Defence sources said last night it is not believed Capt Masters had left a (…)

Well, I screwed it up real good, didn’t I?
- Richard M. Nixon
In a New York Times article published on Sunday, columnist Frank Rich buried the dart right in the center-black. "What matters most in this case," wrote Rich, "is not whether Mr. Rove and Lewis Libby engaged in a petty conspiracy to seek revenge on a whistle-blower, Joseph Wilson, by unmasking his wife, Valerie, a covert C.I.A. officer. What makes Patrick Fitzgerald’s investigation compelling, whatever its outcome, is (…)

Cars stolen in US used in suicide attacks
The FBI’s counterterrorism unit has launched a broad investigation of US-based theft rings after discovering some vehicles used in deadly car bombings in Iraq, including attacks that killed US troops and Iraqi civilians, were probably stolen in the United States, according to senior US Government officials.
The FBI’s deputy assistant director for counterterrorism, Inspector John Lewis, said the investigation did not prove the vehicles were stolen (…)

Mon, 10 17 2005, 16:08 Djokhar Time ???????Englishtürkçe
US "private military contractors" already in-country to "deal with" Venezuela’s President Hugo Chavez Frias...
Intelligence agencies are revealing that US private military contractors, active in Colombia "under various contract umbrellas, including counter-narcotics and counter-insurgency" are building up to yet another attempted coup d’etat against Venezuela’s President Hugo Chavez.
Carefully described as "private military (…)

Chavez, a fierce critic of US-backed free trade policies in the region, has called for closer regional integration, including seeking support for his own proposal - the Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas trade pact, or ALBA for its Spanish initials, named after Latin American independence hero Simon Bolivar.
Venezuela will become a permanent member of the Mercosur trade bloc, helping to strengthen cooperation between the oil-rich country and its regional neighbors, the Venezuelan (…)