contributions

ROME - Italian troops were sent to Iraq to secure oil deals worth 300 billion dollars, and not just for post-war humanitarian purposes, an Italian television report by RAI claimed on Friday.
The 20-minute report, broadcast by RAI News 24, the all-news channel of the Italian state-owned network, is based on interviews and official government documents.
In it, the Silvio Berlusconi administration is accused of picking the Nasiriyah area to safeguard a 1997 deal signed by Italy’s (…)

Adam Curtis has recut his explosive war on terror documentary The Power of Nightmares into a feature film - and is taking it to the festival.
By Stuart Jeffries
05/12/05 "The Guardian" - - There will be no red carpet for Adam Curtis when his film The Power of Nightmares receives its gala screening at the Cannes Film Festival on Saturday. There would be no point: his film has no leading ladies who could disport themselves in backless numbers or lantern-jawed himbos to vogue fatuously (…)

​ ​​​​ Just like the $9 billion ’lost’ and the 52 warnings prior to 9/11, the Democratic ’Leadership’ is silent on the most important news of the day. The current earth-shattering news is The Memo revealing that Bush and Blair agreed to go to war in April 2002, that they ’fixed the facts’ to scare us into war.
This news should turn American politics upside down. It should cause all Americans, even Republicans, to be outraged, really F#@%ing pissed off that WE’VE BEEN LIED TO !!!
We (…)

The Marines of Kilo Company were on the fourth day of an offensive against insurgents in western Iraq, but they had seen little action Wednesday until a loud boom rocked this Euphrates River village, followed by the frantic screams of young troops.
They stopped their convoy and looked back to see an amphibious vehicle engulfed in flames. They knew that about 18 Marines from Lima Company of the 3rd Battalion, 25th Regiment, were in the vehicle.
Within minutes, the vehicle’s gas tanks (…)

The US colonel who authorised the use of dogs to interrogate prisoners at Iraq’s Abu Ghraib prison has been relieved of command after he was found guilty of dereliction of duty.
Colonel Thomas Pappas, who headed the prison’s military intelligence operations, also received a written reprimand and was fined US$8000 (A$10500) for his involvement in the prisoner abuse scandal.
A statement issued by the military said Pappas did not keep his personnel "adequately informed of, trained upon and (…)

"If it were my say, I’d have him [Sgt Kevin Benderman] gassed, and publicly executed to set the example that America is not a nation of fools." This is but one sentence in an email sent by a no-nothing 17 year old to Sgt Kevin Benderman (the entire letter is at the end of this commentary). Is the young man that wrote those words to blame for his mindlessness? Or is the blame with an older generation which is teaching this nation’s youth a mindless ideology that preaches nothing but (…)

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The former commander of the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq blamed a ranking officer for introducing the use of human pyramids and dog leashes in the abuse of detainees and said in an interview on Thursday that abuse may be continuing there.
Col. Janis Karpinski, a former one-star Army Reserve general who was punished in the scandal, said she had no idea what was going on at the prison and blamed Gen. Geoffrey Miller for the methods that were used to humiliate detainees. (…)

THE PROVOCATEUR STATE
The requirement of an ever-escalating level of social violence to meet the political and economic needs of the insatiable "anti-terrorist complex" is the essence of the new US militarism. What is now openly billed as "permanent war" ultimately serves the geo-political ends of social control in the interests of US corporate domination, much as the anti-communist crusade of the now-exhasuted Cold War did.
Back in 2002, following the trauma of 9-11, Secretary of (…)

March Against Terror - May 14, 2005, Washington, D.C.
The Free Muslims Against Terrorism are proud to announce that on May 14, 2005, Muslims and Middle Easterners of all backgrounds will converge on our nation’s Capital for a rally against terrorism and to support freedom and democracy in the Middle East and the Muslim world. This will be the first rally of its kind in Washington, D.C., that is led by Muslims and Middle Easterners.
Join us in sending a message to radical Muslims and (…)

Arlington West, a documentary by Peter Dudar and Sally Marr, Laughing Tears Productions, www.arlingtonwestfilm.org.
IN SANTA Monica, Santa Barbara and Oceanside, Calif., Veterans for Peace has constructed temporary cemeteries in the sand, honoring the soldiers who have died in Iraq. If a cemetery were created to honor the Iraqi dead, it would fill the entire beach. The memorial also serves as a gathering place for military families and veterans of both the Vietnam and Iraq wars, whose (…)