contributions

By Matthew Scott Kelemen
The children featured in Born into Brothels are growing up fast. Filmmakers Zana Briski and Ross Kauffman hope to give them some tools to navigate with.
Was anybody expecting Million Dollar Baby to sweep the Academy Awards? Once Clint Eastwood’s euthanasia drama won Oscars for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actress and Best Supporting Actor, a consensus began to emerge in the media that Academy voters went sentimental this year. It was even suggested in some (…)

by Anh Hieu
US Judge Jack B. Weinstein’s dismissal on Thursday of the compensation lawsuit by Vietnamese Agent Orange victims was unjust, immoral and an irresponsible denial of the US’s war crimes in Viet Nam.
And, it signals a new uphill battle for justice for Viet Nam despite the solid body of evidence against the toxin’s devastating effects on the land and generation-after-generation of Vietnamese people.
Judge Weinstein claimed the documents presented in the New York Court were not (…)

Many progressives are mourning the failure of Senate Democrats to filibuster the Republican Debt Slavery Act of 2005, commonly known as the Bankruptcy Bill.
As Mother Jones said, Don’t Mourn, Organize!
Let’s stop the Republican Debt Slavery Act dead in the House.
What’s that I hear out there? Is someone insisting, "House Democrats can’t stop Tom DeLay’s brutal legislative steamroller!"
The hell we can’t.
House Republicans are already running for their lives over Social Security (…)

By Elliot D. Cohen, Ph.D
Sound the alarm! America, the land of the free, is now under attack, not by Al Qaeda, not by Iraqi "insurgents," not by an enemy confronted on foreign soil; not even by one that homeland security could ever stop. It is an insidious, invisible assailant, more hidden than a terrorist cell. It is one that invades virtually every American household on a daily basis without leaving a trace of its deceitful, dangerous nature. Its whores, draped in dignified apparel, sit (…)

Let’s face it. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to put the evidence together. They Let it happen. 9-11 was not only preventable, but allowed to happen.
Let me begin by asking a question: If you were President of the United States on September 11th, would you initiate an investigation to determine what security lapses had occurred to allow such a tragedy to unfold? Of course you would. The only reason you would try to prevent an investigation is if you had something to hide. If your house (…)

Robert F Kennedy Jr’s Natural Resources Defense Council is organizing to Tell Congress to keep Arctic Refuge drilling out of the budget
Stevens says it may be his last try at ANWR
Washington, D.C. - A Senate vote on drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge next week could have more than just an effect on energy development or conservation efforts. What happens next week may affect the political future of Alaska’s senior senator, Ted Stevens.
He’s been nicknamed “senator for (…)

By Leo Shane III, Stars and Stripes
WASHINGTON - Hundreds of disabled veterans booed and jeered Republican House members on Tuesday for their budget proposal for veterans’ health care, which critics call inadequate to deal with the future needs of current troops.
Following testimony before a pair of congressional committees by officials from the Disabled American Veterans, or DAV, the crowd of more than 400 wounded and disabled veterans cheered House members who criticized the (…)

WASHINGTON - Congressman Dennis J. Kucinich (D-OH), the Ranking Member on the House Government Reform Subcommittee on National Security, Emerging Threats and International Relations, today demanded a broad investigation of the $9 billion in missing reconstruction funds in Iraq, including a criminal investigation and Congressional hearings.
Kucinich will send two letters today calling for a full investigation into the missing $9 billion in funds in Iraq. One letter will be sent to (…)

– Part I Here
By Manuel Valenzuela
"Information Clearing House"
The Fundamentalist Threat
To live in Murka is to see firsthand its degeneration into an emerging Christian theocracy, with its collection of televangelists, cult leaders, mullahs and Taliban, nothing more than corruption-filled, hypocrite-behaving, masterminds of pervasive ignorance, false prophets and preachers drunk off the liquor of fundamentalist thought misguiding tens of millions of lost souls through the chalice (…)

Iraq war stories play tricks on the mind
by Anna Salleh
Research on the way people processed media reports about the Iraq war tells us more about how we create our beliefs and memories.
Psychologist Professor Stephan Lewandowsky of the University of Western Australia and team report their study of more than 800 people from Australia, the US and Germany, in the March issue of the journal Psychological Science.
Lewandowsky says the study, which was conducted in 2003 during the closing (…)