contributions

by Hakim Mirzoev
Together with Americans the flies invaded the city. They are millions. The whole city seems to be under their power. The flies cover the corpses. The older is corpse, the more flies are upon it. First they cover a corpse as by some strange rash. Then they begin to swarm upon it, and then a gray moving shroud covers the corpse. Flies swarm upon some ruins as gray monstrous shadows. The stench is awful.
The flies are everywhere. In the hospital wards, operating rooms, (…)

Göttingen (Germany) anti-nuclear activists have reflected on the dangers of railway actions after a train killed one in France. The following was stated at a demonstration by the AntiAtomPlenum Göttingen on 8 November, a day after Sébastien Briat died:
“Perhaps for many of us it became clear for the first time yesterday that it is not just a cat-and-mouse game we play, we have to play, every year.
”But the fatal accident in Avricourt did not come from nowhere. In earlier years it was a (…)

Anthony Loyd
SHOT, stabbed, blown up,burnt: the bodies of Iraqis killed in Baghdad lie piled in overcrowded refrigerators at the city’s central mortuary, their ever-increasing number overwhelming both staff and storage space in a wave that marks the city’s descent into a Hobbesian world of crime and brutality.
“Our morgue was designed to cope with between five and ten bodies a day,” explained Kais Hassan, the harrassed statistician whose job it is to record the capital’s suspicious (…)

by Ian Traynor
With their websites and stickers, their pranks and slogans aimed at banishing widespread fear of a corrupt regime, the democracy guerrillas of the Ukrainian Pora youth movement have already notched up a famous victory - whatever the outcome of the dangerous stand-off in Kiev.
Ukraine, traditionally passive in its politics, has been mobilised by the young democracy activists and will never be the same again.
But while the gains of the orange-bedecked "chestnut revolution" (…)

Mr Hugo Rafael Chavez Frias,
President of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela
Dear Mr President:
We hear the news about your fourth trip to Iran with some concern. We believe that the Iranian regime is using your name and popularity among the Latin American masses, and progressive and anti-globalisation activists throughout the world, to falsely present a similar image for itself.
Your Excellency, this regime is fundamentally different from your government which enjoys popular (…)

Rural Oklahoma Voting machines know how to count backwards.
Bob Nichols
(Oklahoma City) Rural Oklahoma Voting machines know how to count backwards.
That looks like what the secretly programmed machines did for Sen. Kerry in President Bush’s easily won Presidential Election victory in Oklahoma.
All 77 counties use the Optech Eagle voting machines and Tabulator’s made by ES&S, Sen Hagel’s republican company.
The respectable, conservative "Tulsa World" newspaper reported Nov 3rd (…)

Congresswoman Louise Slaughter (28th District, NY), who joined fellow legislators calling for a GAO investigation into voting irregularities, has responded to communication from petition author Rick Gagliano.
In a letter dated November 24, 2004 and received today by Gagliano, Slaughter says, "...I agree that an investigation into the voting irregularities must be launched."
Te full text of the letter can be found on the Downtown Magazine website, at: (…)

By Gareth Jones
ANKARA (Reuters) - The head of Turkey’s parliamentary human rights group has accused Washington of genocide in Iraq and behaving worse than Adolf Hitler, in remarks underscoring the depth of opposition in Turkey to U.S. policy in the region.
The United Sates embassy said the comments were potentially damaging to Turkish-U.S. relations.
"The occupation has turned into barbarism," Friday’s Yeni Safak newspaper quoted Mehmet Elkatmis, head of parliament’s human rights (…)

by Juan Cole
Over 2000 Iraqis Killed in Fallujah
CBS has elicited from the Pentagon the real figure of US casualties in Iraq, which is more like 25,000. That number includes the 1230 or so killed and the 9300 classified as "wounded in battle," but also 17,000 classified as non-combat sick or injured, of whom 80 percent do not return to their units in Iraq. Although some of the 17,000 are victims of disease, some unspecified number have actually been injured as a result of being in a (…)

Republican candidate for governor declares himself the winner, but his Democratic rival deems it a tie. A hand tally may be next.
By Sam Howe Verhovek, Times Staff Writer
SEATTLE - A microscopic margin of 42 votes, out of nearly 2.9 million cast, separated the two top candidates for governor in Washington state, according to the results of a recount released Wednesday - enough for the Republican to declare himself the victor but far from enough for his Democratic foe to concede.
State (…)