contributions

By Harvey Thompson
A court martial into the killing of a British soldier, held on October 26, heard how United States defence officials passed on plans for war against Iraq to the British Army almost six months before the invasion.
The information emerged during the trial of Lance Corporal Ian Blaymire, who was facing charges for the manslaughter of fellow soldier John Nightingale while serving in Iraq. Both men were reservists with the Territorial Army (TA), deployed as drivers with the (…)

As thousands of provisional ballots will start to be counted Tuesday, more people are coming forward with stories about voting irregularities during the November 2 election.
Dozens of people crowded into a hearing room at the Franklin County courthouse Monday night.
It was the second public hearing since Saturday, and there was a panel made up of voting rights groups listens to every word.
Voters and poll workers told story after story of voters being disenfranchised.
"Finally, I was (…)

Greg Palast: Sean Hannity called me a putz. Oh, my! And soft-porn-site scribe Frank Salvato put me in with the "black helicopter" conspiracy league. Golly!
I can live with that. But when Salon disses my report of vote suppression in Ohio ("Was the Election Stolen?" by Farhad Manjoo), I have to respond. Manjoo went after my article, "Kerry Won," the latest in my series of investigations of our manipulated election system first published in America by ... Salon: "Florida’s Flawed (…)

That’s what Jon Stewart’s Daily Show called the resignation of Colin Powell. A Powell movement. (They didn’t even touch the possible pun on Colin.)
That’s how bad it has become. The Bush national security team is now so bad that it is a joke. The Daily Show noted that Powell was the administration’s “most influential moderate.” He was, at the same time, Stewart noted, also its “least influential moderate.” (See Letterman’s Top 10 comments on Powell below.)
It’s clear to me that the (…)

BY CELESTE HADRICK STAFF WRITER; Staff writer Michael Rothfeld contributed to this story.
Despite their national success this month, Republicans aren’t doing as well in New York, particularly on Long Island.
The Democratic candidate, Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.), beat President George W. Bush 58 percent to 40 percent and Democratic Sen. Charles Schumer trounced his Republican opponent Howard Mills 71 percent to 25 percent.
On the Island, Bush did better than four years ago. But despite (…)

by John Peters
Shortly after declaring major combat operations complete, President Bush was faced with the reality that Iraqi resistance to “liberation” was on the rise.
Just wait until Saddam’s sons are captured or killed, cautioned Bush, then the resistance of the few diehards will end. Uday and Qusay were dispatched in a six hour gun battle with U.S. forces, who utilized superior numbers, attack aircraft, anti-tank weapons and assault vehicles. (Oh yes, Uday and Qusay had their own (…)

In the weeks before the crushing military assault on his hometown, Bilal Hussein sent his parents and brother away from Fallujah to stay with relatives.
The 33-year-old Associated Press photographer stayed behind to capture insider images during the siege of the former insurgent stronghold.
"Everyone in Fallujah knew it was coming. I had been taking pictures for days," he said. "I thought I could go on doing it."
In the hours and days that followed, heavy bombing raids and thunderous (…)

By Tom Engelhardt
Let’s start with an electoral map (scroll down) of the United States not long after George Bush beat a Massachusetts liberal for the presidency. If you take a quick glance at it, you’ll note that sea of blue stretching majestically from coast to coast with just a few isolated red states hanging off the northern border like the last ripe mangos of the growing season. Sound like the fabulous fantasy of some cockeyed Kerry supporter? Actually, it represents a distant reality (…)

By Esther Schrader
WASHINGTON - Matt LaBranche got the tattoos at a seedy place down the street from the Army hospital here where he was a patient in the psychiatric ward.
The pain of the needle felt good to the 40-year-old former Army sergeant, whose memories of his nine months as a machine-gunner in Iraq had left him, he said, "feeling dead inside." LaBranche’s back is now covered in images, the largest the dark outline of a sword. Drawn from his neck to the small of his back, it is (…)

by Bob Fitrakis
One telling piece of evidence was entered into the record at the Saturday, November 13 public hearing on election irregularities and voter suppression held by nonpartisan voter rights organizations. Cliff Arnebeck, a Common Cause attorney, introduced into the record the Franklin County Board of Elections spreadsheet detailing the allocation of e-voting computer machines for the 2004 election. The Board of Elections’ own document records that, while voters waited in lines (…)