contributions

An effort led by Common Cause and the Alliance for Democracy is underway in Ohio to conduct a statewide recount.
By Steven Rosenfeld
Efforts to launch an official statewide recount of the Ohio presidential vote are underway. While it’s unclear if a recount will result in a Kerry victory, it’s likely to highlight many flaws in Ohio elections that may have tilted results toward Republicans and against Democrats.
Common Cause of Ohio and the Alliance for Democracy, a progressive (…)

By Kenneth T. Walsh
Suddenly, the West Wing is buzzing with a new sense of possibility. Reports on the assault in Fallujah (story, Page 16) have been cautiously positive. The president’s first call to Harry Reid, the new Senate Democratic leader, raised hopes that he might get more cooperation from his congressional adversaries. And the death of Yasser Arafat may provide a "new opportunity" for Middle East peace, Bush said late last week in a joint appearance with British Prime Minister (…)

Socialist President Ricardo Lagos is reviewing an official report containing over 35,000 testimonials of tortures
by Hernan Etchaleco
Shortly after Chile’s army acknowledged that tortures and political assassinations during Augusto Pinochet’s right-wing dictatorship were institutional, not excesses of a few individuals, country’s Socialist President Ricardo Lagos received on Wednesday a massive official report containing 35,000 testimonials of abuses providing details of such crimes. It (…)

by Manuel Valenzuela
Exorcising Our Demons
Into the infancy of the 21st century has humanity somehow managed to reach, despite our insatiable addiction for violence and suffering that has for millennia been both endemic and devastating, in spite of the continued tribalism, now called the nation state, that fosters competition, ignorance, fear, hatred and war among the peoples of the world, even with the hierarchical need among peoples to perpetually follow corrupt, immoral and (…)

by Stephen Grey
AN executive jet is being used by the American intelligence agencies to fly terrorist suspects to countries that routinely use torture in their prisons.
The movements of the Gulfstream 5 leased by agents from the United States defence department and the CIA are detailed in confidential logs obtained by The Sunday Times which cover more than 300 flights.
Countries with poor human rights records to which the Americans have delivered prisoners include Egypt, Syria and (…)

by From Roland Watson in Washington
THE CIA’s top spies are on the brink of revolt seven weeks after the arrival of President Bush’s new Director.
Porter Goss and his newly imported aides have had a series of bruising showdowns with established CIA figures that have left the agency in turmoil.
John McLaughlin, the agency’s deputy director, a 32-year CIA veteran, announced at the weekend that he was quitting. Stephen Kappes, the deputy director of operations, is expected to announce his (…)

By Kim Sengupta in Camp Dogwood, Iraq
The United States and Iraq’s interim government claimed yesterday that the battle for Fallujah was over, with 1,000 insurgents killed and the rebel stronghold effectively pacified after six days of fighting.
But even as the victory was being declared, wide-spread violence erupted throughout the rest of the country, with parts of Mosul passing into the hands of insurgents, forcing the American military to detach and rush part of its Fallujah force to (…)

The evidence is mounting against George Bush and his election team for committing widespread fraud in the November 2004 elections. Documented allegations range from telephone subterfuge to get Democrats to stop voting, to high-tech warfare that suppressed the votes of thousands of Kerry supporters.
By far the most effective method for Bush may have been the use of electronic voting machines, provided by three companies run by close friends of the Bush family. A total of three companies (…)

This is a call for action to help save a young Australian woman’s life who is currently facing the death penalty in Bali for allegedly being caught with marijuana in a Balinese airport:
A 27 year old Australian woman named Schapelle Leigh Corby, is facing the death penalty in Bali for being caught with 4 kilos of marijuana in her luggage at an airport in Bali. Ms Corby claims the marijuana was not hers and many of her supporters believe the marijuana may have been planted in her bag (…)

I Smell a Rat BY COLIN SHEA I smell a rat. It has that distinctive and all-too-familiar odor of the species Republicanus floridius. We got a nasty bite from this pest four years ago and never quite recovered. Symptoms of a long-term infection are becoming distressingly apparent. The first sign of the rat was on election night. The jubilation of early exit polling had given way to rising anxiety as states fell one by one to the Red Tide. It was getting late in the smoky cellar of a (…)