contributions

BY JESSE JACKSON
A record minority vote will turn out today, I predict, the product of an effervescent mobilization to express the vote. But that same minority community is now witnessing a despicable drive to suppress that very same vote.
President Bush, having waged the most negative campaign by any incumbent president in memory, is presiding over a systematic effort to stop African Americans, Latinos and Native Americans from voting.
The mobilization to express the vote is a new (…)

Palestinians value their democracy and won’t accept a pliant successor
by Karma Nabulsi
Why has Yasser Arafat not "groomed" a successor (like some petty oriental despot), commentators have demanded to know in recent days, and why he is leaving a chaotic power-vacuum? What has been striking about these questions is not so much their wilful ignorance of the Palestinian reality, but the underlying assumptions they reflect.
The first is that the ailing Palestinian leader is now either (…)

by Richard Norton-Taylor
A senior military policewoman found dead in Basra and named last night by the Ministry of Defence is understood to have killed herself.
Staff Sergeant Denise Rose of the Royal Military Police’s special investigation branch was found dead from a gunshot wound at the army base in the Shatt-al-Arab hotel on Sunday, the MoD said.
It added that the death was being investigated but was "not thought to have been the result of hostile action".
Staff Sgt Rose, who had (…)

by Waleed Ibrahim
BAGHDAD - Rebels bracing for a U.S.-led assault on their Falluja and Ramadi strongholds showed their muscle on Tuesday with a bloody car bombing in Baghdad, strikes on oil pipelines and several attacks on Iraqi security forces.
A morning car bomb blast at the Education Ministry brought fresh carnage to the busy streets of Baghdad, killing six people and wounding eight, an Interior Ministry spokesman said.
"I’m not crying because I’m wounded, but because of my brother. (…)

By Hala Jaber in Baghdad As the US reeled from the death of nine marines in Iraq at the weekend, insurgents in Fallujah claimed to have obtained chemical weapons and threatened to use them in any battle for control of the rebel stronghold. Rebel commanders said chemicals such as cyanide had been added to mortar rounds and missiles that would be deployed against coalition troops reported to be preparing for a major assault on the town west of Baghdad. A military committee made up of (…)

This letter was sent by representatives of the people of Fallujah to the UN secretary general Kofi Annan
"IT IS more than evident that US forces are committing daily acts of genocide in Iraq. As we write, these crimes are being perpetrated against the city of Fallujah.
US war planes are launching their most powerful bombs against the civilian population, killing and wounding hundreds of innocent people. Their tanks are pounding the city with heavy artillery.
As you know, there is no (…)

11-2-04
WHEN DONKEYS AND ELEPHANTS FLY by Husayn Al-Kurdi
There are four major dates on the US government calendar, three of them annual holidays and the fourth the quadrennial spectacle of the presidential election. On the fourth of July each year, the American people are prompted to celebrate the war exploits of the US empire, overlooking the fact that the USA lost many of its wars, including its first war against the so-called Barbary Coast pirates of North Africa and its most recent (…)

by Gary Younge in Akron, Ohio
The independent candidate, Ralph Nader, limped into the home stretch of his presidential campaign yesterday, with barely 1% of voters behind him.
Despite a huge collapse in support compared to 2000 and little organisation on the ground, Mr Nader’s meagre showing could still prove a decisive factor in a tight race.
"The reality is the Nader factor is arguably still there," Chris Kofinis, senior adviser to the anti-Nader group TheNaderFactor.com told the (…)

by Gregory Wilpert
Caracas. Preliminary results of the National Electoral Council (CNE), which were presented to Venezuela at about 1am of November 1st, indicate that pro-Chavez forces won at least 18 of the country’s 22 state governorships. In several cases the vote was still to close to call. In others, where the CNE indicated that Chavez supporters had won, opposition candidates declared that the CNE results were wrong and that they had won.
In one of the most important and contested (…)

By JOANN WYPIJEWSKI
History and its symbols having been central in conceptualizing the demonstration for jobs, peace and human needs that took place at the Lincoln Memorial on a crisp afternoon this past October 17, it is worth casting the mind back a bit before proceeding with our story of that event, recalling first the organizational finesse and political discipline of this latest demonstration’s most famous forebear (depicted on its fliers and literature), the 1963 March on Washington (…)