contributions

Revelations about the U.N. Oil for Food Program get uglier and uglier. Designed to allow Iraq to collect revenues to pay for humanitarian supplies such as food and medicine, it appears to have been manipulated by Baghdad to reward friends of the regime and enrich the country’s leadership. The damage has been magnified by allegations of corruption and negligence on the part of the United Nations. There needs to be a complete investigation of what went wrong with the Oil for Food Program, but (…)

Bush and Kerry put Israel first - and ignore the rise of fascism in the ’Promised Land’
by Justin Raimondo
The collapse and seemingly imminent demise of Yasser Arafat once again draws our attention to the plight of the Palestinian people at the hands of their Israeli occupiers: just as the Jewish state keeps an entire people captive in the twin concentration camps of Gaza and the West Bank, so Arafat was himself incarcerated, physically confined to his headquarters in Ramallah. (…)

Following is an excerpt from the speech by the al-Qa’ida leader, Osama bin Laden, addressing the American people in a video, parts of which were aired by al-Jazeera television last night, as translated by Reuters
O American people, I am speaking to tell you about the ideal way to avoid another Manhattan, about war and its causes and results.
Security is an important foundation of human life and free people do not squander their security, contrary to Bush’s claims that we hate freedom. (…)

by Manuel Valenzuelas
The Calling of our Times
Throughout history, it is few the men and women who are living at moments such as these, when monumental shifts in human existence can be touched and its ramifications seen over the bright sunrays of hope. It is few the men and women in the short sand clock of human civilization whose waking conscious and steadfast courage can propel future generations forward in time, to lands promising and cultures flourishing, in an instant breaking free (…)

by Sarah Boseley
About 100,000 Iraqi civilians - half of them women and children - have died in Iraq since the invasion, mostly as a result of airstrikes by coalition forces, according to the first reliable study of the death toll from Iraqi and US public health experts.
The study, which was carried out in 33 randomly-chosen neighbourhoods of Iraq representative of the entire population, shows that violence is now the leading cause of death in Iraq. Before the invasion, most people died (…)

Murat Kurnaz from Bremen, Germany is imprisoned in Guantanamo. The United States accuses him of being associated with a suicide bomber. The only problem? The suicide bomber is still alive and living as a free man in Germany. Kurnaz, though, remains behind bars.
The military tribunal in Guantanamo Bay holds its hearings at Camp Delta in a run-down barracks building with red carpeting and iron rings embedded in the floor to which the prisoners can be chained like dogs.
Despite the heat and (…)

By Andrew Gumbel
Voting machines have already begun to break down, accusations of systematic voter suppression and fraud are rampant, and thousands of lawyers have flocked to court to cry foul in half a dozen states.
No need to wonder if this year’s U.S. presidential election is headed for another meltdown: the meltdown has already started. The voting machines have already begun to break down, accusations of systematic voter suppression and fraud are rampant, and lawyers fully armed and (…)

By ALEXANDER COCKBURN
I asked one usually radical friend of mine, now a Kerrycrat, how she could support a fellow who pledges a “better”, wider war in Iraq and then a march on Teheran. “Oh” she said airily, “you can’t believe anything a candidate will say.”
From where we sit, here at mission control, CounterPunch hq, (currently a facility known as the Claremont Inn off Interstate 10 east of LA, where Jeffrey St Clair is watching three inches of rain sluicing down on the San Gabriel (…)

By MAUREEN DOWD
Dick Cheney peaked too soon. We’ve still got a few days left until Halloween.
It was scary enough when we thought the vice president had created his own reality for spin purposes. But if he actually believes that Iraq is "a remarkable success story,’’ it’s downright spooky. He’s already got his persona for Sunday: he’s the mad scientist in the haunted mansion, fiddling with test tubes to force the world to conform to his twisted vision.
After 9/11, Mr. Cheney swirled (…)

A flurry of revelations, from Iraq’s missing explosives to the flu vaccine shortage, have touched this year’s presidential race.
By Linda Feldmann | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor
WASHINGTON - On the eve of a presidential contest, late-breaking events can have an outsize impact. While nothing has risen to the level of a blockbuster "October surprise" - the term coined from the 1980 race, when Democrats feared Ronald Reagan and his friends were secretly arranging to delay (…)