contributions

By Ellen Simon Devin Theriot-Orr, a member a feisty group of reporter-activists called Indymedia, was surprised when two FBI agents showed up at his Seattle law office, saying the visit was a "courtesy call" on behalf of Swiss authorities.
Theriot-Orr was even more surprised a week later when more than 20 Indymedia Web sites were knocked offline as the computer servers that hosted them were seized in Britain.
The Independent Media Center, more commonly known as Indymedia, says the (…)

by James Ridgeway
Voting irregularities are beginning to pile up across the country, and unlike four years ago, this time Democrats are less likely to take it lying down. There are already 10,000 lawyers trained and ready to go on the Democrat side.
Early voting began in Florida last week, and in three big counties-including the cities of Tampa, Orlando, and Fort Lauderdale-the network connection used to verify voter identifications broke down. In Jacksonville, where in 2000 the (…)

by Wayne Barrett
Sarkis Soghanalian, the international arms dealer who bought billions in weapons for Saddam Hussein, says he was approached at a Newark airport luncheon meeting in the early ’80s by a representative of then Texas oil entrepreneur George W. Bush, who was seeking to do business in Iraq.
Featured in lengthy interviews on 60 Minutes, 20/20, and PBS’s Frontline over the years, the twice-convicted Soghanalian was dubbed the "Merchant of Death." He was released from prison at (…)

by Paul Krugman PRINCETON, New Jersey Aides to Senator John Kerry say that if he wins the U.S. presidential election, he’ll replace Porter Goss as head of the CIA. Let’s hope so: Goss has already confirmed the fears of those who worried about his appointment, by placing Republican staff members from Capitol Hill in key positions and raising fears about a partisan purge.
But the flap over Goss is only a symptom of a much broader issue: whether the Bush administration will be able to (…)

By Tran Dinh Thanh Lam
HO CHI MINH CITY - News of the discovery of a new offshore oilfield in northern Vietnam may be drawing toasts at home, but it threatens to add fuel to a longtime controversy with China over a territorial dispute in the South China Sea.
Just a day after last Wednesday’s announcement of the find by a partnership of oil companies from Vietnam, Malaysia, Singapore and the United States, a Chinese government spokeswoman made clear Beijing’s position toward future oil (…)

By Tim Reid in Washington and James Hider in Baghdad
IRAQ’S interim Prime Minister yesterday delivered another blow to President Bush just a week before the US election when he blamed American-led forces for failing to prevent last weekend’s massacre of 49 Iraqi Army recruits.
Mr Allawi, who only last month lavished praise on Mr Bush during a White House visit, said that “gross negligence” on the part of the US and its coalition partners was to blame for the massacre of the recruits, 95 (…)

By Pepe Escobar
"And again, I don’t know where he is. I - I’ll repeat what I said. I truly am not that concerned about him." - President George W Bush, March 13, 2002
"Gosh, I don’t think I ever said I’m not worried about Osama bin Laden. That’s kind of one of those exaggerations." - President Bush, October 13
"Now my opponent is throwing out the wild claim that he knows where bin Laden was in the fall of 2001 and that our military passed up the chance to get him in Tora Bora. This is (…)

BY ELI LAKE - Staff Reporter of the Sun
WASHINGTON - Nine years ago, U.N. weapons inspectors urgently called on the International Atomic Energy Agency to demolish powerful plastic explosives in a facility that Iraq’s interim government said this month was looted due to poor security.
The chief American weapons inspector, Charles Duelfer, told The New York Sun yesterday that in 1995, when he was a member of the U.N. inspections team in Iraq, he urged the United Nations’ atomic watchdog to (…)

By Colin Brown, Deputy Political Editor
Secret plans for the war in Iraq were passed to British Army chiefs by US defence planners five months before the invasion was launched, a court martial heard yesterday.
The revelation strengthened suspicions that Tony Blair gave his agreement to President George Bush to go to war while the diplomatic efforts to force Saddam Hussein to comply with UN resolutions were continuing.
Alan Simpson, the leader of Labour Against the War, said the (…)

The Haiti Support Group condemns, in the strongest possible terms, the human rights violations and political repression carried out by agents of the Alexandre/Latortue interim government.
Although it hard to decipher the truth from the conflicting claims and counter-claims about the recent violent clashes between on one hand, the Haitian police, and on the other, what are variously described as ’"local residents", "Lavalas supporters" and "armed bandits", it seems clear that the (…)