contributions

By Harinder Mishra
JERUSALEM - While Israel is at daggers drawn with Iran, its preoccupation with its daunting domestic concerns that are tearing apart the Jewish population and the non-conducive international environment are likely to deter it from the earlier posturing of carrying out a preemptive strike to foil the Islamic Republic’s nuclear ambitions.
The indications here suggest that Jerusalem instead would prefer sticking to its already-launched diplomatic initiatives that it sees (…)

Washington. The chairman of the U.S. Senate Armed Services Committee issued a report accusing Douglas J. Feith of exaggerating intelligence linking al-Qaida and Iraq.
Sen. Carl M. Levin, D-Mich., said he would ask his committee to take "appropriate action" against Feith, the undersecretary of defense for policy, for asserting a relationship between the regime of Saddam Hussein and the terrorist network responsible for the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and falsely ascribing that claim to U.S. (…)

By Jim Lobe
WASHINGTON - Three out of four self-described supporters of President George W Bush still believe pre-war Iraq had weapons of mass destruction (WMD) or active programs to produce them, and that Iraqi President Saddam Hussein gave "substantial support" to al-Qaeda terrorists, according to a survey released Thursday.
Moreover, as many or more Bush supporters hold those beliefs today than they did several months ago, before the publication of a series of well-publicized official (…)

Southern California’s grocery strike couldn’t change the anti-union culture. San Francisco’s hotel strike can.
By David Bacon
SAN FRANCISCO — Socorro Carrillo, Junior Tejano, and Davey Eng didn’t really expect they’d be going back to work. Nevertheless, at the start of their normal 7:30 a.m. shift, they presented themselves at the ornate entrance to the Fairmount San Franciso Hotel, one of San Francisco’s classiest establishments, backed by dozens of other workers, clergy, and public (…)

Dr. Hunter S. Thompson sounds off on the fun-hogs in the passing lane
By DR. HUNTER S. THOMPSON
Armageddon came early for George Bush this year, and he was not ready for it. His long-awaited showdowns with my man John Kerry turned into a series of horrible embarrassments that cracked his nerve and demoralized his closest campaign advisers. They knew he would never recover, no matter how many votes they could steal for him in Florida, where the presidential debates were closely watched (…)

by Paul Krugman
PRINCETON, New Jersey If the U.S. presidential election were held today and the votes were counted fairly, Senator John Kerry would probably win. But the votes won’t be counted fairly, and the disenfranchisement of minority voters may determine the outcome.
Recent national poll results range from a 3-percentage-point Kerry lead in the AP-Ipsos poll released Thursday to an 8-point Bush lead in the Gallup poll. But if you line up the polls released this week from the most (…)

by Justin Raimondo
The somewhat fanciful theory that 9/11 blasted a hole in the space-time continuum and propelled us all into an inverted alternate universe - Bizarro World - where up is down, right is left, and the President of the United States is the most uninformed person on earth, was only supposed to be a joke on my part, a literary device designed to make the point that American society, or most of it, has been thrown off kilter. But I fear that it has become quite literally true, (…)

The inside story of the Army platoon that refused to carry out a "death sentence" mission.
By Mary Jacoby
The e-mail arrived Tuesday evening. But Kathy Harris didn’t see the urgent plea from her son, Spc. Aaron Gordon, 20, until she arrived at work Wednesday morning. By then, Gordon and 16 other members of his Army Reserve platoon were corralled in a tent in Tallil, Iraq, under armed guard, for refusing to drive a fuel supply convoy in what another of the detained soldiers would later (…)

’Frightened to death’ of Bush
By Marlow W. Cook
I shall cast my vote for John Kerry come Nov 2.
I have been, and will continue to be, a Republican. But when we as a party send the wrong person to the White House, then it is our responsibility to send him home if our nation suffers as a result of his actions. I fall in the category of good conservative thinkers, like George F. Will, for instance, who wrote: "This administration cannot be trusted to govern if it cannot be counted on to (…)

By Lyndon LaRouche
Americans will die because George W. Bush’s Administration has created a public health emergency in the lack of influenza vaccine, and refuses to acknowledge that emergency or take required Federal action against it. If the Bush-Cheney crew continues denying the crisis, refusing to take such actions, they will cause the avoidable deaths of thousands of especially older Americans. Lyndon LaRouche said on Oct. 19 that by reckless negligence in dealing with the flu vaccine (…)