contributions

by Bryan Bender
WASHINGTON — A small Pentagon unit set up after Sept. 11, 2001, to review raw intelligence later exaggerated the relationship between Al Qaeda and Iraq, leading White House officials to make overblown or inaccurate comments in the run-up to the Iraq war, according to the Democratic staff of the Senate Armed Services Committee.
The staff’s report, based on a 15-month investigation and released yesterday by Senator Carl Levin of Michigan, the committee’s top Democrat, (…)

by Jane Stillwater
How do you delete a hard drive? Karl Rove had better find out fast!
He should call up Richard Nixon’s secretary and ask her how to erase audiotapes too. "You just accidentally hit the erase button with your knee."
When George Bush becomes a lame duck, the only sound you will hear in the West Wing will be the whir of the document shredding machine.
Lists of people who made illegal campaign contributions? Gone.
E-mail wisecracks about the gullibility of right-wing (…)

The Bill of Rights is moribund in today’s America because in the view of many powerful people it should never have been born.
by David R. Hoffman
James Madison said two centuries ago, "We are free today substantially, but the day will come when our Republic will be an impossibility. ... A Republic cannot stand upon bayonets, and when the day comes, when the wealth of the nation will be in the hands of a few, then we must rely upon the wisdom of the best elements in the country to (…)

Scientists in the US say they have demonstrated the existence of the illness known as "Gulf war syndrome".
The findings are in a report by the influential Research Advisory Committee on Gulf war veterans’ illness, leaked to the New York Times.
Committee chief scientist Professor Beatrice Golombe said that exposure to certain substances in the Gulf may have altered some troops’ body chemistry.
The study was welcomed by British veterans of the Gulf war.
The secretary of the National (…)

By John Lettice ( john.lettice at theregister.co.uk )
Nobody seized Indymedia’s servers, apparently. On the 7th October hosting company Rackspace ’acted in compliance’ with a court order and two servers belonging to Indymedia were removed from Rackspace’s premises in London.
But the denials of involvement roll in, the latest coming from UK Home Office minister Caroline Flint, who in answer to Parliamentary questions said: "I can confirm that no UK law enforcement agencies were involved (…)

By Kaveh L Afrasiabi
TEHRAN - The month of November in a US presidential-election year is not supposed to be particularly eventful, but this year may be an exception, in the light of the gathering storm over Iran’s nuclear program, due to be reviewed by the United Nations’ nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), in late November. November is also important because of the Egypt summit on the future of Iraq, bringing the Group of Eight (G8) industrialized countries (…)

Why Are Some American Christians So Bloodthirsty? Understanding Pro-war Christians’ Indifference to Civilian Deaths by Dr. Teresa Whitehurst
It’s been going on for years now. Almost daily we read that another child, another parent, another sister or brother, another grandpa or aunt, is killed in Afghanistan or Iraq by U.S. weaponry in Mr. Bush’s "war on terror." Sometimes it’s a wedding party, or a bunch of kids, or a family of six. Sometimes it’s a journalist, or a whole group of (…)

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez stepped up the pressure on wealthy landowners Saturday, saying he will send troops to confiscate unused farmland if large property owners refuse to give up the land to help the poor.
Outlining what he dubbed "the new stage of the revolution," Chavez declared "war against large estates," saying they are an obstacle for ensuring more equality in the oil-rich but poverty-stricken, South American country of 25 million.
Owners of large plots of land have two (…)

“RIGHT NOW, THE WAY to stop this war,” says a tired but determined- sounding Steve Earle, “is to make it clear to people that it is their kids who are fucked. That it will be their sons and daughters who are gonna have to go over there for years and years. And despite what this administration is telling you, the way this thing is heading we will be there for a long, long time.”
Stopping the war in Iraq is Earle’s focus right now, both personally and (in the form of his fine new record, The (…)

On September 11, 2001, William Rodriguez, a maintenance worker at the World Trade Center in Manhattan, single-handedly rescued fifteen people. The only employee with the master key to the North Tower staircases, he led firefighters up the stairs, unlocking doors as he went, aiding in the evacuation of hundreds of additional people who, but for his efforts, might have perished. Although his job description did not include saving lives, Rodriguez re-entered the building three times after the (…)