contributions

by John le Carré Maybe there’s one good reason - just one - for reelecting George W. Bush, and that’s to force him to live with the consequences of his appalling actions and answer for his own lies, rather than wish the job on a Democrat who would then get blamed for his predecessor’s follies.
Probably no American president in history has been so universally hated abroad as Bush: for his bullying unilateralism, his dismissal of international treaties, his reckless indifference to the (…)

By RON FOURNIER
WASHINGTON - Sen. John Kerry, bracing for a potential fight over election results, will not hesitate to declare victory Nov. 2 and defend it, advisers say. He also will be prepared to name a national security team before knowing whether he’s secured the presidency.
In short, the Democratic presidential candidate has a simple strategy for Nov. 3 and beyond: Do not repeat Al Gore’s mistakes.
The Democratic vice president prematurely conceded the 2000 race to George W. (…)

By Sandra Jontz
ARLINGTON, Va. - Troops who received some of their anthrax inoculations before the Pentagon halted it 3 years ago have until Dec. 31 to resume their six-shot regimen, no matter where they might be stationed, officials said.
About 200,000 troops need to pick up the vaccination where they left off, even if it has been three years since their last shot, said Col. Steve Jones, director of the Military Vaccine Agency.
Commanders will be responsible for working with health (…)

By FISNIK ABRASHI
QAIM, Iraq — The sound of the Black Hawk medical helicopter is an ominous sign for the Marines patrolling this forgotten western corner of Iraq that borders Syria. It means that one of them is seriously wounded or killed by their elusive enemy.
The sound of roaring engine, shattering evening calm, gets immediately followed up with a quick whisper among the troops, trying to find out who it was — this time.
At this Marine base, at the far west of the restless Anbar (…)

We Artists
are not in war either in the territories of the colonial conflicts in the South of the world neither in the metropolitan territories where there are conflicts against the diverse humans in the North of the world. We don’t want to be dragged on the logics of the propagation of local and global terror.
We Artists
with our expressions, our bodies, the colours, the sounds, the actions, with our imagination and with our creativity are building relations, situations, dialogues, (…)

By Amira Hass Every day soldiers confiscate the identity cards of West Bank Palestinians even though this is prohibited by the law - even by military orders, except under very specific conditions.
It looks like a concentrated mass violation of army instructions. Every day soldiers confiscate the identity cards of West Bank Palestinians even though this is prohibited by the law - even by military orders, except under very specific conditions.
In the best cases, people are delayed for (…)

FRANKFURT : Nearly 40,000 people in Germany, backed by expressions of support
elsewhere in Europe, took to the streets to protest plans by US auto giant General
Motors to axe about one-fifth of its European workforce and possibly even close
a plant.
Police estimated that about 20,000 people demonstrated in the northwestern town
of Bochum, home to one of four factories belonging to GM’s German unit Opel and
currently the centre of the wave of protests .../...
– (…)

Nearly 1.7 million military veterans have no health insurance or access to government hospitals and clinics for veterans, according to a report Tuesday from a doctors’ group that favors federally financed health care.
The number of uninsured veterans jumped by 235,000 since 2000, meaning they are losing health insurance at a faster rate than the general population, said Physicians for a National Health Program, which advocates a universal national health insurance program. About 45 million (…)

Robert Thompson
As I have done in previous essays, I feel it appropriate to preface my remarks by making it clear that I write as a committed practising Catholic Christian, and by stressing that I am always shocked and upset by the misuse of religion as a cover for, or in pursuit of, material and/or political gain.
On Tuesday night, my wife and I watched with growing fear and horror a television report on "Arte" (the Franco-German channel) on the religiosity of Mr George W. Bush. If the (…)

by Mohammed Omer: http://www.rafahtoday.org It smells unbelievably bad here. To walk down any street-if you dare to-you skirt, or sometimes unavoidably walk through, pools of blood. There are shreds of human flesh-some of them unrecognizable as human remains-all over, on rooftops, plastered to broken windows, on the street. The stench of rotting blood mixes with the more acrid odor of flesh burnt to black char by the rockets fired by the Israeli Army’s American-made Apache helicopters. The (…)