contributions

By Jonathan Leff
SINGAPORE (Reuters) - Oil prices set historic highs near $54 a barrel Tuesday, with global supplies hounded by outages that were thwarting efforts to build U.S. heating oil inventories ahead of the winter.
U.S. light, sweet crude oil futures (CLc1: Quote, Profile, Research) surged 31 cents to record $53.95, making a sixth successive day of all-time peaks.
In London, Brent crude (LCOc1: Quote, Profile, Research) rallied 29 cents to $50.95 a barrel after crossing the $50 (…)

By Kathleen Hennessey
Bush and Kerry deny conscription plans, but Rock the Vote raises the specter.
WASHINGTON - An army of new voters received a startling call to serve recently, when one of the largest nonpartisan groups trying to increase voting by young people sent fake draft cards to nearly 640,000 e-mail addresses.
"You’ve been drafted" was the subject line of the message sent by Rock the Vote. The message contained an image of a draft card addressed to the recipient and (…)

Compulsory Mass Registration Of Cell Phones Next
By Michael James in Frankfurt, Germany
Germany has become the first country in the world to tax private personal computers that are deemed to be "Internet-capable". The plan, long in the offing, was agreed in Berlin by the Conference of Prime Ministers of the Federal States of Germany on October 8. It is being billed as part of the expansion of the television and radio public services fee, which is administered by Germany’s Radio and (…)

Federal investigators are focusing on four American oil companies — including San Ramon-based ChevronTexaco — and three U.S. citizens who allegedly received vouchers for oil from Saddam Hussein as he sought to flout United Nations sanctions, the Wall Street Journal is reporting.
The U.S. companies — which also include Exxon Mobil Corp. and El Paso Corp. and Bayoil, a closely held Houston oil company — and individuals were identified in the Central Intelligence Agency’s 1,000-page report on (…)

By Michael T Klare
In the first US combat operation of the war in Iraq, navy commandos stormed an offshore oil-loading platform. "Swooping silently out of the Persian Gulf night," an overexcited reporter for the New York Times wrote on March 22, 2003, "Navy Seals [Sea, Air and Land special forces] seized two Iraqi oil terminals in bold raids that ended early this morning, overwhelming lightly armed Iraqi guards and claiming a bloodless victory in the battle for Iraq’s vast oil empire."
A (…)

by Justin Raimondo
It was a disastrous week for the War Party, as the lies that lassoed us into Iraq were definitively debunked, and Bush, in a vain effort to defend the indefensible, was once again humiliated on national television by his Democratic opponent. The Duelfer report showed that not only did Saddam not have WMD, but he didn’t even have the capacity to develop them. In an address to the Council on Foreign Relations, none other than Donald Rumsfeld was forced to look reality full (…)

Unforgivable Betrayals and Broken Promises
by ROBERT FISK
I am writing a book about our need to escape from history—or rather about our inability to escape the effects of the decisions taken by our fathers and grandfathers. My father was a soldier in the First World War or, as it says on the back of his campaign medal, "The Great War for Civilisation’’—which is the title I’ve chosen for my book. In the space of just 17 months after my father’s war ended, the victors had drawn the borders (…)

Stacy Bannerman Wife of National Guard Soldier Stop-lossed in Iraq American Citizen Registered Voter Kent, WA
October 6, 2004
Senator John Warner, VA Russell Senate Building United States Senate Washington D.C.
Senator Warner:
For shame. You deployed our husbands and children to Iraq, which will take a year or more out of their lives, if not actually costing them their lives, and you couldn’t spare fifteen minutes of yours? You sent your military legislative assistant, Cord Sterling (…)

Off with their heads!
Infiltrating the U.S. Military Gen. Boykin’s “Kingdom Warriors” On the Road to Abu Ghraib and Beyond By Katherine Yurica
October 12, 2004
Since GOP leaders have tasted the heady stuff of unlimited power and watched the success of their bullying tactics, they seem to take pride in the fact that intimidation and coercion silences all opposition. They’ve begun to step more boldly toward the goal of taking control of the judiciary-and it appears that nothing can (…)

The presidential debates are going nowhere. Why? Because both President George Bush and Senator John Kerry are encapsulated in a big lie.
The lie is too big to be acknowledged. Both candidates repeat the mantra that Saddam Hussein was dangerous to America and had to be removed. Both reaffirm that Saddam’s removal remains a good thing despite a plethora of official reports concluding that false reasons were given for his removal.
Kerry gets nowhere because he says he would do the same (…)