contributions

Five years after Nato’s attack on Yugoslavia, its administration in Kosovo is pushing through mass privatisation
by Neil Clark
’Wars, conflict - it’s all business," sighs Monsieur Verdoux in Charlie Chaplin’s 1947 film of the same name. Many will not need to be convinced of the link between US corporations now busily helping themselves to Iraqi state assets and the military machine that prised Iraq open for global business. But what is less widely known is that a similar process is (…)

by Sophie Arie in Rome and Ewen MacAskill
The Foreign Office was thrown into turmoil yesterday after the British ambassador to Rome, Sir Ivor Roberts, described President George Bush as "the best recruiting sergeant ever for al-Qaida".
His comment, made at a closed conference of about 100 British and Italian diplomats, politicians and journalists in Tuscany, was leaked to an Italian newspaper, provoking embarrassment in London.
According to one of those present, Sir Ivor had been (…)

Labor accused Prime Minister John Howard of undermining the war on terror by his renewed support for pre-emptive strikes.
But Mr Howard stood firm and said his support for pre-emptive strikes in another country proved he had a stronger commitment to protect Australia than Opposition Leader Mark Latham.
The debate came as both Mr Howard and Mr Latham campaigned on national security in Australia’s north.
In Darwin, Mr Howard announced plans for special Australian Federal Police flying (…)

By Dennis Shanahan
MARK Latham has lifted Labor into the victory lane for the first time since the election campaign began, with an egalitarian schools policy and a win over John Howard in the leaders debate.
Labor has now opened a narrow two-party-preferred margin over the Howard Government as the Coalition’s primary support has fallen and Mr Latham’s personal standing has lifted.
The ALP’s lead depends heavily on second preferences from the minor parties in a week when the major (…)

by Martha Irvine DETROIT - Voter registration drives aimed at young people are turning 18- to 24-year-olds into an important variable in the presidential election, especially in decisive battleground states such as Michigan — where nearly 100,000 young people have registered in recent months — and Wisconsin, where the numbers are even higher.
They are the nation’s newest swing voters, with polls showing their support for the major candidates has vacillated in recent months. A Harvard (…)

By Thomas E. Ricks
FORT DIX, N.J. — The 635 soldiers of a battalion of the South Carolina National Guard scheduled to depart Sunday for a year or more in Iraq have spent their off-duty hours under a disciplinary lockdown in their barracks for the past two weeks.
The trouble began Labor Day weekend, when 13 members of the 1st Battalion of the 178th Field Artillery Regiment went AWOL, mainly to see their families again before shipping out. Then there was an ugly confrontation between (…)

By Stephen Naysmith
ISRAELI nuclear whistleblower Mordechai Vanunu risked legal retribution during a telephone interview at a human rights festival yesterday, as he claimed that British, French, Italian, and US security services had co-operated in his 1986 kidnapping by Mossad, Israel’s intelligence agency.
Vanunu, 49, who completed an 18-year jail sentence in Israel in April, is barred from leaving the country and from talking to foreign nationals or foreign media under release terms. (…)

By PATRICK COCKBURN
Baghdad.
Where freedom was promised, chaos and carnage now reign. A suicide bomber in a car blows himself up in the heart of Baghdad killing 13 people. Air raids by US near the city of Fallujah kill scores more. And so ends one of the bleakest weeks in Iraq’s grim recent history.
Between them, suicide bombers targeting Iraqi police and US air strikes aimed at rebels have killed some 300 Iraqis since last Saturday - many of them were civilians. The escalating (…)

Israeli intelligence created the threat posed by Saddam Hussein and his claimed weapons of mass destruction, an Israeli think-tank has suggested.
Israeli intelligence helped the U.S. and British services in painting a ‘false’ picture, said the Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies at Tel Aviv University.
The country’s secret services could lose their credibility over the Iraqi issue, Israeli politicians have warned.
"Israeli intelligence was a full partner with the U.S. and Britain in (…)

By Philip Blenkinsop
DRESDEN, Germany - Germany faced a surge of far-right parties in eastern state elections, worrying about their rise and the ensuing damage to the country’s image.
The electorate in the two eastern states moved to the fringes at the expense of big parties due to planned cuts in jobless benefits that have brought tens of thousands onto the streets, especially in the depressed ex-Communist east.
The National Democratic Party (NPD), which the government has likened to (…)