contributions

By Glen Yeadon
Numerous writers have compared the Bush tactics with those used by Hitler, while others have documented the connection between Prescott Bush and the Nazis. However, there is much more to what has lead the Bush regime to transform the United Stated into a fascist police state. Few people are aware that it is the Republican Party which paid for Nazi broadcasts in the 1930s or that the GOP employed Nazis in election campaigns. Fewer are aware that Herbert Hoover conspired with (…)

The United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan has told the BBC the US-led invasion of Iraq was an illegal act that contravened the UN charter.
He said the decision to take action in Iraq should have been made by the Security Council, not unilaterally.
The UK government responded by saying the attorney-general made the "legal basis... clear at the time".
Mr Annan also warned security in Iraq must considerably improve if credible elections are to be held in January.
The UN chief said (…)

As politicians make grand speeches supporting our troops, families of our wounded soldiers are being told they soon will no longer receive the modest government stipend that helps them leave job and home to stay at their loved one’s hospital bedside.
The majority of the 3,974 seriously wounded soldiers are young, and few earn more than $1,600 a month, tops. Their families are often of limited means and have a hard enough time keeping up with their bills. Family members forfeit wages and (…)

By Alistair Lyon
LONDON - Fierce guerrilla attacks in Iraq and U.S. assaults on rebel bastions have unleashed a new wave of bloodshed that threatens to discredit the interim government and undermine prospects for fair elections in January.
Analysts said the U.S. military drive might simply alienate more Iraqis, without eliminating insurgents who this month pushed the American death toll in the Iraq war beyond 1,000.
"Mere force is not enough to calm the situation. You need wisdom and (…)

BY JONATHAN S. LANDAY AND WARREN P. STROBEL
WASHINGTON - The U.S. strategy to create a stable, democratic Iraq is in danger of failing, current and former U.S. officials say, and the anti-American insurgency is growing larger, more sophisticated and more violent.
The violence increasingly appears to threaten nationwide elections planned for January, which are key to President Bush’s hopes for reducing the number of U.S. troops, now 140,000, and making a graceful exit from Iraq.
"The (…)

By Aine Gallagher
STRASBOURG, France - The European Union’s outgoing External Relations Commissioner, Chris Patten, launched a withering attack on United States policy in Iraq Wednesday, saying the world deserved better than American "testosterone."
Renowned for his blunt speaking, Patten used his parting speech to the European Parliament to deliver a stinging rejection of what he depicted as the Bush administration’s go-it-alone approach and contempt for allies.
The U.S.-led invasion (…)

by Luke Harding
Lying amid the debris strewn near Al-Karkh police station was the photo of a young man in a blue T-shirt. The passport snap had been part of his application to join Iraq’s police force.
Yesterday, however, he and dozens of other recruits queueing outside the station in central Baghdad were blown to pieces by a car bomb. Near the photo, someone had heaped the shoes of the dead and injured into a neat pile.
The destruction from the suspected suicide blast which killed 47 (…)

Boston Social Forum Significance, Achievements and Some Lessons Learned by Suren Moodliar and Jason Pramas ZNet September 11, 2004
The World Social Forum (WSF) burst onto the global progressive scene in January 2001 with a 20,000-person happening in Porto Alegre, Brazil. Its mandate was to link up and strengthen disparate social movements against neoliberalism and militarism around the world by creating an open space for dialogue and debate, educating and strategizing, and music and (…)

by Robert Fisk
Robert Fisk is still probably the most outstanding journalist working in the Middle East. He was one of the first journalists to be present at the scene of the horrific murders in Lebanon, 1982. He has published a number of different books and writes columns for The Independant newspaper. He has received a number of prestigious awards for reporting and has produced a number of documentaries including the excellent "Beirut to Bosnia"
What we found inside the Palestinian (…)

President Stalled Inquiry, They Say `Jersey Girls’ Condemn War
by Tim Harper
WASHINGTON - Five women whose husbands died in the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the World Trade Centre threw their support behind John Kerry yesterday, saying the Democratic presidential challenger would keep America safer by refocusing U.S. efforts to defeat Al Qaeda.
The quintet, who were joined by a survivor of the attack on the Pentagon, said they had been rebuffed by President George W. Bush in every (…)