contributions

Jurist Holds City in Contempt of Court, Saying Dozens of People Were Held Without Charges
By Michael Powell and Dale Russakoff
NEW YORK, Sept. 2 — A criminal court judge ordered the release of hundreds of Bush protesters Thursday, ruling that police held them illegally without charges for more than 40 hours. As the protesters began trickling out of jail, they spoke of being held without access to lawyers, initially in a holding cell that had oil and grease spread across the floor. (…)

Two French journalists who had been taken hostage in Iraq are no longer in the hands of their abductors, French Culture and Communications Minister Renaud Donnedieu de Vabres has said.
"We know that they are alive and no longer in the hands of the abductors who had held them," he told journalists on Thursday in Perpignan, southern France.
The editor of the French publication Le Figaro told Aljazeera that the hostages had been handed over to another group which supported their release. (…)

By Terence Samuel
NEW YORK — I’m not sure why, because it should have been obvious by now, but one of the biggest epiphanies out of the week in New York has been the fact that while Democrats and detractors are trying to wish George W. Bush away this November, a whole lot of Republicans are thinking about the post era, too. They just hope it comes four years later.
The most obvious examples, of course, came on opening night when John McCain and Rudy Giuliani delivered from the convention (…)

By ALAN MAASS
Three million southeast Asians dead. Fifty-six thousand U.S. soldiers killed. Cities flattened by bombs. A countryside devastated to this day by chemical warfare. That’s the reality of the U.S. war on Vietnam. But to judge from the media, the only thing that matters about the Vietnam War today is the record of one U.S. naval officer for a brief period in 1968 and 1969.
John Kerry enlisted in the Navy in 1966 and served two tours of duty in Vietnam. The first six-month stint (…)

by Ira Chernus
If you read that President Bush said we can’t win the war on terrorism, you may have missed the point. You had to hear the way he said the words. When the interviewer asked "Can we win it?", Bush replied: "I don’t think you can win IT." The emphasis was on "IT," as if to say "You can’t win this war. But you can win other wars" — in Afghanistan, Iraq, and anyplace else the U.S. wants to conquer.
The Bush administration seems content to have a permanent war on terrorism. (…)

by Michael Moore
Tonight, it’s show time for George W. Bush, and I can’t wait to hear what he has to tell the Republican convention.
It has been a pretty thrilling week so far, my favorite moment by far being the rebellious Bush twins who, in just a few short minutes, delivered on their promise to issue "payback" to their parents and all authority in general.
They revealed their parents’ pet name for each other: "Bushie" or "Bushy" - no spelling was provided. They seemed to have (…)

by Robert B. Reich
The idea of an ownership society-where everyone has private retirement and investment accounts, rather than Social Security-is great, if you’ve got extra money to invest for your future. Problem is, most Americans don’t. Robert Reich shares ideas on what a real ownership society would require. For more of Bush’s plans for a second term, see Roger Hickey’s thorough analysis here .
Robert B. Reich is the Maurice B. Hexter Professor of Social and Economic Policy at (…)

PRESIDENT DECLARES "OWNERSHIP SOCIETY" TELLS CONVENTION HE’S ORDERED INVASION OF SOCIAL SECURITY TRUST FUND
by Greg Palast
New York - Of all the bone-headed, whacky, breathtakingly threatening schemes George W. Bush is trying to sell us in his acceptance speech tonight is something he and his handlers call, "the Ownership Society." Sounds cool, "ownership." Everyone gets a piece of the action. Everyone’s a winner as the economy zooms. All boats rise.
Sure. Behind the (…)

by Matthew Rothschild
A hero to the conservatives at the Republican Convention, Dick Cheney could not have found a more sympathetic crowd, except perhaps at the annual meeting of the Halliburton corporation.
He soaked up the applause, and then, in his smug monotone, began his case, oddly invoking the name of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who stood for everything Cheney opposes.
After the obligatory autobiographical bow to the promise of America, Cheney spent less than 10 percent of his (…)

David Brock, the reformed conservative noise-maker, on how the Right has sabotaged journalism, democracy, and truth. David Brock
Interviewed By Bradford Plumer
As a young journalist in the 1990s, David Brock was a key cog the Republican noise machine. Writing for the American Spectator, a conservative magazine funded by billionaire Richard Mellon Scaife, Brock gained fame for his attack pieces on Anita Hill and President Bill Clinton. Then, in 2002, Brock came clean. In his memoir, (…)