contributions

Leslie John (Jack) McPhillips, Trade unionist, 1910 - 2004
Jack McPhillips, a powerful figure in the Australian communist and trade union movements, has died aged 94. His death marks the end of an era of larger-than-life communist leaders who played a major role in the union movement in the 1940s, ’50s and ’60s.
McPhillips was born in Rockhampton in Queensland. The family followed his father, a railway engineer and something of a martinet, from Rockhampton to first Woodford then Roma, (…)

By Paul Kelbie
The mother of a British soldier killed in an Iraqi ambush has launched a petition for the withdrawal of UK troops as she prepares to sue the Ministry of Defence over the death of her son.
Rose Gentle, 40, whose outspoken criticism of the conflict has fuelled criticisms that her grief has been hijacked by anti-war campaigners, denied yesterday that she was being manipulated. "Let’s just make this clear," she said. "It was my decision to speak out. Nobody is using me. I was (…)

At least 10 people have been killed and over 50 injured by a female bomber in a crowded part of central Moscow.
The blast on Tuesday follows a series of similar attacks over the past year, including near simultaneous plane crashes exactly a week ago, all of them linked by officials to Chechen fighters seeking independence from Russia.
Moscow Mayor Yuri Luzhkov said the woman had tried to enter the Riga metro station, that would have been crowded towards the end of the evening rush hour. (…)

by Nicola Clark PARIS For most of the last three years Christian Chesnot and Georges Malbrunot have been largely inseparable.
The two French journalists became fast friends when they met in Amman, Jordan, in 2001, according to colleagues who have known and worked with them. The two men, both fluent Arabic speakers, have collaborated often over the years and traveled frequently together on assignments that have taken them to the far corners of the Middle East. They have covered subjects (…)

By Eric Silver
At least 16 people were killed and more than 90 wounded yesterday when Palestinian suicide bombers struck two buses in the southern desert city of Beersheba. They detonated their devices within seconds of each other as the blue buses took passengers home from the city centre on a sweltering afternoon. One bus burst into flames, billowing thick, grey smoke; the other had all its windows pulverised and roof blown off.
Commentators predicted swift retribution against Hamas, (…)

by Arjan El Fassed
Anyone following the mainstream media couldn’t miss the news today. CNN reported that two suicide bombers set off almost simultaneous blasts on buses in Beer Sheva, killing 16 people in addition to themselves. At least 93 people were wounded. Usually, such attacks are followed with a wide range of condemnations.
Ariel Sharon said: Israel will continue fighting terror with all its might." The U.S. State Department, as well as the European Union, through its foreign (…)

Iraq’s leading Islamic authority, the Association of Muslim Scholars, has condemned the killing of 12 Nepalese captives.
Dr Harith al-Dhari, secretary-general of the AMS, strongly condemned the execution, describing the slain captives as "simple people" who did not deserve their fate.
"Speaking from [a] religious and humane point of view, I was the first among those calling on the kidnappers to release the hostages,"he told Aljazeera.
"We are against killing hostages, particularly if (…)

Voices from the March to Nowhere
By Tom Engelhardt
Let the numbers battle begin. The first unofficial police estimate of yesterday’s mega-march in New York: 120,000. The organizers’ estimate: 400,000. The earliest news pieces used the usual vague "tens of thousands" or "more than 100,000," but the Washington Post wrote of "more than 200,000," and the usually march-unresponsive New York Times picked the phrase, "hundreds of thousands." So the choice is yours.
On a boiling hot late (…)

By Kim Phillips-Fein
Politics, pundits and even the weather report seemed to be conspiring against a massive turnout at Sunday’s New York City demonstration against the Republican National Convention. Thanks to the city’s refusal to allow a rally in Central Park, no one knew until days earlier where the march would go or what would happen when it got there. Liberal commentators like Todd Gitlin and James Traub, trapped in nightmarish flashbacks of Chicago 1968, issued vague yet dire (…)

By DAVE LINDORFF
Manhattan.
So let’s get this straight.
George Bush says that the war on terror-that enterprise which to him encompasses the special forces actions and aerial bombardments of Afghanistan and the quagmire guerrilla war of attrition in Iraq, as well as the gutting of civil liberties here at home under the rubric of the USA Patriot Act-cannot be won after all.
He used to be fond of talking cowboy talk, and saying we were going to "smoke ’em out" and win.
Now it’s all (…)