contributions

by Josh Grossberg
It wasn’t any lethal weapon that got Danny Glover on the wrong side of the law.
The activism-minded actor was arrested Saturday outside Sudan’s embassy in Washington, D.C., during a protest against the African nation’s government over the deepening humanitarian crisis in the country’s Darfur region.
Addressing a crowd of demonstrators, Glover called for swift international intervention to halt attacks that the United States Congress has declared a genocide. More than (…)

By Raymond Whitaker, Francis Elliott and Paul Lashmar
British intelligence services stepped in to foil an African coup plot which Sir Mark Thatcher has been accused of helping to finance, according to sources close to the affair.
Simon Mann, a former SAS officer, was convicted in Zimbabwe last week on arms charges connected to a failed coup in the oil-rich West African state of Equatorial Guinea last March. More than a dozen alleged mercenaries are on trial for their lives in Malabo, (…)

By Ehsan Ahrari
The deal struck between the old guard, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, and the young guard, Muqtada al-Sadr, on Thursday over the custodianship of the Imam Ali Shrine is also a continuation of the struggle for the future of Iraq.
The old guard is unwittingly giving the US occupation a little space to maneuver, with an understanding that the young guard will not be harmed. Muqtada has apparently agreed to hand over the custodianship of the shrine with a more than tacit (…)

By RAY HANANIA
When I heard that Israel had a man working in the Pentagon as a spy, providing secret information to its powerful lobbying arm in Washington, I was surprised.
Why does Israel need a spy to steal secret information when it has several key people there already who hold top positions and can share instead of steal sensitive data?
Paul Wolfowitz? Richard Pearle? Paul Bremer?
Didn’t we invade Iraq in part to satisfy the Israeli lobby that pressured the weakling (…)

Existence, nature of operations resurface in dispute over Kerry
TOM INFIELD
WASHINGTON - Vietnam War veterans critical of Sen. John Kerry’s claims about his military service in Southeast Asia have reopened one of that era’s most controversial chapters with claims that Kerry lied when he said he’d spent Christmas Eve 1968 in Cambodia.
In a 1986 Senate speech, Kerry said that, as the skipper of a Swift boat in the Mekong Delta, he’d crossed the Vietnamese border into Cambodia, which was (…)

More than 500 people assembled in New York’s Martin Luther King, Jr. Auditorium concluded the War Crimes Tribunal with a resounding unanimous vote of guilty, declaring the Bush administration guilty of war crimes, crimes against humanity, and crimes against peace.
Declaring the Bush administration a criminal regime, this meeting, which drew speakers and participants from around the world, defended the right of GIs to resist illegal orders to fight against the people of Iraq, expressed (…)

The antiwar movement’s Spring Offensive began on 19 April when more than one thousand members of Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW)launched a five-day "limited incursion into the country of Congress" known as Operation Dewey Canyon III, a parody of the code name of the invasion of Laos. Dressed in fatigues, the veterans—many with long hair, some disabled—held memorial services for fallen comrades, conducted guerrilla theater search-and-destroy missions, and testified against the war (…)

By Kevin Maurer
Two swift boat sailors who served with Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry told supporters Saturday in Fayetteville that Kerry would not sacrifice American service members.
Skip Barker, a former swift boat commander, said Kerry would not rush American soldiers into combat. He said when a friend is killed in combat, you are always left to wonder whether it was worth your friend’s life.
"The answer has got to be yes. And before John Kerry sends our children and (…)

Pentagon official served as Air Force reservist, inquiry shows
By Thomas E. Ricks and Robin Wright
WASHINGTON - The FBI investigation into whether classified information was passed to the Israeli government is focused on a Pentagon analyst who has served as an Air Force reservist in Israel, and the probe has been broadened in recent days to include interviews at the State and Defense departments and with Middle Eastern affairs specialists outside government, officials and others familiar (…)

By Richard Sale
The FBI has intensified its investigation of senior members of what was formerly known as the Pentagon’s Office of Special Plans on suspicion that one of them passed highly classified U.S. military information to the government of Israel, according to federal law enforcement officials.
In some cases, colleagues, former associates and members of other government agencies have been interviewed as many as four times by teams of FBI agents, FBI officials told United Press (…)