contributions

by Andrew Kennis
New York City - A rally in New York City today to protest Starbucks Coffee’s negative reaction to recent union organizing efforts ended with four arrests, including the detention of two Starbucks employees who are members of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) union branch 660 (IU 660).
Chanting "Union busting is disgusting," about 400 protesters gathered around 2:00 p.m. at a midtown Starbucks located at 36th street and Madison Avenue, proceeded to the Starbucks (…)

By RON FOURNIER
NEW YORK - Abortion-rights protesters and the first Republican delegates descended on President Bush’s heavily fortified convention city Saturday as campaign officials said their boss would use the nomination spotlight to defend his hawkish foreign polices and offer a second-term agenda for health care, education and job training.
"He believes it’s important for a candidate to talk about what he’s done and, most important, where he wants to lead," said adviser Karen (…)

Bush Tries Out GOP Convention Themes In Ohio
Freedom, Stable Mideast, Improving Economy Likely To Be In Acceptance Speech
NEW YORK — The first real wave of Republican delegates has descended on the Big Apple, ahead of Monday’s GOP convention. A smattering of delegates had arrived midweek for platform hearings.
Meanwhile, President George W. Bush — campaigning across Ohio by bus — was giving a glimpse of his acceptance speech at the convention, talking about stabilizing the Mideast as (…)

By VERENA DOBNIK
NEW YORK — Thousands of abortion-rights activists marched across the Brooklyn Bridge and demonstrators rang handbells at the World Trade Center site Saturday, the latest in a growing procession of protests leading up to the Republican National Convention.
Thousands of marchers, forming a line 10 people wide and a half-mile long at times, crossed the bridge from Brooklyn to Manhattan in a march organized by Planned Parenthood.
Later in the day, several hundred (…)

Tactical Assessment of NYPD for Direct Actionists, Some Notes on the Strategic Importance of the Protests
by Volunteers of America
After the unprovoked mass arrests at the Critical Mass bike ride on Friday, August 27, we can expect police to use a pattern of a) attempted containment, b) surge, c) demonstrative violence, and d) mass arrest.
We can expect the liberal establishment to fear the popular response to Bush’s contempt for democratic rights, the war and the NYPD’s suppression of (…)

By James Risen
WASHINGTON - The FBI is investigating a Pentagon official on suspicion of passing secrets to Israel, according to government officials.
The espionage investigation has focused on an official who works in the office of Douglas Feith, the undersecretary of defence for policy, officials who have been briefed about the investigation said on Friday. The FBI has gathered evidence that the Pentagon official passed classified policy documents to officials at the American Israel (…)

By Jackson Diehl
The latest official reports on the prisoner abuse scandal contain a classic Washington contradiction. Their headlines proclaim that no official policy mandated or allowed the torture of detainees in Iraq and Afghanistan, and that no officials above the rank of colonel deserve prosecution or formal punishment. But buried in their hundreds of pages of detail, for anyone who cares to read them, is a clear and meticulous account of how decisions made by President Bush, his top (…)

By Sarah Ferguson
There’s a popular revolt afoot in New York City. Despite Mayor Bloomberg’s refusal, backed by a state judge to allow protesters to show their strength in numbers in New York’s most hospitable venue-Central Park- the demonstrations confronting George Bush and the Republicans are shaping up to be the biggest manifestation of popular dissent in the history of party conventions.
New York is now the sounding board for all the pent-up frustration against Bush that was stifled (…)

by Bradford Plumer
Anyone paying close attention to White House spin over the past three years would have pegged 2003 as a banner year for the American economy. After all, weren’t we in the second year of an expansion, with the economy growing at a brisk 3 percent clip? And hadn’t President Bush told us that his tax cuts were working their supply-side magic and helping the country "turn the corner"? Too bad the American people never got the message. According to a new data from the U.S. (…)

By Curt Anderson in Washington and Eric Silver in Jerusalem
In an espionage investigation that could strain US-Israeli relations and muddy the Bush administration’s Middle East policy, the FBI is investigating whether a Pentagon analyst fed to Israel secret materials about White House deliberations on Iran.
No arrests have so far been made, federal law enforcement officials said, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the continuing investigation, but an arrest in the case could (…)