contributions

by Sheldon Richman
The first presidential election in the post-9/11 era has people thinking hitherto unthinkable thoughts: Should the election be postponed if a terrorist attack occurs before election day? What if there is an attack on election day? What happens if an attack takes the lives of the winner of the election and his running mate before inauguration day? It has even been asked if these matters should be discussed publicly.
Advocates of thoroughgoing individual liberty are (…)

by Paul Craig Roberts
Having experienced the Clinton and George W. Bush administrations, do Americans wish they had elected Patrick J. Buchanan president? Was Buchanan America’s last chance to put a true patriot in the Oval Office?
America was meant to cultivate its own garden, to steer clear of foreign entanglements and permanent alliances, and to serve as an example to others. Instead, the U.S. has become a "democratic imperialist."
In a new book dedicated to Ronald Reagan, Where the (…)

by Ivan Eland
As the 21st century dawns, Americans have come to define patriotism as uncritical support of war and the military. In this year’s presidential campaign, John Kerry touts his war exploits in Vietnam, and those with connections to George W. Bush try to rewrite this history decades later. The president dresses up in military garb and lands on an aircraft carrier, pretending to be a war hero to make people forget that he avoided the danger of conflict years earlier. Both Bush and (…)

Officials Say Inquiry Also Confirms Prisoners Were Hidden From Aid Groups
By Josh White and Thomas E. Ricks
An Army investigation into the Abu Ghraib prison scandal has found that military police dogs were used to frighten detained Iraqi teenagers as part of a sadistic game, one of many details in the forthcoming report that were provoking expressions of concern and disgust among Army officers briefed on the findings.
Earlier reports and photographs from the prison have indicated that (…)

"Stop the War" Italian National Committee
We are women and men active in the Italian peace movement. We wish to appeal
to those who are holding Enzo Baldoni. Free him now. Baldoni is a journalist
who has always openly spoken against the war on Iraq and against Italian
participation in the occupation of that country. To harm Enzo Baldoni will
in no way further the cause of peace. On the contrary, it will merely serve
to strengthen the war "faction", to which the Italian government (…)

Mary Blume
Was it really possible to be that happy and to believe you would be that happy again and again? In Paris, on the 25th day of a pleasantly hot August 60 years ago, the answer was an exuberant yes: the Germans were gone and the city was again free. "Paris outraged! Paris broken! Paris martyred! But Paris liberated!" General Charles de Gaulle proclaimed that evening in the Hôtel de Ville.
Everyone was in the streets, laughing, shouting, crying, embracing, plunging to the ground (…)

From the campaign of the Progressive Democratic challenger to Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert:
Dear Friends and Supporters,
In this issue: upcoming fundraiser and other events, volunteer opportunities, printing and campaigning needs, Springfield update, and thank-you.
Mark Your Calendar Now
Saturday, September 18, we are planning a “Wine and Art” fundraiser at 7 p.m. at 14 W. Downer Place, Suite 18 (two doors down from our headquarters), in Aurora.
We are gathering artwork and (…)

Italian former far-left rebel disappears after court overrules asylum pledge and backs extradition for 70s bombings
by Jon Henley
A former Italian terrorist turned best-selling crime writer who has been living openly in France for the past 15 years has fled the country to escape near-certain extradition, French media reported yesterday.
The left-leaning daily Libération, which has followed Cesare Battisti’s case closely, said that "according to our information" the author had left (…)

By Charles Bremner and Richard Owen
EMBARRASSED French police have launched an international manhunt for a convicted Italian terrorist who became a cult figure among intellectuals and the left-wing opposition in Paris.
Cesare Battisti, 50, triggered the search when he failed to make a weekly visit to a Paris police station on Saturday, breaking the terms of his probation. In the 1970s he was a member of the Armed Proletarians for Communism (PAC), one of several hardline groups — smaller (…)

Ros Taylor
One of France’s ex-terrorists is missing. Cesare Battisti, the Italian ex-guerrilla turned thriller writer and pin-up of the far left who was granted asylum by a sympathetic François Mitterrand in 1985 after a court in Rome handed down a life sentence in his absence, has apparently fled.
The precise nature of Battisti’s revolutionary activities has never been entirely clear. Born in 1954, the biography on his website records that he joined an organisation called Armed (…)