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WASHINGTON - The AFL-CIO will monitor polls in battleground states on Election Day to guard against voting abuses, and is launching a new effort to educate voters about the process and their rights.
The "My Vote, My Right" campaign is intended to help prevent problems that arose in the 2000 election, including technological glitches with voting machines, confusing ballots, inadequately staffed polls, polls that opened late and closed early, and registered voters erroneously removed from (…)

by Lawrence Donegan
President George Bush stood accused of appropriating the Olympic movement for political means last night, amid reports he was planning to visit Athens later this week to watch some sporting events, including a potential gold-medal winning bid by the Iraqi football team.
According to unconfirmed reports in the US, the White House is examining the logistical and security implications of Mr Bush travelling to the Greek capital in time for Saturday’s football final. Iraq, (…)

New details on hijackers’ visa, immigration violations
by Phil Hirschkorn
WASHINGTON - The 9/11 commission has released new details about how 19 hijackers and suspected conspirators in the attacks of September 11, 2001, were financed.
The two new reports — released Saturday shortly before the commission closed — also revealed visa and immigration violations among the suspected hijackers.
The commission released pictures of hijackers’ visas — including the charred remains of Ziad (…)

by Conal Urquhart
The US was yesterday accused by Palestinian leaders of destroying hopes for peace in the Middle East by giving its covert support to Israel’s expansion of controversial settlements in the West Bank.
American officials are privately admitting they have abandoned their demands that Israel freeze settlement activity, and have given Jerusalem tacit permission to build thousands of new homes on the disputed land.
Palestinians fear that the expansion of settlements will (…)

By Ahmad Maher, IOL Staff
CAIRO - It takes a lion-hearted and objective journalist along with a talented cameraman to go all the way to perils-riddled Iraqi holy city of An-Najaf, to reveal facts and unearth the truth that we may never know.
Beleaguered by a torrent of western media reports that sometimes, if not all the time, are politically motivated, many people worldwide are really bewildered at what is really going on in the flashpoint city of An-Najaf, especially after a stark (…)

by Chuck Collins
The news media and business sector have gone ga-ga about Google, as if its initial public offering were a new reality-TV show "Who wants to be a billionaire?"
In Google’s first days as a public company, we’ve already seen a flood of stories about how Google’s founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin have joined the billionaires club just nine years after meeting as Stanford University graduate students. They are now both worth $3.8 billion, vaulting them into the top 20 of (…)

by Jonathan Curiel
The applause started at 7:40 p.m., when she was first introduced to the overflow crowd at the San Francisco Hilton. By the time Arundhati Roy finished an hour later — by the time this novelist-activist-public intellectual completed her speech titled "Public Power in the Age of Empire" - - the audience had given her two standing ovations, 20 more rounds of applause and countless variations of more personal salutations like, "That’s right!"
Roy says she doesn’t want to (…)

Synod Hall, Cathedral of St. John the Divine, 110th St. & Amsterdam Ave. Trains: 1/9/B/C to 110th Street
Peter Camejo, Ralph Nader’s vice-presidential running mate, Green Party member
JoAnn Wypijewski, CounterPunch contributor
Shujaa Graham, exonerated inmate from California’s death row, former member of the Black Panther Party
Ahmed Shawki, editor, International Socialist Review
Hundreds of thousands of people will be in the streets of New York City to protest the Republican (…)

By Aluf Benn
South African law professor Prof. John Dugard, the special rapporteur for the United Nations on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories, has written in a report to the UN General Assembly that there is "an apartheid regime" in the territories "worse than the one that existed in South Africa."
As an example, Dugard points to the roads only open to settlers, from which Palestinians are banned.
In his report presented early this month, Dugard is highly (…)

Hundreds of yard signs supporting Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry have been stolen and vandalized in this heavily Republican region known as "Bush Country," officials said, prompting some Kerry supporters to hang signs from trees to deter burglars.
About 350 signs have been stolen, according to Panhandle for Kerry organizers, which met with Pensacola police Monday. The group has distributed nearly 3,400 signs.
Police said they would increase patrols and Panhandle for Kerry (…)