contributions

by Joe Goodson
Mirror, mirror, on the wall: who’s the most arrogant nation of all?
Is it that country where everybody thinks they own the world because they have "perpetual" economic prosperity? Is it that place where people think war is just a cool video game on TV, dropping bombs on innocent civilians in an effort to "rid the world of evil-doers"? Is it that enchanted land where "deficits don’t matter," where anyone with a pulse can buy a big fancy house and two brand-new Lexus (…)

by Paul Krugman NYT PRINCETON, New Jersey Almost a year ago, on the second anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks, I predicted "an ugly, bitter campaign - probably the nastiest of modern American history."
The reasons I gave then still apply. President George W. Bush has no positive achievements to run on. Yet his inner circle cannot afford to see him lose: If he does, the shroud of secrecy will be lifted and the public will learn the truth about cooked intelligence, profiteering, (…)

The Iraqi cleric has an illustrious family background of resistance
by Sami Ramadani
Secular as well as Islamic anti-occupation forces in Iraq are now beginning to drop their caution about Moqtada al-Sadr and are openly siding with his resistance forces in Najaf. The National Foundation Congress, the influential umbrella organisation that represents most religious, nationalist and other secular forces opposed to the US-led occupation, on Saturday issued an eight-point proposal, already (…)

We as members of the International Coordinating Group of the World Tribunal on Iraq wish to record the following statement:
An appalling silence prevails about the devastation being inflicted on the people of Iraq. Having staged a show of transferring power to Iraqi authorities, the US has intensified military operations to stifle anything that dares to challenge occupation.
The World Tribunal on Iraq refuses to be part of this silence... Based on our work to investigate and bring out (…)

A veteran who disputed Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry’s Vietnam war record acknowledged on Sunday he had no proof to back his charge that Kerry fabricated the reports of enemy fire that won him two medals.
Speaking on "Fox News Sunday," Van Odell, a member of the group Swift Boat Veterans for Truth that has spearheaded a campaign against Kerry’s service record, said his was one of seven eyewitness accounts and he was not being directed by President Bush’s campaign.
He has (…)

By DEXTER FILKINS and ALEX BERENSON
BAGHDAD, Iraq - A kidnapped American journalist was released Sunday after the intervention of the cleric Moktada al-Sadr, even as his Shiite militia engaged in heavy fighting in an effort to fend off a renewed American assault near the holiest shrine in Najaf.
The freed journalist, Micah Garen, and an Iraqi interpreter, Amir Doushi, were turned over to Americans and reported to be in good health in the southern city of Nasiriya on Sunday night by (…)

A simple yet audacious attack by a guerrilla fighter in Najaf killed two American soldiers in their 69-ton Abrams tank.
By Edmund Sanders
NAJAF, Iraq - To his buddies, 2nd Lt. Mike Goins looked indestructible atop his Abrams tank as he maneuvered through Najaf’s besieged cemetery.
His command of the 69-ton machine in the maze-like graveyard led a superior to dub the 6-foot-3-inch soldier his "killer tanker."
"He loved that tank and believed he was invincible in it," said Capt. Kevin (…)

Big Brother is clamping down on America, and nobody seems to care. What will it take to get the average American to realize that we are rapidly descending into a police state? Our kids are counting on us to preserve the freedoms we inherited, yet many have already been stripped. Right now most Americans are living in la la land watching the Olympics and ignoring Bushco’s attempt to ignite WW III in Najaf. The draft is a very real possibility, they will close the borders to keep us in!
You (…)

The British intelligence services and the Foreign Office appear complicit in the torture
Vanessa Redgrave
I have just returned from a theatre workshop in Croatia, with women who survived Tito’s concentration camp for political prisoners on the island of Goli Otok. Officially this was a "work site" or "labour camp", and was opened by the Yugoslav State Security Service in 1948, when Tito split from Stalin.
The women prisoners were suspected of being pro-Stalin. They were never formally (…)

By MAUREEN DOWD
WASHINGTON - It’s easy for the Bushes to stay gallant. They delegate the gutter.
There are always third-party political assassins, ostensibly independent, to do the dynasty wet work.
W.’s old pal and running partner, Lee Atwater, set up the Bush modus operandi: Lay in the weeds while craftily planting plausibly deniable surrogates to slice up your rival.
The New Yorker editor David Remnick, writing in Esquire in 1986, limned the 1980 Congressional race in South (…)