contributions

by Madeleine Baran
Although new data shows that mercury pollution has increased in recent years, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the Bush administration have rejected stricter rules for regulating companies that introduce the highly toxic substance into the environment.
In response to a court order, the EPA will release the nation’s first-ever rule purportedly intended to reduce mercury pollution from coal-burning power plants by March 15. The order was a result of a case (…)

by Robert Scheer
It was a sucker pitch, and John Kerry fell for it like a rookie. I’m talking about President Bush’s latest cheap gambit—turning his own unjustifiable and costly invasion of Iraq into his opponent’s problem. Bush mocked Kerry’s Iraq position for its "nuance"—a word that manages to sound both French and less than fully masculine.
At Bush’s prompting, reporters asked Kerry if he, knowing what we all know now about Iraq’s lack of weapons of mass destruction, would still have (…)

by Nonna Gorilovskaya
Never mind that Al Qaeda and Taliban are still operating in Afghanistan. Never mind that this weekend, 21 people were killed in clashes there after the forces of a warlord, Aminullah Khan, temporarily seized an airport in the Herat region. Or that Herat’s governor, Ismail Khan, has shown little inclination to obey central authority. Never mind that the country is the world’s #1 supplier of opium. Never mind that attacks on humanitarian workers have become so frequent (…)

Does Big Media have a vested interest in protecting Bush? You betcha.
By Lawrence Lessig
The US president owns neither his words nor his image - at least not when he speaks in public on important matters. Anyone is free to use what he says, and the way he says it, to criticize or to praise. The president, in this sense, is "free." But what happens when the commander in chief uses private venues to deliver public messages, holding fewer press conferences and making more talk-show (…)

NAJAF - Iraqi political and religious leaders trying to end a Shiite uprising flew into Najaf on Tuesday, where US troops and fighters battled near the country’s holiest Islamic sites.
In Baghdad, insurgents fired a shell into a busy street, killing at least seven people including two children. The new violence, especially the challenge from Shiite cleric Moqtada Sadr, highlighted the massive security headaches for interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi barely seven weeks after he took over (…)

by Norm Dixon
Despite their public "resolve" and "care" for the people of western Sudan, Western governments are allowing more than 2000 hungry and sick Darfuris to die every single day for want of urgently needed food, medicines and shelter.
The British aid agency Oxfam has revealed that Western governments have not kept their promises to provide aid funds to the more than 1.3 million refugees in Darfur and 200,000 in neighbouring Chad.
In March, the UN issued an appeal for US$350 (…)

Proxy Soldiers in Bush’s War Mexico Fiercely Opposes the Iraq War, But Mexicans Are Dying There Every Week
By JOHN ROSS
"She died on Friday thinking about coming home to eat beans and carnitas."
Father of Sgt. Isela Rubacalva
MEXICO CITY.
When Lance Corporal Juan Lopez Rangel was killed in a firefight near the rebel city of Fallujah in Al Anbar province just west of Baghdad on June 21st, his grieving parents, who now live in a small Georgia town, were determined to bury the proud (…)

by Gwynne Dyer The claims and counter-claims make it hard to discern the strategies behind the showdown in Najaf, and the language that is used blurs the situation even more. U.S. military spokesmen, for example, always call the young men who are defending rebel Shia cleric Moqtada al-Sadr "anti-Iraqi forces," although not one in a hundred of them has ever been outside Iraq.
But you can guess why U.S. authorities in Iraq chose this moment to try to eliminate Sadr and his al-Mahdi (…)

By Will Lester
WASHINGTON - Nine months of chaos and casualties in Iraq since Saddam Hussein’s capture have taken a heavy toll on American opinion of President Bush’s decision to go to war.
Last December, when Saddam was caught, public support for Bush was 2-to-1 in favor. Now the public is evenly divided on whether the war was the right thing to do or whether it was a mistake.
Older people, minorities, people with lower incomes, residents of the Northeast and Catholics are among those (…)

AN Iraqi freelance journalist working for Germany’s ZDF television has been killed in the flashpoint city of Fallujah, the network said today.
Mahmud Hamid Abbas, 32, had gone to the city on Sunday to film when he was killed "in unexplained circumstances", it said.
The media watchdog Reporters without Borders (RSF) said the journalist was killed as he was leaving his native Fallujah for Baghdad.
"When he phoned the ZDF office in Baghdad to say he was coming he mentioned he had just (…)