contributions

Greg Palast
There’s so much BS and baloney thrown around about Venezuela that I may be violating some rule of US journalism by providing some facts. Let’s begin with this: 77% of Venezuela’s farmland is owned by 3% of the population, the ’hacendados.’
I met one of these farmlords in Caracas at an anti-Chavez protest march. Oddest demonstration I’ve ever seen: frosted blondes in high heels clutching designer bags, screeching, "Chavez - dic-ta-dor!" The plantation owner griped about the (…)

By MIKE GLOVER
DES MOINES, Iowa — Sen. Tom Harkin pushed the name-calling in the presidential race to a new level, calling Vice President Dick Cheney a coward for not serving in Vietnam and cowardly for his criticism of John Kerry.
Kerry, the Democratic presidential nominee, recently said that if elected he would pursue a more effective and "more sensitive war on terror that reaches out to other nations and brings them to our side and lives up to American values in history."
Cheney, in (…)

Rumsfeld and Scalia’s Pre-emptive Strike on the Rule of Law
By MIKE WHITNEY
The basic purpose of the Law is to protect the individual from the violence of the state.
Judges who refuse to defend this fundamental principle must be removed from the bench. Free societies simply cease to exist beneath the shadow of arbitrary imprisonment.
When the Supreme Court finally ruled on the Yasir Hamdi case, America’s liberals were overcome with rapture. The cascade of praise came in all (…)

By Khaled Oweis
BAGHDAD - Shi’ite militia have set fire to an oil well in southern Iraq, Baghdad said Monday, adopting a new tactic in the uprising against U.S. forces and the new Iraqi government.
"The well in a field near the city of Amara was targeted on Sunday," an Iraqi government spokesman said.
While the attack on one of thousands of oil wells in Iraq’s southern fields will have negligible impact for production, it underlines the threat to Iraq’s oil infrastructure from the (…)

By TARIQ ALI
The turn-out in Venezuela last Sunday was huge. 94.9 percent of the electorate voted in the recall referendum. Venezuela, under its new Constitution, permitted the right of the citizens to recall a President before s/he had completed their term of office. No Western democracy enshrines this right in a written or unwritten constitution. Chavez’ victory will have repercussions beyond the borders of Venezuela. It is a triumph of the poor against the rich and it is a lesson that (…)

By Andrew North
Kabul’s trial of the year has resumed.
Former US soldier Jonathan K Idema and two other Americans, Edward Caraballo and Brent Bennett, are facing charges including hostage-taking, torture, illegally entering Afghanistan and running a private jail.
Four Afghan men arrested with them in Kabul in early July are also in the dock.
Even the judge admits he has never tried a case like it.
But the key question for this next stage is this: Will Mr Idema produce any evidence (…)

By David Usborne in Orlando
President George Bush flew into south-west Florida yesterday on a mission that was as much about politics as compassion for the area devastated by a hurricane over the weekend.
Accompanied by Jeb Bush, his brother and Governor of the state, and by Mike Brown, the director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema), the President toured - by helicopter and on land - Charlotte and Lee counties, which suffered the most damage by far from Hurricane Charley (…)

By GARY LEUPP
Oppose the oppressor and support the oppressed.
Imam Ali, Last Will and Testament (39 AH; 661 CE)
I have been thinking for months that if those commanding U.S. forces in Iraq really wanted to perform the ultimate stupidity, and ratchet up exponentially the degree of hatred they face in Iraq and throughout the Muslim world---then they’d surely attack the Imam Ali Shrine in Najaf, or be drawn into a situation where they’d damage it. This is the most important Shiite site in (…)

Relatives of the U.S. soldier who sounded the alarm about abuse of Iraqi detainees at Abu Ghraib prison said on Monday the family was living in protective custody because of death threats against them.
Reservist military police officer Staff Sgt. Joseph Darby alerted U.S. Army investigators about the abuse by fellow soldiers of prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison near Baghdad, a move his wife says has angered people in their community in western Maryland.
"People were mean, saying he was a (…)

Former US president Jimmy Carter has corroborated preliminary figures issued just after 4:00 a.m. this morning which show President Hugo Chavez Frias as the clear winner in Sundays’ recall referendum on his rule.
Carter told a news conference "our findings coincide with the partial returns announced today by the National Elections Council." On the same platform, Organization of American States (OAS) Secretary General Cesar Gaviria said that "observers have not found any element of fraud in (…)