contributions

by Donald Macintyre
Democracy was a long way from Najaf yesterday. As fighting resumed in the Shia holy city, Iyad Allawi’s government moved to impose an authoritarian media clampdown before any full-scale assault on the holy sites which insurgents have made their base.
Amid continued exchanges of fire, US tanks rolled deeper into the old city in an attempt to tighten the cordon around the militants loyal to Muqtada Sadr based in and around the shrine of Imam Ali. Sporadic explosions (…)

By Jill McGivering
Many in the United States will be watching keenly as voters in Venezuela cast their ballots in Sunday’s referendum which decides whether or not Hugo Chavez will continue as president.
They may have mixed feelings.
President Chavez’s relationship with the US has been notoriously discordant but turmoil in Venezuela could also cause unwelcome disruption in oil supplies.
The Bush administration and the Venezuelan leader have struggled to co-exist.
The relationship (…)

By Cahal Milmo
A single line of smudgy black type reads "OWEN, Wilfred, lieutenant, Fifth Battalion Manchester Regiment". It is just one of more than 700,000 reminders of the carnage of the Great War kept in the dusty ledgers of a London archive.
But now the entry of the poet Wilfred Owen in the official index of war dead, along with those of his comrades fallen in both world wars, has leapt from the corridors of the General Register Office (GRO) to cyberspace.
From today, amateur (…)

An Iraqi journalist working for Iran’s state Arabic-language Al-Alam TV channel was arrested Sunday in the holy Iraqi city of Najaf for violating the local police’s order of leaving.
Mohammad Kazem was detained when he was reporting live on TV the new round of US offensive against Shiite militia in Najaf, the channel said.
Earlier in the day, Najaf police chief Ghaleb al-Jazairi had ordered all journalists to leave the city in two hours before a major attack was launched.
It (…)

Iraqi police brandishing rifles threatened to arrest journalists unless they left Najaf on Sunday, raising fears among local reporters they were attempting to impose a news blackout on the holy city.
At least 20 reporters had travelled to the southern Iraqi town, where Shi’ite militiamen fought fierce battles with U.S. and Iraqi forces, after the collapse of peace talks aimed at ending fighting that has killed hundreds.
Najaf police chief Ghaleb al-Jazaeri told a news conference all (…)

by Doug Lorimer
On August 7, 43 former Australian military chiefs and top diplomats issued a statement attacking Prime Minister John Howard’s government for joining the US-led invasion of Iraq "on the basis of false assumptions and the deception of the Australian people".
The military brass who signed the statement included General Peter Gration and Admiral Alan Beaumont, both former chiefs of the Australian Defence Force. Also signing the statement were former defence department (…)

CARACAS, Venezuela - Voters turned out in huge numbers Sunday to decide whether to keep populist President Hugo Chavez in power or oust him and his social revolution that critics say has sidelined the middle class and fueled tensions between rich and poor.
Activists on both sides set off huge firecrackers and played recorded bugle songs to wake voters hours before dawn. Voters turned out in droves, waiting in line for five hours or more to cast ballots in the historic vote.
It was the (…)

By Alex Kirby
World water supplies will not be enough for our descendants to enjoy the sort of diet the West eats now, experts say.
The World Water Week in Stockholm will be told the growth in demand for meat and dairy products is unsustainable.
Animals need much more water than grain to produce the same amount of food, and ending malnutrition and feeding even more mouths will take still more water.
Scientists say the world will have to change its consumption patterns to have any (…)

By Hannah Allam, Tom Lasseter and Dogen Hannah
BAGHDAD, Iraq - U.S. and Iraqi forces launched a renewed assault Sunday on Shiite Muslim militiamen in the southern holy city of Najaf in a risky campaign that was marred from the onset by an outcry from Iraqi politicians and the desertion of dozens of Iraqi troops who refused to fight their countrymen.
The latest siege began Sunday afternoon, a day after Iraqi Prime Minister Iyad Allawi’s administration announced that fighting would resume (…)

by Tisha Steyn
Baghdad - A large group of people walked out of a national conference billed as an experiment in Iraqi democracy shortly after it opened, as fighting resumed in the holy city of Najaf.
More than 100 people leapt out of their seats as soon as UN special envoy to Iraq, Ashraf Jehangir Qazi, finished his opening speech, shouting "as long as there are airstrikes and shelling we can’t have a conference".
Yahya Mussawi, a representative of a group known as the Shiite House, (…)