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Bush’s nominee for CIA director faces an uphill battle in getting Democrats in the Senate to back him after lacklustre years as head of the house intelligence committee. And if he is confirmed, his job may soon be axed
by Suzanne Goldenberg
For a loyal company man, Porter Goss appeared to be going out of his way to offend his former and potentially future employers at the CIA, saying that the agency was so badly managed it risked becoming "a stilted bureaucracy incapable of even the (…)

by Cyprus Indymedia
The scandal is unfolding in gigantic proportions... and we can hardly keep up with the developments. Responding to a publicity and solidarity campaign by Indymedia, the Government of the Republic of Cyprus has been forced to admit that they were acting under orders from the US Government to carry out an intelligence investigation of Cyprus Indymedia and of one of its founding members, Petros Evdokas, in order to assess whether he "constitutes a threat to US interests." (…)

by Stephen Zunes
Editor’s note: In case you were still harboring any illusions that John Kerry is an "antiwar" candidate, he made it perfectly clear on Monday: He would have supported giving the president the authority to invade Iraq, even if he knew there were no WMDs. Here Stephen Zunes explains Kerry’s stance is part of a larger move to the right by the Democratic Party:
Against the backdrop of ongoing death and destruction in Iraq as a result of the U.S. invasion and subsequent (…)

Global Eye Unnatural Acts
By Chris Floyd
After months of bad press, here at last was an act of genuine humanitarianism by U.S. troops in Iraq that could have been trumpeted to the skies: a unit of National Guard troops — part-time citizen-soldiers from Oregon — rescuing a group of prisoners from sadistic torture by the security forces of the "sovereign" Iraqi government. Yet the incident was buried by U.S. brass, who repudiated their own soldiers — and backed the Iraqi torturers.
It (…)

McGreevey Has Been Facing Other Political Problems
By Michael Powell and Michelle Garcia
TRENTON, N.J., Gov. James E. McGreevey resigned Thursday, announcing that he had an affair with a man and that it had left him vulnerable to "false allegations and threats of disclosure."
"My truth is that I am a gay American," the married father of two said at a news conference at the State House here. "This, the 47th year of my life, is arguably too late to have this discussion. But . . . at a (…)

NewsWithViews.com
A new 9-11 video was screened last night in Sacramento, California, leaving the audience stunned. ’911 in Plane Site’ is basically presented in two parts. The first segment is 52 minutes and designed for showing on television with the balance of a one hour time slot reserved for commercials. Part II continues with more film and analysis. This video is digitally mastered making details sharp and clear.
’911 in Plane Site’ presents actual film from that fateful day and (…)

By Martin Chulov
ACCUSED Sydney terrorist Mamdouh Habib said yesterday his life at Guantanamo Bay had become like the Hollywood prison film Lock Up.
In his first conversation with his wife, Maha, and four children since his arrest in September 2001, Habib begged her not to send him any family photographs and broke down when his daughter asked when he would return home.
During a 30-minute phone call yesterday to the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade office in Sydney, Habib said: (…)

By PETER LINEBAUGH
Dave Gilbert, serving a life-sentence in New York, has just come out with an important, wonderful book, No Surrender: Writings from an anti-imperialist political prisoner, and Staughton Lynd, counsellor to death row in Ohio, has just published the scathing j’accuse of our times, Lucasville: The Untold Story of a Prison Uprising. Forty years ago they were prominent in SDS (Students for a Democratic Society), and around then they sang a song that had come up north with (…)

by Steve James
NEW YORK - They’re on strike at Becancour and Labrador City in Canada, and last month they downed tools at La Caridad in Mexico and Nye, Montana.
With high metal prices driving up company profits, miners and smelter workers are looking for a bigger slice of the economic pie and sometimes taking tough action to get it.
In a spate of mine and smelter strikes across North America this summer, several operations are threatened as both sides appear to be taking a hard-nosed (…)

Claudia Jardim and Jonah Gindin spoke to veteran political activist and author Tariq Ali, during his recent trip to Caracas, about Venezuela and Latin American resistance to US neoliberalism.
How do you explain the explosion in social movements against neoliberalism in Latin America?
I think the reason for this is that Latin America was used as a laboratory by the United States for a long, long time. When Washington wanted to crush popular movements by unleashing military dictatorships, (…)