contributions

Zaman - Turkey Cumali Onal - Cairo
The fighting in Sudan’s Darfur region, which is being reported in the world press as ’ethnic cleansing’ and a ’humanitarian crisis’, reportedly stems from attempts to gain control over the oil resources in the region, claim Arab sources. These Arab sources find it interesting that such skirmishes occurred when a peace agreement that would have brought an end to 21 years of north-south conflict was about to be signed. The sources point out that oil fields (…)

We are a nation at war - a global war on terror against an enemy unlike any we have ever known before.
Saying there are weapons of mass destruction in Iraq doesn’t make it so. As President, I will ask hard questions and demand hard evidence
Before you go to battle, you have to be able to look a parent in the eye and truthfully say: "I tried everything possible to avoid sending your son or daughter into harm’s way. But we had no choice. We had to protect the American people, fundamental (…)

July 31, 2004
I have been home a bit more than a day, and I wanted to give my perspective on the convention in Boston.
The first thing I want to say is that the entire convention was a sham. Perhaps I was naïve, but I went in with the perspective of Duluth (the MN Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party State Convention in May), where there was lots of expression from the delegates, including wrangling over platform, motions from the floor, significant interactions with other delegates. (…)

It’s probably unfair to be too hard on the Greens for taking such a complicated view of the 2004 Presidential election. At their convention in Milwaukee at the end of June, the arguments were flying: for running all out against the Democrats again, for running only in "safe" states where they wouldn’t affect the outcome of the Presidential election, and even for not running a candidate for President at all. While it was confusing trying to sort out all the Greens’ various positions, it’s (…)

By Scott Beckman
Anybody who’s reading this has probably already concluded that President Bush is a liar. And the just completed Democratic Convention proved Ralph Nader’s campaign premise that the major parties have achieved a "duopoly on duplicity" beyond any shadow of my doubt.
John Kerry says he will restore "integrity and trust" to the White House "by telling the truth to the American people." Well, after a lifetime of U.S. citizenship, I’ve become so attuned to the moldy hypocrisy (…)

Bush, don’t let this technology get away! 31.Jul.2004 15:20 Ronald Steins, Retired Military Commander link
There is a lot of hype over this Gaiacomm technology and its discoverer Dr. Judah Ben-Hur. Well I have not found any published material from this person in the science world but that is ok. Must be a cover to protect the truth of the science. The website is impressive! Not to say that this person does not exist, he does and has a technology that is pretty impressive from what I can (…)

By Kersasp D. Shekhdar
"I want the truth!" "America, you can’t handle the truth!" This well-known snatch of dialogue, slightly amended, from "A Few Good Men" perfectly illustrates the U.S.A.’s state of mind today: it can’t handle the truth. And that is if the truth is spoken, especially in these times when the truth-teller is smeared as being ’unpatriotic’ and ’anti-American’. For a nation in the grip of near-collective narcissistic delusions, unwilling and unable to see the truths about (…)

By MERLIN CHOWKWANYUN
MIT Professor Noam Chomsky is one of the world’s most perceptive social critics. I had the opportunity recently to ask him some questions concerning a range of subject matter. Professor Chomsky’s latest book is Hegemony or Survival: America’s Quest for Global Dominance. Other works, many recently reissued, include American Power and the New Mandarins, Manufacturing Consent, and Deterring Democracy.
Merlin Chowkwanyun: One scholar and activist whom you’ve cited (and (…)

By DOUGLAS JEHL
A senior leader of Al Qaeda who was captured in Pakistan several months after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks was the main source for intelligence, since discredited, that Iraq had provided training in chemical and biological weapons to members of the organization, according to American intelligence officials.
Intelligence officials say the detainee, Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, a member of Osama bin Laden’s inner circle, recanted the claims sometime last year, but not before (…)

By Robert Fisk in Baghdad - 30 July 2004
Their Kalashnikov automatic rifles regularly jam after firing two bullets, their flak jackets don’t protect them, their promised £45 pay increase never arrived, their boss wants to take the air-conditioners from their vehicles and the hospitals can’t cope with their wounded.
Apart from that, the men of the new Iraqi police mobile patrols in Baghdad - the front-line victims of the Iraq war - are fighting fit. More than that. They’ve found that (…)