contributions

To: Members of the U.S. House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate.
As members of university faculties in law, international relations, diplomacy, and public policy, we write to register our objection to the systematic violation of human rights practiced or permitted by authorities of the United States within occupied Iraq during recent months: we request Congressional action to ensure accountability for such violations and to safeguard against such egregious abuses in the future. (…)

by Dahr Jamail
I revisited Chuwader General Hospital in Sadr City yesterday. Unlike at Yarmouk Hospital, the manager at Chuwader was very open about the desperate plight facing his hospital, where 78 doctors work with desperate medicine and equipment shortages to serve an average of 3,000 daily visitors.
I was taken on a tour where I saw the kitchen facilities in complete disrepair, toilets which overflowed across the floor in the intensive care wing, X-Ray equipment dated from the 1970s (…)

By Scott Wilson
BAQUBAH. The 1st Infantry Division soldiers who walked off the battlefield Thursday, exhausted by the frantic pace of combat and a baking summer sun, had seen nothing like it in their three months here. In dawn-to-dusk fighting, more than 100 armed insurgents overran neighborhoods and occupied downtown buildings, using techniques that U.S. commanders said resembled those once employed by the Iraqi army. Well-equipped and highly coordinated, the insurgents demonstrated a (…)

In Moscow property prices are rising by 40% a year and construction work is everywhere. But there is a dark side to the property boom involving fraud, violence, and even murder.
Gennady Gavrilov once lived in a flat in one of the more sought after neighbourhoods of Moscow.
But the former metal worker suddenly found himself homeless and penniless. He was dumped in a provincial town 150 miles away, where he was forced to sleep with animals in a barn and had to work for food.
Gennady is (…)

A new public-opinion poll shows President Bush is losing support for his handling of the fight against terrorism and the decision to invade Iraq.
For the first time, more than half of those surveyed in the monthly Washington Post/ABC News poll say the war in Iraq was not worth fighting.
The poll shows 70 percent of Americans believe U.S. casualties in Iraq have reached an unacceptable level. That is up six points from April.
In that time, Mr. Bush has also seen a 13 percent drop in (…)

US policy in the "war on terror" is harshly criticised in a new book by an intelligence official who says the battle against al-Qaeda is being lost. The author, identified as Anonymous, claims the invasion of Iraq has played into the hands of Osama Bin Laden and has not made America any safer.
He also predicts a new al-Qaeda strike within the US which will be far more damaging than the 11 September attacks. There has been no White House comment yet on the book due out on 4 July.
The (…)

ISTANBUL. A bomb blast ripped through a city bus, killing two people in Istanbul on Thursday, days before President Bush arrives in the country for a NATO summit, Turkish television said.
It was the second bomb blast to rock a Turkish city on Thursday.
The bus was passing in front of a hospital in a residential district of Istanbul, the country’s largest city, when the blast occurred, CNN Turk said. Ambulances rushed to the scene. Seven people were hurt.
Earlier on Thursday a small (…)

BAGHDAD Insurgents killed 75 people on Thursday in a wave of attacks across Iraq aimed at sabotaging next week’s handover to Iraqi rule.
Three U.S. soldiers were among those killed in bloody assaults on Iraqi security forces in Baghdad and the mainly Sunni Muslim cities of Baquba, Falluja, Ramadi and Mosul. More than 250 people were wounded.
A group led by Jordanian militant Abu Musab Zarqawi, who Washington says has links to al Qaeda, claimed responsibility for the attacks in a (…)

A group headed by al Qaeda-linked operative Abu Musab al-Zarqawi claimed responsibility for a wave of attacks across Iraq on Thursday which killed 75 people.
"Your brothers in Jama’at al-Tawhid and Jihad launched a wide assault in several governorates in the country which included strikes against the apostate police agents and spies, the Iraq army alongside their American brothers," said an Arabic-language statement in the name of the group.
"Your brothers in the martyrdom brigade also (…)

WASHINGTON The United States will extend immunity from Iraqi prosecution for U.S. and other foreign troops and personnel in Iraq beyond the handover of power next Wednesday, officials said on Thursday.
Defense officials confirmed that U.S. administrator Paul Bremer was expected to renew an immunity order in place throughout the occupation, extending it until the election of a new Iraqi government late this year or in early 2005.
White House spokesman Scott McClellan said there was (…)