contributions

Just attempting to discuss why a people would want to get the "democratic" fascists out of Iraq or Palestine or Columbia or Haiti or ad nauseum is next to impossible in freedom fries amerikkka. GJ
Automatonica Glenn Becker 15/06/04
Just attempting to engage someone in a factual conversation about the curious and convenient events on 9/11, Bush War II, corporate war profiteering, Israeli Zionist brutality or the sad state of our world in general is mostly an exercise in futility. (…)

UN Secretary General Kofi Annan firmly opposed US efforts to extend immunity of US citizens from prosecution for war crimes.
"As you know, for the past two years, I have spoken quite strongly against the exemption, and I think it would be unfortunate for one to press for such an exemption, given the prisoner abuse in Iraq," Annan told reporters as he arrived at UN headquarters.
It was the first time Annan publicly put his opinion in such clear and firm terms.
"I think in this (…)

by Ghaida Ghantous
Al Qaeda militants beheaded U.S. engineer Paul Johnson, who had been held hostage since last week, after the Saudi government failed to meet a Friday deadline for it to free jailed militants.
The group loyal to Saudi-born Osama bin Laden displayed his severed head in pictures posted on its Islamist Web site Sawt al-Jihad. A Saudi Web site, al Wifaq, said Marshall’s body was found in the Mowansiyah area, east of the capital Riyadh.
The U.S. embassy (…)

Vice President Dick Cheney agave a speech on June 14th to The James Madison Institute, a conservative Florida-based “think tank.” (That term that usually describes a handful of ideologues positing as “thinkers,” and acquiring, through corporate donations, the kind of respectability that allows the corporate media to cite it as somehow knowledgeable about the topics about which it thinks. These tanks are also useful in that they can invite prestigious speakers to speak in a supportive, (…)

Dominique Esser and Kim Ives
A U.S. prison consultant sent last year to "reform" Iraq’s Abu Ghraib prison, now world infamous for the torture U.S. soldiers there inflicted on Iraqis, is doing the same job now in Haiti.
Terry Stewart is the former director of Arizona’s prison system. Under his watch (1995-2002), the U.S. Justice Department repeatedly scrutinized and sued the state’s Department of Corrections, alleging abuse, particularly of women. A 1997 DOJ suit charged that male prison (…)

by Robert Fisk
They came as liberators but were met by fierce resistance outside Baghdad. Humiliating treatment of prisoners and heavy-handed action in Najaf and Fallujah further alienated the local population. A planned handover of power proved unworkable. Britain’s 1917 occupation of Iraq holds uncanny parallels with today - and if we want to know what will happen there next, we need only turn to our history books...
On the eve of our "handover" of "full sovereignty" to (…)

Marjorie Cohn, Truthout.org
The teflon that has enveloped George W. Bush is chipping off. Arriving in office with the promise of a "humble" foreign policy, Bush was sitting pretty at the beginning of his term. But Georges honeymoon has turned sour.
From the first day of his presidency, the neocons in Bushs cabal determined to "stabilize" Iraq for U.S. corporate investment. Bush had his own motives to "git" Saddam for his would-be hit on George I. The tragedy of September 11 gave them (…)

Stewart Nusbaumer
Until the first bomb landed on the center of Baghdad, I insisted, although my friends insisted I was nuts, we were not going into Iraq. Not my best predication.
What went wrong, with me? I underestimated George Bush’s stupidity. My friends are better at stupidity than I am.
My firm belief that our military was not going into Iraq was based upon a certainty on my part that a U.S. occupation of Iraq would turn out to be an utter disaster, for both Iraqis and Americans. (…)

Who is really doing the beheadings and why?
juneemoon.8m.net
US firm spread hostage video 17/06/2004 20:10 - (SA)
http://www.news24.com/News24/World/News/0,,2-10-1462_1544211,00.html
Berlin - Video images of a US engineer taken hostage in Saudi Arabia, possibly by the al-Qaeda network, could have been put on the internet via a US firm based in California, Der Spiegel magazine reported on Thursday.
The video was released on Tuesday and shows relatively high-quality film of hostage (…)

Colin Brown and David Usborne, The Independent
New York. President George Bush and the Prime Minister’s Office yesterday defied the independent US commission on 11 September and insisted that there were links between Saddam Hussein and al-Qa’ida.
The report by the commission on Wednesday dealt a devastating blow to the credibility to one of President Bush’s reasons for going to war against Iraq by finding there was no credible evidence linking Saddam’s regime to Osama bin Laden’s (…)