contributions

By ERIC SCHMITT
WASHINGTON, June 9 — The commander of American forces in the Middle East asked Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld this week to replace the general investigating suspected abuses by military intelligence soldiers at Abu Ghraib prison with a more senior officer, a step that would allow the inquiry to reach into the military’s highest ranks in Iraq, Pentagon officials said Wednesday.
The request by the commander, Gen. John P. Abizaid, comes amid increasing criticism from (…)

by Paul Sperry
On the eve of the Iraq war, Pentagon lawyers gave license to torturing suspected terrorists in custody. Use of drugs on prisoners wasn’t banned in all cases. Even killing in some cases was justified.
That’s the gist of a March 6, 2003, draft Pentagon report titled, "Working Group Report on Detainee Interrogations in the Global War on Terrorism."
Or at least the first half of it. Pages 1-56 have been declassified, but the rest of the 100-plus-page report – starting with a (…)

by Jim Lobe
WASHINGTON - Coca-Cola and other large businesses are indirectly benefiting from the use of child labor in sugarcane fields in El Salvador, according to a new report released here Thursday by Human Rights Watch (HRW) which is calling on the company to take more responsibility to ensure that such abuses are halted.
From 5,000 to 30,000 Salvadoran children, some as young as eight years old, are working in El Salvador’s sugarcane plantations where injuries, particularly severe (…)

BY CAMILLE DODERO The Boston Phoenix Issue Date: June 4 - 10, 2004 http://www.bostonphoenix.com/boston/news_features/this_just_in/documents/03885837.asp It was a skinny pair of stereo wires that got 21-year- old Joe Previtera charged with two felonies. A week ago on Wednesday, the Boston College student poked his head through a gauzy shawl, donned a black pointy hood, and ascended a milk crate positioned to the right of the Armed Forces Recruitment Center’s Tremont Street entrance. He (…)

Democracy Now
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=04/06/03/142254 A 21-year-old college student could spend years in jail on bomb threat charges after he stood silently outside a military recruitment office dressed like an Iraqi prisoner: in a black cape, hooded, wearing stereo wires hanging from his fingers. The police charged Joseph Previtera with making a bomb threat since the stereo wires resembled wires to a bomb. An article in today’s Boston Phoenix (see below) begins like (…)

By Derrick Z. Jackson Boston Globe June 9, 2004
http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2004/06/09/reagans_heart_of_darkness/ President Bush proclaimed: "Ronald Reagan believed that God takes the side of justice and that America has a special calling to oppose tyranny and defend freedom." In the first three days of news reports on the death of the former president, not a single major American newspaper, television station, or politician has dared to exhume this (…)

"Reagan Was The Butcher of My People" Fr. Miguel D’Escoto Speaks From Nicaragua
Editors Note: Fr. Miguel D’Escoto is a Catholic priest in Managua, Nicaragua. He was Nicaragua’s Foreign Minister under the Sandinista government of the 1980s, when the US was arming and supporting the Contra death squads. Ronald Reagan said of the Contras: "They are our brothers, these freedom fighters and we owe them our help. They are the moral equal of our founding fathers." The following text is drawn (…)

By RICK CALLAHAN, Associated Press Writer
NEWPORT, Ind. - In a cavernous, pipe-filled structure known simply as the Utility Building, Army contractors are getting ready to destroy a Cold War-era concoction so lethal it could kill untold millions.
After years of controversy, workers will begin chemically neutralizing 1,269 tons of the ultra-deadly nerve agent VX this summer as part of a plan to eliminate the nation’s chemical weapons stockpile.
Residents near the Newport Chemical (…)

By Becky Branford BBC News Online
"I’ve been in prisons all around Brazil," said James Cavallero, founder of Brazilian human rights group Global Justice.
"They’re dark, dreary, wet, and damp. Some of them feel like mediaeval dungeons. And it’s remarkable - there’s the same stench in all of them. Rotting food, urine, excrement, prisoners’ sweat. That prison smell is uniform - it’s teeming humanity."
Both the government and rights groups agree that poor conditions in Brazilian jails are (…)

Residents will held their second demonstration tomorrow [Ar-Ram, North Jerusalem] Tomorrow, Friday, June 11, 2004, the community of Ar-Ram will gather at Ar-Ram intersection at 12h15 and organize the Friday prayer there as a demonstration against the construction of the wall throughout their town. They will be joined in their nonviolent protest by international and Israeli peace activists. The planned route of the Wall runs through the main road of the town, from Ar-Ram checkpoint to (…)