contributions

by Phil Reeves in Samara
http://news.independent.co.uk/low_res/story.jsp?story=469253&host=3&dir=75
To Ali Abdullah Amin, the accusations and denials that were yesterday flying about the latest battle between the occupiers and occupied of Iraq - the fiercest engagement, some say, since the early days of the US-led invasion - were irrelevant.
He was not interested in whether the American military was telling the truth when it said that its troops had killed 54 "attackers" - (…)

CHAVEZ VERSUS THE FREE TRADE ZOMBIES OF THE AMERICAS
Greg Palast reporting from Caracas
It’s as if they were locked in a crypt for the last ten years. The finance ministers of every Latin American nation last week signed on to a resolution in principle to join the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA), the hemispheric expansion of NAFTA.
The walking corpse of Argentina’s economy was there, as well as the long-deceased body of Ecuador and several other South American nations whose (…)

Published on Sunday, November 30, 2003 by CommonDreams.org
US Delegation of Military Families and Veterans Leaves for Iraq
Mission is Not ’Photo-op" But Seeks Answers by Andrea Buffa and Medea Benjamin
In the wake of quick visits to Iraq by both George Bush and Hillary Clinton, another group of Americans is paying a visit to that war-torn nation. This is a 10- person delegation of veterans and military families with loved ones serving in Iraq. Organized by the San Francisco-based human (…)

by Stan Goff Published on Saturday, November 15, 2003 by Counterpunch http://www.veteransforpeace.org/Hold_on_to_your_111503.htm
Dear American serviceperson in Iraq,
I am a retired veteran of the army, and my own son is among you, a paratrooper like I was. The changes that are happening to every one of you-some more extreme than others-are changes I know very well. So I’m going to say some things to you straight up in the language to which you are accustomed.
In 1970, I was assigned to (…)

http://www.veteransforpeace.org/
Veterans for Peace, Inc. (VFP) is a non-profit 501(c)(3) educational
and humanitarian organization dedicated to the abolishment of war.
STATEMENT OF PURPOSE
We, having dutifully served our nation, do hereby affirm our greater
responsibility to serve the cause of world peace. To this end we will
work, with others
(a) Toward increasing public awareness of the costs of war (b) To
restrain our government from intervening, overtly and covertly, in the (…)

Toll on U.S. troops in Iraq grows as wounded rolls approach 10,000 By Roger Roy Knight Ridder - Orlando TimesLeader - Nov. 29, 2003 http://www.timesleader.com/mld/timesleader/news/nation/7368173.htm
ORLANDO, Fla. - Nearly 10,000 U.S. troops have been killed, wounded, injured or become ill enough to require evacuation from Iraq since the war began, the equivalent of almost one Army division, according to the Pentagon.
Unlike the more than 2,800 American fighting men and women logged by (…)

Rockers Unite to Oust Bush
Moby, Henley, Matthews ask fans to "get involved"
by Damien Cave Rolling Stone - November 26, 2003
http://www.rollingstone.com/news/newsarticle.asp?nid=19029
Bruce Springsteen told a crowd of 50,000 New Yorkers on October 4th to "shout a little louder if you want the president impeached." Two weeks later, John Mellencamp posted an open letter to America on his Web site, declaring, "We have been lied to and terrorized by our own government, and it is time to (…)

By Nicholas D. Kristof
The New York Times Op-Ed Columnist November 29, 2003 http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/29/opinion/29KRIS.html
A drum roll, please: It’s time to announce the results of the Name That War Contest.
In a column 10 days ago about Iraq, I expressed frustration at the absence of a good name for our war there. So I offered prizes (Iraqi 250-dinar notes with Saddam’s picture) and invited readers to send in entries.
Then I fled to Guatemala and El Salvador, and when I (…)

EUROPEAN APPEAL FOR ACTION 6 DECEMBRE 2003
In almost all European countries and despite the resolutions adopted by the European Parliament in October 2002, we can see that the State is disengaging itself from the field of culture: financial crisis, cuts in subsidies as well as in social benefits… This global disengagement in favour of a market oriented culture is daming the future of thousands of workers, threatening hundreds of cultural enterprises and breaking the creative liveliness (…)

By David Bacon - Submitted to portside
BAGHDAD, IRAQ (10/20/03) — The disaster that is the occupation of Iraq is much more than the suicide bombings and guerilla ambushes of U.S. troops which play nightly across U.S. television screens. The violence of grinding poverty, exacerbated by economic sanctions after the first Gulf War, has been deepened by the latest invasion. Every day the economic policies of the occupying authorities create more hunger among Iraq’s working people, transforming (…)