contributions

First account of US methods from UK detainee
Vikram Dodd Saturday October 4, 2003 The Guardian
A British businessman arrested as a suspected terrorist has told the Guardian that US agents threatened him with beatings and rape in an attempt to break him.
Wahab al-Rawi, 38, was denied a lawyer, held incommunicado for four weeks in Gambia, and repeatedly questioned by CIA agents before being released without charge. His account is the first from any Briton about their treatment by the US (…)

The Independent (UK)
October 2, 2003
This Obscene Wall Will End All Hope of Peace
By Adrian Hamilton
Call it "a wall", "a fence", "a boundary" or even just "a barrier" if you want, but however you describe it, the "security fence" the Israelis are erecting around Palestinian territory marks the end of hopes of a negotiated Middle East settlement.
It is difficult for anyone outside the region to understand just how malevolent and humiliating the wall is to the Palestinians, and (…)

1,200 weapons inspectors spent 90 days in Iraq. The exercise cost $300m. And the number of weapons found? 0 By Rupert Cornwell in Washington and Paul Waugh 03 October 2003
Five months after the end of the war in Iraq, a CIA adviser has admitted that his 1,200-strong team of inspectors has discovered none of Saddam Hussein’s alleged weapons of mass destruction.
"We have not yet found stocks of weapons," David Kay, the head of the CIA-led Iraq Survey Group, said in a first report to (…)

Italian Unions Reject Changes in Pensions; General Strike Seen
Sept. 29 (Bloomberg) — Italy’s three largest trade unions, which represent more than 11 million people, rejected Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi’s plan to change pension rules and threatened a general strike.
The government presented the plan to the unions today and offered to negotiate details with the labor leaders, but only until Friday when the cabinet muets to adopt the measures. The changes include requiring workers to (…)

Iraqi resistance to foreign occupation enjoys great popular support
Sami Ramadani Saturday September 27, 2003 The Guardian
It was my first and brutally abrupt realisation that Baghdad, the city of my childhood, is now occupied territory. It was also my first encounter with a potent symbol of Iraqi hostility to the occupation forces. Sitting in the front seat of the taxi that brought us from Amman, I suddenly realised that a heavy machine gun was pointing at us from only a few metres (…)

To Soldiers Who Are Involved in the Occupation of Iraq
by Guy Grossman and James Skelly
We write this letter because we have both been military officers during conflicts that descended into a moral abyss and from which we struggled to emerge with our humanity intact. We know the moral dilemmas that some of you have begun to confront. Those of you now in Iraq may have begun to wonder about the purpose of the war, the occupation that has followed, and why so many of the Iraqi people want (…)

Israeli Air Force Pilots in Reserves:
We Refuse to Attack in the Territories.
=======================================
from Arthur Waskow
Dear Folks,
Just in time for Rosh Hashanah (and its sermons and discussions on ethical issues) appears a public letter from some Israeli pilots in the reserves and Air Crew who sent the following letter today to Air Force Commander, Dan Halutz.
Before the text of the letter and some Israeli commentary on it, let us remind you that on the Shalom (…)

By Syed Saleem Shahzad
KARACHI - Faced with escalating unrest and an increasingly stronger and more organized guerrilla resistance in Afghanistan, the United States has stepped up efforts to address the country’s troubles, including its moves to draw elements of the ousted Taliban back into the political process.
Asia Times Online broke the news on September 12 (Tribes, traditions and two tragedies ) that a new Taliban grouping under the name of Jaishul Muslim had been formed to at least (…)

by Marc Cooper
It’s enough to review once more that last, final black-and-white photograph of Salvador Allende to glimpse the apparent contradictions of his life and legacy on this, the thirtieth anniversary of his death, and that of his Popular Unity government.
Chilean Army tanks and troops were circling the presidential palace, twin Air Force jets ready to bomb it were already in the air and General Pinochet was about to seize power. Accompanied by his young bodyguard, there on the (…)

This week Colin Powell made a solemn visit to a mass grave of Kurdish victims of gassing by Saddam’s regime in 1988. The Secretary of State’s pilgrimage followed recent visits to the same site by Paul Wolfowitz and Donald Rumsfeld in now ritualized selective mourning directed toward turning the growing Iraq quagmire into a paean to human rights - detracting attention from daily casualties and staggering costs of an occupation which has failed to find weapons of mass destruction and has (…)