contributions

The UN must not let itself be used as a dustbin for failed American adventures
George Monbiot
Tuesday August 26, 2003
The Guardian
The US government’s problem is that it has built its foreign policy on two great myths. The first is that it is irresistible; the second is that as time advances, life improves. In Iraq it is trapped between the two. To believe that it can be thwarted, and that its occupation will become harder rather than easier to sustain as time goes by, requires (…)

Former UN chief: bomb was payback for collusion with US Exclusive: By Neil Mackay
Sunday Herald - 24 August 2003
http://www.sundayherald.com/print36222
THE reason the United Nations headquarters in Baghdad were bombed is because the UN has been taken over by the US and turned into a "dark joke" and a "malignant force", according to one of the UN’s most internationally respected former leaders. Denis Halliday, the former UN Assistant Secretary-General and UN (…)

Former CIA agent tells: How US infiltrates "civil society" to overthrow governments ______________________________________________ BY PHILIP AGEE
08/03/03: Condemnation of Cuba was immediate, strong and practically global following the imprisonment of 75 political dissidents and the execution of three ferry hijackers. Prominent among the critics were past friends of Cuba of recognised international stature.
As I read the hundreds of denunciations that came through my (…)

Saving face, losing a war VIEW FROM THE LEFT Harley Sorensen,
Special to SF Gate Monday, August 25, 2003
(c)2003 SF Gate
URL: http://www.sfgate.com/columnists/sorensen/
"Bring ’em on," the man said. He is not a brave man, but he plays one on television. When it came his turn to fight in a war, he hid behind Daddy. Then he had another drink and hid from the National Guard. Then he had another drink. When our nation was attacked on Sept. 11, he hid in an (…)

By David Bacon
Submitted to portside
August 24, 2003
Iraq’s legal code may be in disarray. The streets of Baghdad may be filled with thieves and hijackers who seem to have little fear of being arrested. But US occupation authorities seem to have no trouble identifying one crime, at least. For the four million people out of work in Iraq, protest is against the law. On July 29, US occupation forces in Iraq arrested a leader of Iraq’s new emerging labor movement, Kacem Madi, along with 20 (…)

Reclaiming the Legacy on the 40th anniversary of the historic March on Washington
By Frances M. Beal
Submitted to portside
August 24, 2003
It was truly a sight to behold. On August 28, 1963 a quarter million people descended on the nation’s capital to demand that the politicians listen to their demand for jobs and freedom. Never before had the country seen that many people amassed at one point for any purpose let alone the fight against Jim Crow and the demand for racial justice. (…)

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A34978-2003Aug23.html
Microsoft Windows: Insecure by Design
By Rob Pegoraro
The Washington Post
Sunday, August 24, 2003; Page F07
Between the Blaster worm and the Sobig virus, it’s been a long two weeks for Windows users. But nobody with a Mac or a Linux PC has had to lose a moment of sleep over these outbreaks — just like in earlier "malware" epidemics.
This is not a coincidence.
The usual theory has been that Windows gets all the (…)

UN Attack Underlines America’s Crumbling Authority And Shows It Can Not Guarantee The Safety Of Any One
Robert Fisk
08/20/03: What UN member would ever contemplate sending peace-keeping troops to Iraq now? The men who are attacking America’s occupation army are ruthless, but they are not stupid. They know that President George Bush is getting desperate, that he will do anything - that he may even go to the dreaded Security Council for help - to reduce US military losses in Iraq. But (…)

August 19, 2003 2000 -
Mazen Dana arguing with a soldier during a demonstration at the entrance of Shuhada street in Hebron Did the Pentagon order the assassination of a Journalist in order to cover up secret mass burials of dead U.S Soldiers in the desert around Baghdad ? What is really behind the killing of my colleague, the Palestinian Reuters Cameraman Mazen Dana, in Bagdad? Is the Pentagon really scared of the media telling the U.S public what is really going on in Iraq? Do the (…)

Saddam no longer a joke for Syrian satirist
David Hirst
Thursday August 21, 2003
The Guardian
The Syrian Ba’athist regime is struggling to prevent a rising tide of agitation for across-the-board reform and democratisation from turning into a flood.
For one of the last fraying Arab versions of the theoretically socialist, one-party state, repression is proving less and less effective. Censorship has always been at the heart of this struggle, exemplified by the story of the (…)