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Los Angeles Times
August 11, 2003
Rock the Vote picks up the beat
A decade after its heyday, the group renews its push to get young adults to polls. By Susannah Rosenblatt Times Staff Writer There was a time when voting was cool. A time when a presidential candidate stumped for support by playing his sax; when MTV, Madonna and R.E.M. were adding to the political discourse and candidates were addressing the concerns of young adults.
A time - a decade ago now - when Rock the Vote, a (…)

Firing blindly during a power cut, soldiers kill a father and three children in their car
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article4408.htm
By Justin Huggler in Baghdad
10 August 2003 (The Independent)
The Abd al-Kerim family didn’t have a chance. American soldiers opened fire on their car with no warning and at close quarters. They killed the father and three of the children, one of them only eight years old. Now only the mother, Anwar, and a 13-year-old daughter are alive to (…)

Financial Times August 11, 2003
World in drier straits
By Vanessa Houlder
Recent images of forestfires, withered crops and depleted rivers are a vividillustration of the threats posed by drought. But the parched conditions inflicted by the northern hemisphere’s current heatwaves will be eclipsed by increasingly devastating water shortages in the decades ahead, a conference will hear this week. The Stockholm Water Symposium, which opens today , aims to grapple with water scarcity, which (…)

Financial Times August 11, 2003
Freed French activist rallies crowd of 150,000 faithful to Larzac
By Jo Johnson Financial
More than 150,000 people gathered on the plateau of Larzac, 80km north of Montpellier, have sent a strong message to Paris in a spectacular weekend-long demonstration against the French government’s plans for public sector reform and liberalisation of the country’s statist economy. Speculation over whether the government will suffer from a rentrée chaude -a (…)

August 11, 2003
Russian Drug Official Criticizes U.S. for Afghan Heroin Surge
By MARK SCHOOFS Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
MOSCOW — Calling attention to a growing sore spot between Washington and Moscow, Russia’s newly appointed top drug cop said the U.S. could do more to reduce the flow of heroin from Afghanistan. Gen. Viktor Cherkessov, whose appointment this spring to head Russia’s huge new drug-enforcement agency signals Moscow’s new emphasis on the problem, said in an (…)

Contra Costa Times August 11, 2003 Anti-nuke rally at lab draws 1,200 Protest denounces Iraq war By Sarah Krupp CONTRA COSTA TIMES LIVERMORE - In what organizers touted as one of the largest demonstrations against the Lawrence Livermore Laboratory since the end of the Cold War, 1,200 people gathered to protest against the development of nuclear weapons.
The protesters said President Bush’s policies on Iraq and the country’s nuclear weapons program were responsible for the high turnout (…)

We Stand Our Ground - Keynote at the Veterans for Peace National Convention in San Francisco By William Rivers Pitt — t r u t h o u t | Perspective Sunday 10 August 2003 http://www.truthout.org/docs_03/081003A.shtml
I must begin by saying that standing here before you is, simply, one of the greatest honors of my life. I have never served in the armed forces in any capacity. My father, however, did. He volunteered for service in Vietnam in 1969. The changes that war wrought upon him have (…)

Dissenters Face Job Loss, Arrest, Threats But Activists not Stopped by Backlash
GW Bush’s America: Americans Pay Price for Speaking Out Dissenters Face Job Loss, Arrest, Threats But Activists not Stopped by Backlash by Kathleen Kenna, staff reporter, Toronto Star Published on Saturday, August 9, 2003 by the Toronto Star http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_Type1&c=Article&cid=1060380618360&call_page=TS_Columnists&call_pageid=97059910977

"An unprecedented internet campaign waged on the frontline and in the US is exposing the real risks for troops in Iraq. Paul Harris and Jonathan Franklin report on rising fears that the conflict is now a desert Vietnam" Paul Harris and Jonathan Franklin Sunday August 10, 2003 The Observer http://observer.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,6903,1015684,00. html Susan Schuman is angry. Her GI son is serving in the Iraqi town of Samarra, at the heart of the ’Sunni triangle’, where American (…)

Immunity for Iraqi Oil Dealings Raises Alarm ============================================
Some contend Bush’s order grants U.S. firms a broad exemption, a view the government rejects.
By Lisa Girion, Times Staff Writer L A Times August 7, 2003
An executive order signed by President Bush more than two months ago is raising concerns that U.S. oil companies may have been handed blanket immunity from lawsuits and criminal prosecution in connection with the sale of Iraqi oil.
The Bush (…)