contributions

Police may charge Katsav with rape in light of woman’s claims
By Jonathan Lis and Roni Singer-Heruti, Haaretz Correspondents
Officials investigating an alleged extortion attempt aimed at President Moshe Katsav are expected to question him following claims by a female former employee that she was coerced into engaging in sexual relations with the president.
Police said Thursday that Katsav will be questioned in the coming days. Investigators have yet to determine which specific charges (…)

UK Muslim Leaders Begin to Doubt the Plot August 18, 2006 by Sanjay Suri
LONDON - Many Muslims in Britain are beginning to doubt the alleged plot to blow up aircraft flying to the United States from Britain.
The arrest of 24 people last week was followed by the cancellation and diversion of hundreds of flights at British airports. The plot story became leading global news, but most of the information on arrested suspects has come by way of allegations and police leaks. These have not (…)

Kurds flee homes as Iran shells Iraq’s northern frontier
Michael Howard in Qandil Mountain Friday August 18, 2006
Turkey and Iran have dispatched tanks, artillery and thousands of troops to their frontiers with Iraq during the past few weeks in what appears to be a coordinated effort to disrupt the activities of Kurdish rebel bases.
Scores of Kurds have fled their homes in the northern frontier region after four days of shelling by the Iranian army. Local officials said Turkey had also (…)

"Look What You’ve Done!" AIPAC Congratulates Itself on the Slaughter in Lebanon By JOHN WALSH
"My fellow American," Howard Friedman, President of AIPAC, begins his letter of July 30 to friends and supporters of AIPAC, "Look what you’ve done"! After warning that "Israel is fighting a pivotal war for its life," by which he means Israel’s wanton slaughter and all-out destruction in Lebanon, Freiedman condemns "the expected chorus of international condemnation of Israel’s actions" and (…)

Wall Street Journal Rhapsodizes Over Sham UN Resolution to End Lebanon War - by Stephen Lendman
On its editorial page at least the Wall Street Journal is consistent. It never fails to disappoint or miss an opportunity to misinform its readers. The August 16 article by the right wing Hoover Institution George Shultz Senior Fellow and former US State Department legal advisor in the 1980s Abraham Sofaer is just the latest example. The article is a typical Journal litany of propaganda, (…)

Is the Lebanon invasion a step toward a regional war?
8/17/2006 10:30:00 AM GMT
By: Kevin Zeese
The dividing line between peace candidates and pro-war candidates is no longer opposition to the Iraq War - a view now held by large majorities of Americans. It is whether they oppose the pre-meditated destruction of Lebanon by Israel - with U.S. weapons, and oppose a first strike military attack on Iran.
Israel’s massive attack on Lebanon, resulting in the death of more than 1,100 (…)

Fear and Loathing in the Occident
By Jason Miller
Islamophobia is a mental and spiritual affliction. And our Western ruling elites bear the responsibility for inflicting it upon the psyches of the masses.
Now that the Stalinist/Maoist regimes have collapsed or evolved toward capitalism and no fascist states with imperial ambitions exist (besides the United States and its few allies), the American Empire needed to find a new "enemy" to replace Stalinists and Nazis. Much of the soft (…)

By Gideon Levy
The Gaza Strip has been completely closed to Israeli journalists for the last two months or so, since soldier Gilad Shalit was abducted. Not that hordes of these journalists have been gathering en masse at the Erez border crossing. Israel has been engrossed in another war, and even during normal times, it averts its gaze from what goes on in Gaza. However, the Israel Defense Forces has been operating quite energetically there recently, with no Israeli eyes keeping track of (…)

By Nicola Nasser* With the Palestinian - Israeli peace process dormant, deadlocked and declared “dead” and at least two thirds of the Palestinians living in exile hosted and influenced by regional powers, the Palestinian leadership is facing an overdue review of its self-defeating unilateral approach to change course towards a multilateral, or better a collective, Arab approach to resolving the conflict with Israel. Adapting to an Israeli intransigent insistence on bilateral tracks of (…)

DETROIT Aug 17, 2006 (AP)- A federal judge ruled Thursday that the government’s warrantless wiretapping program is unconstitutional and ordered an immediate halt to it.
U.S. District Judge Anna Diggs Taylor in Detroit became the first judge to strike down the National Security Agency’s program, which she says violates the rights to free speech and privacy as well as the separation of powers enshrined in the Constitution.
"Plaintiffs have prevailed, and the public interest is clear, in (…)