contributions

http://www.atimes.com Clearing the path for US war on Iran By Gareth Porter
WASHINGTON - Israel has argued that the war against Hezbollah’s rocket arsenal was a defensive response to the Shi’ite organization’s threat to Israeli security, but the evidence points to a much more ambitious objective - the weakening of Iran’s deterrent to an attack on its nuclear sites.
In planning for the destruction of most of Hezbollah’s arsenal and prevention of any resupply from Iran, Israel (…)

August 8, 2006
The City is Dying Requiem for Baghdad By PATRICK COCKBURN
Amman.
These days, when I drive around Baghdad, I sit in the back seat of the car with gauze curtains drawn down so nobody on the street can see me. I have a second car following 100 yards behind to make sure we are not trailed. We try to avoid police and army checkpoints in case they are death squads. My driver, a Sunni Muslim, is rightly frightened of the overwhelmingly Shia police and police commandos. He has (…)

Crocodile tears of leaders as city burns
By Robert Fisk
08/08/06 "The Independent" — — Shortly after 4am, the fly-like buzz of an Israeli drone came out of the sky over my home. Coded MK by the manufacturers, Lebanese mothers have sought to lessen their children’s fears of this ominous creature by transliterating it as "Um Kamel", the Mother of Kamel. It is looking for targets and at night, like all the massacres being perpetrated by the Israeli air force across southern Lebanon, you (…)

War crimes and Lebanon http://www.guardian.co.uk/israel/Story/0,,1835915,00.html
The US-backed Israeli assault on Lebanon has left the country numb, smouldering and angry. The massacre in Qana and the loss of life is not simply "disproportionate". It is, according to existing international laws, a war crime.
The deliberate and systematic destruction of Lebanon’s social infrastructure by the Israeli air force was also a war crime, designed to reduce that country to the status of an (…)

Lebanon, 2006, and Czechoslovakia, 1938 the historical parallels The New Munich http://www.stopusa.be/scripts/texte.php?section=BM&langue=3&id=24795
Justin Raimondo 7th August 2006 Antiwar.com
As the rape of Lebanon proceeds on schedule, the "civilized world" rushes to give its imprimatur to the slaughter.
The U.S. and France are sponsoring a United Nations resolution that neither calls for a cease-fire nor demands the withdrawal of invading Israeli troops. So much for the UN (…)

By Nick Turse and Deborah Nelson, Special to The Times
The men of B Company were in a dangerous state of mind. They had lost five men in a firefight the day before. The morning of Feb. 8, 1968, brought unwelcome orders to resume their sweep of the countryside, a green patchwork of rice paddies along Vietnam’s central coast.
They met no resistance as they entered a nondescript settlement in Quang Nam province. So Jamie Henry, a 20-year-old medic, set his rifle down in a hut, unfastened (…)

By Bob Herbert
So there was Hillary Rodham Clinton grandstanding for the television cameras last week, giving Donald Rumsfeld a carefully scripted chewing out for his role in the Bush administration’s lunatic war in Iraq.
Casual viewers could have been forgiven for not realizing that Senator Clinton has long been a supporter of this war, and that even now, with the number of pointless American deaths moving toward 2,600, her primary goal apparently is not to find an end game, but to (…)

Some 25 activists protest outside Ramat David air force base calling to ’stop civilian killings.’ After battling with police, 12 were taken into custody. Ali Waked
Some 25 left-wing activists from central Israel protested Tuesday outside the entrance to the Ramat David air force base. They held banners calling to "end war crimes." The protestors called for an immediate ceasefire and release of all prisoners and captives. The protest was held without authorization. Police arriving at (…)

Everyone needs help at one time or another, perhaps the powerful most of all. George W. Bush has come to the inevitable conclusion that he needs advice; not just from a political staffer or his whacko VP, but from what Lincoln called "The Common Man"...that would be us.
There are a host of areas where I think George could really use some meaningful advice. One is about nation building. GW said in his 2000 campaign that he didn’t approve of nation building and would avoid it. Is it too late (…)

How to Hack a Diebold Voting Machine
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/marty-kaplan/how-to-hack-a-diebold-vot_b_26301.html