contributions

Is This Really War? By Sheldon Richman June 16, 2006 In 1985, Wilson Goode became the first U.S. mayor to bomb his own city. In an effort to rid a West Philadelphia neighborhood of a ragtag, violent, back-to-nature organization called Move, which had engaged in a shootout with police, Goode ordered explosives dropped on the Move house from a helicopter. The whole block of row houses burned, 61 homes in all. Eleven people were killed, five of them children. Some 250 people lost their homes. (…)

Unexpected Guest Drops In On Iraq’s Prime Minister Dave Lindorff Thursday, June 15, 2006 I don’t know which is more pathetic and embarrassing: the president’s cowardly trip into the Green Zone in Baghdad, in which he didn’t notify Iraq’s prime minister of his "visit" until five minutes before the ostensible leader of Iraq was ushered in to meet the great Decider, or the fawning way the American media covered this farce.
The visit itself was hardly the bold stroke it was portrayed as. (…)

An Open Case Four Years After Daniel Pearl Was Brutally Murdered In Pakistan, Questions And Concerns Remain By Abi Wright Posted May 2006 Coming in the Spring/Summer 2006 issue On the evening of January 11, 2002, Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl walked into a hotel near the Pakistani capital, Islamabad, and was introduced to a man who called himself Bashir. Pearl thought he was meeting a potential source who could help him get access to a radical Islamic cleric for a story on (…)

The Moon-Bush Cash Conduit By Robert Parry June 13, 2006 Over the past quarter century, South Korean theocrat Sun Myung Moon has been one of the Bush family’s major benefactors - both politically and financially - while enjoying what appears to be protection against federal investigations into evidence that his cult-like organization has functioned as a criminal enterprise. Indeed, the newest disclosure about Moon funneling money to a Bush family entity bears many of the earmarks of (…)

The Final Say The Only People Who May Miss Al-Zarqawi Are The Pro-War Neocons, Who Claimed He Was Part Of Al-Qaida To Justify The Invasion Of Iraq By Eric Margolis June 11, 2006 "Zarqawi will be dead soon," two of his disgruntled Jordanian supporters told me in March. "He will be betrayed by his own men."
And that’s likely what happened last week. Tipped off that Iraq’s most wanted man was in a rural house, U.S. aircraft bombed it, killing some of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi’s top aides, a (…)

Imagination is more robust in proportion as reasoning power is weak. Giambattista Vico
In the latest polls, Bush rose four percent. Is there anyone knowledgeable enough out there who would explain the mercurial rise, fall, and then rise again of an irrefutably failed Administration? How is it that one morning Joe Six Pack gets up and decides, yes by God I’m now positive about the President’s performance? Did he hear a (…)

Seeking a Better Debate By William Rivers Pitt t r u t h o u t | Perspective
Tuesday 20 June 2006
The Republican majority in Congress labored mightily last week to derail and distract any discussion of an exit strategy from Iraq. In the House of Representatives, a debate aimed at whether or not to establish a timetable for withdrawal collapsed under a rhetorical onslaught from the Right. In order to adequately describe the experience of watching the so-called House "debate" on June (…)

Last night on Frontline they broadcast a biting documentary entitled "The Dark Side", which revealed the truth about how the CIA and the Pentagon were at odds about evidence for going to war in Iraq,etc. These guys emerged as the "Gang that couldn’t shoot staight", and reminded me of Lawrence Peters, who created the "principle" IN ANY HEIRARCHY, PEOPLE RISE TO THE LEVELY OF THEIR INCOMPETENCY AND REMAIN THERE.
Nowhere can I find better examples of this rule than in the Bush (…)

by Dahr Jamail and Ali Fadhil
*RAMADI, Jun 19 (IPS) - As the threat of a giant U.S. military operation in Ramadi lingers and sporadic clashes plague the city daily, residents struggle to cope, both inside and outside the sealed city.*
A week spent in Ramadi, the capital of Anbar province west of Baghdad, reveals that residents are suffering from lack of water, electricity, cooking gas and medical supplies for the hospitals. The streets are eerily empty, and it appears that many people (…)

By Gabriele Zamparini (*)
Introduction
There was a time when the arbitrary act of the powerful was the unquestioned rule and the abuse of the prince was called the ‘art of government’. The word ‘justice’ was used to describe the prince’s magnanimity or the reward for the suffering of this life, because... justice is not of this world.
Centuries of darkness and misery are now called the history of civilization.
During this history, women and men have constantly rebelled and struggled (…)