contributions

Baltimore, MD - On Saturday afternoon, June 10, 2006, Ralph Nader, a 3rd Party candidate for the presidency in 2004, spoke at a political rally, held in a conference room at the U. of Baltimore’s Langsdale Library. (1) The primary purpose of the affair was to boost the candidacy of Kevin Zeese, who is running as an Independent candidate for the U.S. Senate in Maryland. In 2004, Zeese served as Nader’s press secretary. (2)
Nader’s message emphasized that Americans need a good dose of (…)

1040 Checkmate?
DOJ Dismisses Felony Tax Prosecution With Prejudice — After PRA Defense Raised
Evidence OMB Complicit In Income Tax Fraud
DOJ & IRS Petitioned To Explain
On May 12, 2006 in Peoria, Illinois, the attorney for the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) begged the court to dismiss all charges against IRS victim Robert Lawrence in federal District Court.
The motion for dismissal came on the heels of a surprise tactic by Lawrence’s defense attorney Oscar Stilley.
The (…)

We on the Left are constantly accused of negativism and of seeing the glass as half empty. But what else can one do at this point in human development?
The DOW is down, with expectations for further drops due to various institutions switching to Euros as a hedge, rising fears of inflation coupled with false unemployment numbers and outsourcing,a housing sales slump and higher gas prices.
Hopes are down for the future of the Palestine state due to actions being taken by Israel to expand (…)

Comments on Greg Palast’s New Book Armed Madhouse - by Stephen Lendman
I’ve known about and followed Greg Palast’s important work for some time. I read his eye-opening book The Best Democracy Money Can Buy a few years ago and have mentioned it several times in some of my other writing. Greg is one of the most important and exhaustively thorough investigative journalists anywhere, which is especially important at a time when that kind of effort is needed more than ever. I knew he had a (…)

· Annan’s British deputy criticises administration · US envoy calls comments ’a very, very grave mistake’
by Oliver Burkeman
The deputy secretary-general of the United Nations was last night accused of making "a very, very grave mistake" after calling the Bush administration hypocrites who were feeding a right-wing anti-UN frenzy in middle America.
Washington’s ambassador to the UN responded with undisguised fury to a speech by Mark Malloch Brown, the deputy secretary-general, in which (…)

by Humberto Márquez
CARACAS, Jun 8 (IPS) - "Where’s the end of the line? Another queue; whatever it takes to get a house," said Ángela Rodríguez as she reached Panteón Plaza in the Venezuelan capital, where thousands of housing rights activists who support President Hugo Chávez gathered after a recent march through the central part of the capital.
Seven or eight out of every 10 of the participants in Sunday’s march were women. Amidst the heat and the chaos in the plaza — there were no (…)

House panel backs budget reductions
by Rick Klein WASHINGTON - House Republicans yesterday revived their efforts to slash funding for public broadcasting, as a key committee approved a $115 million reduction in the budget for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting that could force the elimination of some popular PBS and NPR programs.
On a party-line vote, the House Appropriations subcommittee that oversees health and education funding approved the cut to the budget for the Corporation (…)

By Terri Judd
The women of Basra have disappeared. Three years after the US-led invasion of Iraq, women’s secular freedoms - once the envy of women across the Middle East - have been snatched away because militant Islam is rising across the country.
Across Iraq, a bloody and relentless oppression of women has taken hold. Many women had their heads shaved for refusing to wear a scarf or have been stoned in the street for wearing make-up. Others have been kidnapped and murdered for crimes (…)

by Hans Blix
STOCKHOLM During the Cold War, it proved possible to reach many significant agreements on disarmament. Why does it seem so impossible now, when the great powers no longer feel threatened by one another? Almost all the talk these days is about the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction to states like Iran and North Korea, or to terrorists. Foreign ministers meet again and again, concerned that Iran has enriched a few milligrams of uranium to a 4 percent level. Some (…)

The world should respond to Israel’s racist, human-rights abusing Apartheid policies with SANCTIONS and BOYCOTTS. However Israeli universities should be exempt from such blanket boycotts because the academic ethos is about truth, reason and dialogue - indeed such dialogue might well help to bring an end to gross, proto-Nazi ultrazionist violations of the Geneva, Human Rights and Rights of the Child Conventions.
The recent academic boycott resolutions of the Canadian CUPE and the British (…)