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By David Swanson
"It would take half our salary to buy one of the sweat shirts we produce," Josefina Hernandez Ponce told students at the University of Virginia on Wednesday night. The classroom was packed to capacity with students in every seat and squeezed in on the floor.
A flyer passed around showed where the $39.99 paid for a UVA sweatshirt goes ($2.40 in royalties to the university, $0.20 in pay to the workers who made it).
But that familiar story wasn’t all that Hernandez Ponce (…)

by Jonathan Power
LONDON Proliferation Lost somewhere in the mists of history is the knowledge that it was the pro-American Shah of Iran who initiated Iran’s quest to build a nuclear bomb. And it was the anti-American revolution led by Ayatollah Khomeini that initially suspended work on the bomb.
Fanning the panic of proliferation has been a mainstay of the Bush administration, supported in the wings by the British government and more recently France’s president, Jacques Chirac. It is (…)

by Deepa Kumar
I’ve just about had it. I cannot watch one more episode of the Daily Show which makes racist jokes about Arabs and Muslims. I am sick and tired of people who see themselves as part of the left writing articles that put a liberal gloss over what is, in essence, a right-wing "clash of civilizations" argument. And I am fed up with an anti-war movement in the United States that will do nothing to defend Muslims against all the attacks they have faced both domestically and (…)

By Rick Klein
WASHINGTON — After months of trying unsuccessfully to develop a common message on the war in Iraq, Democratic Party leaders are beginning to coalesce around a broad plan to begin a quick withdrawal of US troops and install them elsewhere in the region, where they could respond to emergencies in Iraq and help fight terrorism in other countries.
The concept, dubbed ’’strategic redeployment," is outlined in a slim, nine-page report coauthored by a former Reagan administration (…)

By Eleanor Bader
A colorful mural of 90 female activists puts a splash of militant sass on the side of an otherwise drab wall in Brooklyn, N.Y. Produced by an all-female team of artists it leaves its chief creator dreaming of more public tributes to women.
BROOKLYN, N.Y. (WOMENSENEWS)—It is a cold, blustery Saturday and in the hours before a blizzard is set to begin, people in the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood of Brooklyn are moving quickly. Most carry heavy bags and seem to be rushed. (…)

Meeting at the Church of the Good Shepherd, NYC - March 15, 2006 1. The recent ‘reporting’ of Iran to the UN Security Council follows three years of political and economic pressure by the US on the EU-3, other Board members of the IAEA, and China and Russia in particular.
2. The resolution has no legal basis: it preempted the March 6th final report of the IAEA investigation and thus tried to influence and frame the final decision improperly.
3. It has no technical basis: it has (…)

http://son-of-a-bush.blogspot.com With an allied government preparing to assume control , why would Iran blow up the central governing authority ? When the US installs a puppet regime , they move heaven and Earth to butress the legitimacy of that government , not seek to destroy it. All countries seeking the role as hegemon over a region ( or the world) reward allies and subvert foes ...

If you read the commentary of Bush’s Middle East foreign policy advisors , it is not hard to understand how "Amurka" reached this parlous state ..... Michael Ledeen supports "Total War" ... "Creative Destruction".... He wants earnestly to spread the "creativity" to Iran... "Faster.. please ! " . ..... Bush advisor Daniel Pipes thinks civil war in Iraq would be a "humanitarian disaster" but a "strategic victory" All those AYE- RABS killing each other off ... Yummy-Yum.... In (…)

The End of Civilization
Introduction
I had a mild epiphany the other day: it’s not President Bush who’s living in a fantasy world, it’s most of his critics who are. I’m no apologist for Bush - I neither like nor dislike him. He’s no more significant to me than a fly buzzing around outside my window. So permit me to explain my reasoning.
People look at Bush’s invasion of Iraq and see a miserable failure. But a failure to do what? Democratize Iraq? Eliminate Iraq’s WMD arsenal? Reduce (…)

By JULIA KENDLBACHER Counterpunch
They came from the deepest forest, gathered at the two harbors of Porto Velho in Rondônia and Belém in Pará and finally reached the center of Amazonia, Manaus. They came together to celebrate the 20th anniversary at the annual conference of the Conselho Nacional dos Seringueiros (CNS), organization of the famous Chico Mendes that until today is fighting for the rights of the rubber tappers and traditional populations of the rainforest. More than 350 (…)