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Rahul Mahajan - When Vladimir Putin engineered the election of his hand-picked subordinate Ahmad Kadyrov as president of Chechnya through tactics such as pressuring candidates to withdraw, forcing the leading candidate, Malik Saidullayev, out with a court injunction, and appointing another candidate to his staff to remove him from the election, Western punditry was not slow to condemn the election as a farce and a sham. Ever since 9/11, however, the Bush administration has been treating us to a series of equally farcical “elections” with minimal or no comment from the same sources. The matter has now come to what should be a crisis point over plans to engineer the upcoming elections in Iraq.
Kim Bullimore - For settlements like Ariel to exist, Israel must repress, terrorise and displace the indigenous people of Palestine. It must steal their natural resources, it must use force and it must use collective punishment to terrorise the local Arab population into submission. While settlers in Ariel enjoy well-paved roads and lush parks, almost unlimited access to water, modern schools, cultural centers and health clinics, the Palestinian people in the villages surrounding Ariel must endure constant surveillance and harassment and restrictions on their movement. They must also endure contaminated water, ruined roads and having their land stolen and their homes and olive trees destroyed.
Manuel Valenzuela - Imagine my surprise, having returned from a research and exploratory sojourn through the mesmerizing beauty of the lands, coasts and peoples of Mexico where the spirit re-energized, mind meditated and appreciation for humanity returned, all of which enabled me to escape, at least for a small respite, from the madness of a troubled world, to see that Iraq had almost overnight been transformed into a nation on the verge of a Renaissance, becoming a new beacon of democracy and security, morphing into an unyielding success, an illuminated positive road devoid of reality. A heap of garbage had suddenly become a Kandinsky, a masterpiece in waiting whose canvas Bush had transformed into a work of art with each new brushstroke of his formula for nation building and democracy creating.
Omar Barghouti - Dear Americans. After four years of having the almost perfect, nearly credible alibi, “we did not really elect him,” come November, you shall have to finally look the entire world in the eye and defend why you’ve chosen as your leader a time-tested racist, ruthless, semi-intelligent, religious fanatic who has committed enough war crimes to warrant being locked up for life at the Hague. Just this past week, Iraqis had the equivalent death toll of 9/11. In fact, they have one every week or two, on average, thanks to your sickening and utterly irrational support for the neo-con gang at the helm of power in Washington. I, and I bet most people around the earth, cannot take it any more!
Angie Todd - The stage has been set, and the forces are being marshaled against the government of Sudan. Both the corporate media and several respected NGOs have claimed that the Khartoum government is carrying out ethnic cleansing by proxy against Sudanese rebel supporting villages, by arming and protecting the now notorious Janjawid militia. Earlier this month the UN Security Council threatened sanctions if the violence does not come to a swift end. Amid all this, Tony Blair and George W Bush are preparing yet another military operation under the guise of a humanitarian intervention. This article provides a rarely-found exploration of the real motives of those in London and Washington, whose actions so far have hardly been characterised as humanitarian.
Jean Stimmell - New studies show that soldiers who killed in combat suffer higher rates of PTSD. Certainly, I saw Vietnam vet clients who experienced multiple stressors from combat but were most traumatized by the killing they had done, even when against clearly identifiable enemy combatants. And now it is happening all over again. The war in Iraq, like Vietnam, is a counterinsurgency conflict becoming more controversial and unpopular over time. And in Iraq — even more than Vietnam — most combat soldiers have shot at people and many have killed. Quoting one soldier: from the New Yorker article “There’s just too much killing. They shoot, we return fire, and they’re all dead.”
Jim Lobe, Asia Times - The reason Washington is having such a difficult time persuading of its good faith and its good works in its “war on terror” was best illustrated on Tuesday. While President George W Bush told the United Nations General Assembly that the US belief in “human dignity” - a phrase he used no fewer than 10 times - was the main US motivation for pursuing the war, two articles that appeared in two major US newspapers the same morning offered an altogether different subtext.
Sarah Whalen - Allawi has spoken in America, and his news is good. Iraqi democracy is on track, and Iraqi police and military forces, homegrown, are routing insurgents. Any contradiction is the product of biased Western journalists who want to see Iraq’s bold new democracy fail, Allawi assured a special joint session of the US Senate and Congress in Washington, D.C. on Thursday. After Allawi called journalists reporting unenthusiastically about Iraq’s daily slaughter liars, almost the entire legislative and executive branches of the US government gave the CIA-trained, neocon-selected Iraqi interim prime minister a standing ovation, and Wolfowitz kissed him. Twice.
David R. Hoffman - While there may be several reason’s why Germany in the 1930’s, one of Europe’s leading cultural and economic nations, managed to succumb so readily to the machinations of a madman like Adolf Hitler, one reality is clear: Hitler’s Germany arose when the perfect combination of anger, bellicosity, fear and hatred coalesced to make the masses receptive to the “allure of fascism.” Flash forward to the year 2004, and the machinations of George W. Bush, and it is not difficult to perceive how this same allure is now engulfing America. Two fundamental tactics of fascism - scapegoating and the repetition of “great lies” - have been openly utilized by both Bush and the deceitful, venal, hypocritical war criminals that personify his corruptly appointed dictatorship.
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