Monthly Archives: June 2008 »
Alternatives to Free Trade: Fair Trade and Beyond
By Shamus Cooke | The global debate around free-trade and its consequences has evolved tremendously in recent years, from tiny circles of leftist critics into a broad international protest movement. Although the movement began
Read More »The Real State of Iraq
By Juan Cole | American television loves natural disasters. The Burmese cyclones that may have carried off as many as 200,000 people offered the cameras high drama. The floods in Wisconsin, Iowa and Missouri
Read More »Activists, Journalists Harassed Ahead Of EU Meeting
Radio Free Europe | Ahead of an EU-Turkmen meeting on human rights in Ashgabat, civic activists and independent journalists in the country have been reporting widespread harassment, intimidation, and even the detention of government
Read More »Government rejects calls for greater debate on data sharing
By Tom Young | The government has rejected a call from the Joint Human Rights Committee that any legislation that permits greater data sharing between Whitehall departments should be open to debate in parliament.
Read More »Are the telecoms paying to get amnesty for illegal acts?
the folks at maplight.org look at what lobbyists get for what contributions in Congress: On March 14 of this year the House passed an amendment that rejected retroactive immunity for phone carriers who helped
Read More »Richard Dowden: If the people want power, they must fight for it
While it was always a possibility that the Zimbabwean opposition leader, Morgan Tsvangirai, would pull out of Friday’s second round of the presidential election, when I met him in Harare three weeks ago it
Read More »Civilian sex assaults by Afghan soldiers ignored
By Rick Westhead | Canadian soldiers serving in Afghanistan have been ordered by commanding officers “to ignore” incidents of sexual assault among the civilian population, says a military chaplain who counsels troops returning home
Read More »Reporters Say Networks Block War Reports
By Brian Stelter | Getting a story on the evening news isn’t easy for any correspondent. And for reporters in Iraq and Afghanistan, it is especially hard, according to Lara Logan, the chief foreign
Read More »White House Dismissed Legal Advice On Detainees
By Michael Abramowitz | Senior lawyers inside and outside the Bush administration repeatedly warned the White House that it was risking judicial scrutiny of its detention policies in Guantanamo Bay if it did not pursue
Read More »Bush ‘war crimes conference’ to convene in Mass
By Stephen C. Webster | On September 13-14, 2008, Lawrence Velvel, the dean of the Massachusetts School of Law at Andover, plans to convene a ‘convention’ at the school’s facilities; the attendees of which
Read More »Congress wrestles over spying bill
By Gail Russell Chaddock | Washington – Congress is on the verge of ending a year-long struggle with the White House over a contentious intelligence surveillance bill. In one of the toughest votes of the
Read More »NATO: 6,000 troops urgently needed in Afghanistan
BERLIN (Reuters) | Up to 6,000 additional troops are urgently needed in Afghanistan and a failure to deploy them will only prolong the presence of Western forces in the country, a German NATO general said
Read More »Lib Dems criticise gov’t over latest data losses
By Tom Espiner | The Liberal Democrats have taken the government to task following this week’s round of high-profile official data losses, suggesting the breaches show the government could not safely administer an ID card database.
Read More »Blackwater is Still in Charge, Deadly, Above the Law and Out of Control
On June 3, Jeremy Scahill’s bestselling Blackwater: The Rise of the World’s Most Powerful Mercenary Army was released in fully revised and updated paperback form. The new edition includes reporting on the now-famous Nisour
Read More »Dems to OK Bush War Funds Without Conditions
By ANDREW TAYLOR | Democratic and GOP leaders in the House announced agreement Wednesday on a long-overdue war funding bill they said President Bush would be willing to sign. The agreement on the war
Read More »Letter to Ian Blair by George Galloway
I write in connection with the police operation surrounding the President George W Bush to Downing Street today. I am not a habitual complainer about the police, as a scan of the public record
Read More »Republicans’ Offshore Drilling Plan Would Expand Dysfunctional System
By Phil Mattera | The response to the politically opportunistic call by the Bush Administration and John McCain to expand offshore oil drilling is being framed primarily in environmental terms. The drilling, which would do
Read More »CIA Played Larger Role In Advising Pentagon
By Joby Warrick | A senior CIA lawyer advised Pentagon officials about the use of harsh interrogation techniques on detainees at Guantanamo Bay in a meeting in late 2002, defending waterboarding and other methods as
Read More »General Accuses White House of War Crimes
By Dan Froomkin | The two-star general who led an Army investigation into the horrific detainee abuse at Abu Ghraib has accused the Bush administration of war crimes and is calling for accountability. In his
Read More »Sweden passes ‘Big Brother bill’
Press TV | Swedish lawmakers vote in favor of a controversial bill allowing all emails and phone calls to be monitored over ‘security issues’. Lawmakers voted late on Wednesday on one of the most
Read More »Lorry drivers to stage M62 fuel protest
By Jon Land | Police monitoring a proposed fuel protest by truckers on one of the UK’s busiest motorways said today their primary aim is to keep traffic flowing on the route. Organisers of
Read More »UK is world’s biggest arms dealer
ABC | Britain was the world’s biggest arms seller last year, accounting for a third of global arms exports, the Government’s trade promotion organisation said. UK Trade and Investment (UKTI) said British arms exporters
Read More »Doctors’ Report Finds Evidence of U.S. Torture and ‘War Crimes’
AP | Medical examinations of former terrorism suspects held by the U.S. military at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq and Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, found evidence of torture and other abuse that resulted in serious
Read More »World Governments Misleading and Failing Iraqi Refugees
Amnesty International | The international community is evading its responsibility towards refugees from Iraq by promoting a false picture of the security situation in Iraq when the country is neither safe nor suitable for return,
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