contributions

By Jane Stillwater "Want to go to New York and volunteer at the Republican National Convention with me in August?" I asked my 17-year-old daughter. "Can we buy rice pudding on Second Avenue?" Of course. Young Ashley is very fond of Lower East Side kosher food. We bought our tickets — and got a great deal on Expedia. Flight and rooms for only $235 each! Now all we have to do is to convince the RNC to put us on their staff. I have already sent in an application. (…)

By Jane Stillwater Suppose some hot-spit economist pointed out to you that America couldn’t afford the war on Iraq? "These figures in this column here indicate that..." That what? That if America continues to indiscriminately run up her credit card debt in Iraq, we are soon going to get a rather ugly visit from the repo man. At the rate that the math-challenged party-boys in the White House continue to pour America’s paychecks into Iraq, we will soon be bankrupt, have no (…)

by Daniel Patrick Welch
It’s funny. I’d seen all this stuff before-I mean it isn’t as if there was anything really new here for anyone who’s been paying attention for the past few years. And yet, I cried. Maybe it’s the deprogramming of having at least some of what we’ve seen replayed with any decent focus for One Brief Shining Moment, beyond the self-imposed straitjacket of a docile and dangerously inept US press. Maybe it’s just the oxygen given to all those impulses so many of us have (…)

President Bush’s budget for next year scares the hell out of me. A letter from Ellen Tauscher, my congresswoman, delivered the wake-up call.
By Joseph Smigelski
The other day I received a letter from Representative Ellen Tauscher, my congresswoman. She told me about President Bush’s upcoming budget, and what she said scared the hell out of me.
What frightened me even more was considering that a lot of Bush supporters are probably unaware of what the President is doing economically to (…)

BRUSSELS — A Belgian historian has found documents showing that the United States reached a secret agreement with Belgium during World War II to obtain the right to purchase uranium ore that was later used in the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Jacques Vanderlinden, a professor of history at the Free University of Brussels, uncovered the documents at the British Public Record Office in London.
It is already known that uranium from Congo, which was under Belgium’s colonial rule, was (…)

by Shashank Bengali
WASHINGTON - For President Bush, the first family and Bush’s top aides, the most generous foreign leader last year - by far - was Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah.
The State Department’s annual tally of gifts to administration officials shows that Abdullah gave them $127,600 in jewelry and other presents last year, including a diamond-and-sapphire jewelry set for first lady Laura Bush that was valued at $95,500.
The Saudi royal family’s gifts dwarfed those of other world (…)

The once-ubiquitous Defense chief is seldom seen in public. Is he busy or deemed a liability?
By John Hendren and Mary Curtius
WASHINGTON - Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, once so popular as an administration spokesman for the Iraq war that President Bush dubbed him a "matinee idol," has reduced his public profile, trimming appearances as the war has turned from a positive for the Bush campaign into a potential liability.
Critics, particularly on the left, have delighted in the (…)

By Richard Tomkins
WASHINGTON - Some former Vietnam comrades of Sen. John Kerry accused the Democratic Party’s nominee for president Thursday of lying about his war record and exploits. They also claim he "fled the scene" of the incident for which he was awarded a Bronze Star and the Purple Heart, giving him a ticket home after four months of a 12-month tour of duty.
"I know for a fact that John Kerry is a liar, and now I have documentation that proves it," Larry Thurlow, like Kerry a (…)

by Vikram Dodd and Tania Branigan
Repeated abuses allegedly suffered by three British prisoners at the hands of US interrogators and guards in the Guantánamo Bay detention camp in Cuba could amount to war crimes, the Red Cross said yesterday.
The organisation, which maintains a rigidly neutral stance in public, took the unusual step of voicing its concerns in uncompromising language after the former detainees, known as the Tipton Three, revealed that they had been beaten, shackled, (…)

by Joshua Frank
(Joshua Frank recently had the opportunity to have a quick chat with Ralph Nader about his Independent campaign for president. Below is a portion of the transcript.)
Joshua Frank: Mr. Nader thanks for agreeing to do this interview. Given how worried the Democrats appear to be about your presidential run taking votes away from John Kerry, why do you think the Kerry campaign refuses to toss even a small bone to the progressive anti-war, anti-PATRIOT Act crowd — even though (…)