Common Dreams

It’s springtime in American politics. It’s only early March, but there’s a giddy, hopeful feeling to this election season, a sense that new leadership is blossoming. We could have a Democrat in the White House next year. But winter isn’t over yet and we need to balance our hope with a little fear. In 2000 Bush and Cheney stole the election in Florida. In 2004 they played dirty tricks in Ohio. In 2008 could they go one step further — and suspend the election altogether?

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Al-Ahram

With scores of Gazans killed by Israel, the position of President Abbas and the PA comes into focus, writes Khaled Amayreh in Ramallah

With Gazans being killed and maimed in the thousands, and with Israel's Deputy Defence Minister Matan Vilnai threatening them a "bigger holocaust", Palestinians -- intellectuals and ordinary people -- are wondering if the present calamity won't unite them, whatever will?

The question is not rhetorical. Israel is taking advantage of the enduring national rift between Hamas and Fatah to wreak as much death and havoc on the Palestinians as the international community -- i.e. the West -- can tolerate, which to say get away with tolerating.

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US rates of incarceration beat those of any European country to include Russia and former satellites of Stalin's Soviet Union. By the time you read this, more than 2.3 million adults will have been locked up in 'big houses' throughout the US. That number far exceeds some 1.8 million adult prisoners representing the total prison population of 36 European countries where the aggregate population is 2.7 timers that of the US.

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Smoking Mirrors

From the screaming loons at the Palm Beach election center to the bloodbath in Gaza, from the shores of Montezuma to David Motari’s puppy tossing, it’s been a hard Se7en years. I can honestly say that I saw it coming. I saw Mr. Executioner demagoging out of Texas and I looked at the source of the money behind him and I said to myself, “Bush… head for the mountains.” And metaphorically speaking, that is what happened.

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Water torture

Anti-Empire Report

With all the media coverage of "waterboarding" and all the congressional questioning of government officials about their views on the subject, I imagine that by now many people think that waterboarding must be the worst kind of torture that the United States has engaged in, and that if waterboarding is in fact not torture then the idiot king is correct when he says: "We don't torture." This is the way myths are born, so let's try and squash this particular one while it's still young.

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The Palestinian Information Center

From Khalid Amayreh in Occupied E. Jerusalem

"The shooting, which was highly expected, is believed to be a revenge attack for the killing by the Israeli army this week of more than 120 Palestinians, the vast bulk of them innocent civilians, including more than 13 children and toddlers."

In an apparent retaliation for the recent Israeli massacres in the Gaza Strip, (or the assassination in Damascus by Israeli agents last month of Imad Mughniya, a leading Hizbullah figure) unidentified guerillas on Thursday attacked the headquarters of the religious messianic Zionist movement in West Jerusalem, killing and injuring a number of settlers and soldiers. According to Israeli media reports, at least six settler-soldiers were killed and several others wounded. At least one Palestinian guerilla was killed.

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Underlying causes in richest countries in the world

One of the great joys of life is the absence of television early in life. Between then and now I have watched television; but for some years now, I have had no television reception in my home as I find television boring, crass, banal, uninspiring and unenlightening.

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