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  • An Analysis of the United Nations Security Council Resolution 1441

    as Adopted on November 8, 2002 The Security Council, Recalling all its previous relevantresolutions, in particular its resolutions 661 (1990) of 6 August 1990, 678(1990) of 29 November 1990, 686 (1991) of 2 March 1991, 687 (1991) of 3 April1991, 688 (1991) of 5 April 1991, 707 (1991) of 15 August 1991, 715 (1991) of 11October 1991, 986 (1995) of 14 April 1995, and 1284 (1999) of 17 December 1999,and all the relevant statements of its President, PhyllisBennis, fellow at the Institute for PolicyStudies and author of the newbook Before and After: U.S. Foreign Policy and the September 11thCrisis:”According to…

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  • Detailed Analysis of October 7, 2002 Speech by Bush on Iraq

    Thank you for that very gracious and warm Cincinnati welcome. I’m honored to be here tonight. I appreciate you all coming. Tonight I want to take a few minutes to discuss a grave threat to peace and America’s determination to lead the world in confronting that threat. The threat comes from Iraq. It arises directly from the Iraqi regime’s own actions, its history of aggression and its drive toward an arsenal of terror. Chris Toensing, editor of Middle East Report: “This might indicate that Iraq is actively threatening the peace in the region. There is no evidence whatsoever that Iraq…

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  • A Detailed Analysis of the Draft UN Security Council Resolution Proposed by the U.S. Government

    (Latest publicly available version, October 23, 2002) PP1 Recalling all its previous relevant resolutions, in particular its resolutions 661 (1990) of 6 August 1990, 686 (1991) of 2 March 1991, 678 (1990) of 29 November 1990, 687 (1991) of 3 April 1991, 688 (1991) of 5 April 1991, 986 (1995) of 14 April 1995, and 1284 (1999) of 17 December 1999, and all the relevant statements of its President, PP2 Recognizing the threat Iraq’s noncompliance with Security Council resolutions and proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and long-range missiles poses to international peace and security, Rahul Mahajan [www.rahulmahajan.com], author of…

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  • UN Security Council Resolutions Being Violated by U.S. Allies

    The following are some of the UN Security Council resolutions being violated by U.S. allies: Resolution 252 (1968) Israel: Urgently calls upon Israel to rescind measures that change the legal status of Jerusalem, including the expropriation of land and properties thereon. http://domino.un.org/UNISPAL.NSF/bdd57d15a29f428d85256c3800701fc4/46f2803d78a0488e852560c3006023a8!OpenDocument 262 (1968) Israel: Calls upon Israel to pay compensation to Lebanon for destruction of airliners at Beirut International Airport. http://domino.un.org/UNISPAL.NSF/bdd57d15a29f428d85256c3800701fc4/74cff7bff73f9ea1852560c30061d11b!OpenDocument 353 (1974) Turkey: Calls on nations to respect the sovereignty, independence, and territorial integrity of Cyprus and for the withdrawal without delay of foreign troops from Cyprus. www.pio.gov.cy/docs/un/security_council/res_353.htm 379 (1975) Morocco: Calls for the withdrawal of foreign forces…

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  • Is God “Neutral”?

    WASHINGTON — Ever since Sept. 11, some American religious leaders have been outspoken in calling for a peaceful response and respect for civil liberties. Their perspectives contrast sharply with President Bush’s bellicose invocations of religious rhetoric, as in his Sept. 20 address to Congress when he declared that “God is not neutral.” “Christians have a ‘just war’ teaching that in theory can be used to judge any war. In practice, the teaching serves to bless rather than judge wars,” said Sister Evelyn Mattern, a program associate at the North Carolina Council of Churches. “For example, the U.S. Roman Catholic bishops…

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  • As Bombs Fall, Critics Question U.S. Approach

    WASHINGTON – As the United States continued with air attacks on targets in Afghanistan, dubbed “strategic military locations” by Pentagon officials, peace advocates found their struggle pushed to the forefront. The U.S. strikes, comprised of cruise missiles launched from remote locations and bomber raids, were initial steps of what President Bush described as a “sustained, comprehensive and relentless” campaign against Taliban forces. According to the Washington Post, the attacks focused on Taliban strongholds in the south of Afghanistan, damaging airports and other military facilities in Kabul and Kandahar. Critics of the campaign questioned the approach behind these “strategic” strikes.

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  • Critics Blast Bush’s Call for “Lengthy Campaign”

    WASHINGTON – When President Bush took the national pulpit on September 20 to address a joint session of Congress, he faced perhaps his greatest challenge since his inauguration. Mainstream media pundits spoke at length of his need to rise to the occasion — to solidify the nation’s commitment to fighting terrorism. With the chamber’s applause still audible, the reports were already coming out. Bush’s approval rating had risen ten more points, to an astronomical 91 percent. His singling out of common citizens — some of whom sat in the audience — had captured the allegiance of skeptics. His calls for…

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  • Rethinking Welfare Reform

    WASHINGTON — With re-authorization of key “welfare reform” legislation due in the coming year, activists are mobilizing to place the rights of minorities and women foremost on the agenda. Many indict the current system — established by the 1996 passage of the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act — as a racist and gender-biased structure that keeps the poor in poverty and further burdens disadvantaged families. The five-year-old legislation has in fact reduced welfare rolls. A White House report in 2000 said that the number of Americans on welfare had decreased from 5.5 percent in 1993 to 2.3 percent…

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  • Uncontrolled Burn: How congress is adding fuel to the western wildfires

    As wildfires rage through woodland in the West, critics are questioning the federal government’s role in protecting the National Forests. Recently, President Bush proposed a $175 million increase in commercial timber sales on public lands — a move that, along with a planned repeal of the “roadless rule” established by former President Clinton, has many suspicious of where the Bush administration’s true agenda lies. Big forest fires make the news every summer. Last year, over 7 million acres of U.S. land burned during wildfire season. Many forest advocates believe that wildfires are a naturally occurring, healthy phenomenon and should, to…

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  • Are Americans “Vacation Starved”?

    WASHINGTON — When President Bush clocked out to start on a 30-day vacation at his Texas ranch, a collective lament was in the air from much of the population: “When do we get a break?” The vacation brings to 52 days the president’s total vacation time since his swearing-in last January, a number that dwarfs the average eight days of vacation most U.S. small business employees receive each year, according to Joe Robinson, director of the Work to Live campaign. Robinson, declaring America to be “the most vacation-starved country in the industrialized world,” is one of many people leading the…

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  • Bahrain Repression Escalates on Second Anniversary of Uprising

    “Security forces in Bahrain clashed on Thursday with anti-government protesters in street battles that left at least one boy dead amid high tensions on the second anniversary of the uprising in the Gulf nation, activists said. The demonstrators also included groups chanting against talks aimed at easing the Arab Spring-inspired unrest in the country, showing…

  • SOTU: Obama Poses as Dove while Civilians Bombed in Afghanistan

    KATHY KELLY, [email] Just back from Afghanistan, Kelly is co-coordinator of Voices for Creative Nonviolence. She said today: “Obama is a ‘hawkish’ president who likes to sound ‘dovish.’ He spoke of ending the U.S. war in Afghanistan, and yet the Pentagon has already told the Afghan government that U.S. troops will remain in Afghanistan till…

  • SOTU: * Jobs * Equity * Climate

    “The content of the president’s state of the union regarding climate was un-presidential. Trying to resuscitate broken carbon markets that have not worked in a decade since they began in Europe is a recipe for climate catastrophe. The failure to assemble the growing litany of oil and energy executives that are already doing more than…

  • North Korea “Test”: Aggravated by U.S. “War Games” and “Pivot”?

    “The North Korean government is angry about “massive war games that the United States and South Korea [engage in] almost every year — one took place last week. And they see the United States and these war games as very hostile and as a threat to their sovereignty, as they put it.”

  • The State of the Union: Is Rule of Law in Peril or Is it No More?

    “Under each of the past two presidents, executive fiat, enabling legislative statutes and judicial formalism have combined to shred our Constitution and transform America from a ‘land of the free’ into a land that loudly proclaims freedom while denying it to our own people.”

  • Postal Service Crisis Brought on by Bizarre Law

    “The USPS’s financial crisis has primarily been caused by a congressional mandate, coming from the Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act of 2006, that the USPS prefund the next 75 years of retiree health benefits in just a decade, by 2016. This is something that is not required of any other federal government agency or private…

  • Degraded Postal Service Part of a “Manufactured” Crisis and a “Daylight Heist” of New Deal Art

    ‎”The USPS is custodian of post offices and art of extraordinary quality, but at the current pace of downsizing, all of its properties will soon be thrown onto the market and the U.S. will be without the public postal service mandated by the Constitution. The USPS announced last week that it will sell the central…

  • Obama Administration’s Justification for Killing Without Charges

    “Last night, NBC News’ Michael Isikoff released a 16-page ‘white paper’ prepared by the Obama DOJ that purports to justify Obama’s power to target even Americans for assassination without due process. This is not the primary OLC memo justifying Obama’s kill list — that is still concealed — but it appears to track the reasoning…

  • Colin Powell’s Infamous U.N. Speech, 10 Years Later: Deceiving Public, Ignoring Whistleblowers Led to War

    “When Secretary of State Colin Powell spoke to the U.N. Security Council on February 5, 2003, countless journalists in the United States extolled him for a masterful performance — making the case that Saddam Hussein’s Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. The fact that the speech later became notorious should not obscure how easily truth…

  • Super Bowl Blackout and New Orleans Infrastructure

    “Last night’s power outage at the Super Bowl gave the world a glimpse of the daily challenges many New Orleans residents still face in the wake of rebuilding post-Katrina. Thanks to misplaced priorities that place war and partisan politics over our nation’s infrastructure needs, cities like New Orleans suffer. From New Jersey to New Orleans…

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