A fierce assault by thousands of U.S.-backed Colombian government troops — launched on Friday to retake a large safe-haven region controlled by rebels for three years — has already resulted in confirmed reports of civilian deaths. The Bush administration is now seeking more than $500 million in additional aid to the Bogota regime, which would supplement a previous $1.3 billion U.S. aid package. As the New York Times reported over the weekend, some members of Congress “express doubts about aiding a military with a poor human rights record and alliances to right-wing paramilitary forces.” The following critics of U.S. government…

CHRISTOPHER SIMPSON Associate professor of communication at American University and author of the books Blowback and Science of Coercion, Simpson said today: “Donald Rumsfeld strongly implied last night that the Department of Defense is not running covert operations in its military operations. The truth of the matter is that U.S. psywar and covert operations against American citizens and allied countries are expanding more rapidly today than at any other time in U.S. history. The program has several clear levels. For example, John Poindexter, a national security perjurer who supervised the Iran-Contra disaster, has been quietly appointed to lead the new…

DENIS HALLIDAY Halliday is a former UN Assistant Secretary General and ex-head of the UN oil-for-food program. He said today: “The International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors were in Iraq just two weeks ago. Those types of monitoring programs could be expanded to include chemical and biological weapons capability, but re-starting an Iraq-specific regime like UNMOVIC would very difficult because of domestic pressure in Iraq. It’s very hard for Iraq to trust the UN after the UNSCOM inspectors were used for espionage. The talk of ‘axis of evil,’ ‘regime change’ and threats of a major assault on Iraq are just grossly…

In recent days, a coalition of 13 groups has begun a $10 million ad campaign, “Covering the Uninsured.” The coalition released data showing that 2001 witnessed the largest one-year increase in the number of uninsured Americans in nearly a decade. Participants include the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, AFL-CIO, AARP, the Business Roundtable, American Medical Association, American Nurses Association, Health Insurance Association of America, American Hospital Association, Federation of American Hospitals and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The following analysts are available for interviews on this initiative and reasons for the increase in uninsured numbers: DON McCANNE, M.D. President of Physicians…

HELEN LENSKYJ Lenskyj is author of Inside the Olympic Industry: Power, Politics, and Activism and the forthcoming The Best Olympics Ever? Social Impacts of Sydney 2000.She is professor of sociology at the University of Toronto. Lenskyj said this afternoon: “How much do the Olympics really cost and who ends up paying? The International Olympic Committee continues to do things in much the same way despite negative effects at each Olympics. Repeated attempts to inject social conscience into how the games are run have fallen on deaf ears. When the inspection team came to Toronto, it was clear that they had…

ANDREW WHEAT Wheat is the research director for Texans for Public Justice, a non-profit policy and research organization which tracks the influence of money in politics. Wheat said today: “President Bush’s explanation of his relationship to Enron is at best a half truth. He was in bed with Enron before he ever held a political office…. Although Enron is George W. Bush’s No. 1 career donor, the president also is heavily indebted to the professional firms that aided and abetted the greatest bankruptcy and shareholder meltdown in U.S. history. Enron’s ‘independent’ auditor and ‘outside’ law firm — whose own questionable…

VAN JONES The World Economic Forum, meeting in New York City, has named Jones as one of the “100 Global Leaders for Tomorrow.” Jones, who founded the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights in 1996, said today: “I think it is a grudging admission on their part that the growing movements against corporate-led globalization and the incarceration industry must be taken seriously. I will accept the award — not for myself, but for the thousands of activists and concerned community members who will be locked out. The WEF meeting is essentially a gathering of 3,000 economic royalists, who dominate decision-making…

WALDEN BELLO JOY CHAVEZ Bello is the executive director and Chavez is a research associate for Focus on the Global South. Bello said today: “Porto Alegre, site of the World Social Forum [WSF] last year and again this year, has become the byword for the spirit of the burgeoning movement against corporate-driven globalization. Galvanized by the slogan ‘Another world is possible,’ some 70,000 people are expected to flock to this coastal city. The WSF has been established as a counterpoint to the World Economic Forum [WEF], in timing as well as in spirit.” More Information More Information NJOKI NJOROGE NJEHU…

GREG PALAST Palast is an internationally recognized expert on regulation of power markets and author of Regulation and Democracy, an upcoming U.N. study. On a Jan. 24, 2001 news release by the Institute for Public Accuracy, he said: “The California blackouts are a simple case of greed run amok…. The big winners in this monstrosity are Enron — the largest career contributor to George W. Bush — and other energy companies who have strangled the market. ‘Deregulation’ is a lie — it is simply moving regulation from democratic government agencies to an unelected circle of market manipulators.” Palast said today:…

GWENDOLYN MINK Author of the newly-revised Welfare’s End and a political scientist at Smith College, Mink said today: “Temporary Assistance for Needy Families reauthorization is Congress’s opportunity to undo some of the damage of the 1996 welfare law. The first step toward TANF reform must be to repeal TANF’s current goal of abolishing single motherhood, which makes meddling in women’s intimate lives the surrogate for dealing with the causes of mothers’ poverty. The progressive TANF Reauthorization Bill (H.R. 3113) does just that by rededicating TANF’s statutory purposes and provisions to reducing poverty — through education, work supports, caregiving support, child…