Heads of state, including George W. Bush, address the U.N. General Assembly today. U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan recently stated the invasion of Iraq “was not in conformity with the U.N. Charter from our point of view, from the Charter point of view, it was illegal.” Here are some relevant excerpts from the U.N. Charter: “All Members shall settle their international disputes by peaceful means in such a manner that international peace and security, and justice, are not endangered. All Members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political…

DARCY RICHARDSON Richardson is completing a four-volume work on third parties. The first volume, Others: Third-Party Politics From the Nation’s Founding to the Rise and Fall of the Greenback-Labor Party, was released earlier this year; the second volume will be released in October. Richardson said today: “While pro-Bush forces helping independent candidate Ralph Nader get on the ballot have garnered headlines — most recently with lawyers in Florida representing Nader and the Reform Party who argued on behalf of Bush during the 2000 election fiasco — another important story is how pro-Kerry forces are blocking Nader from getting on the…

As independent candidate Ralph Nader and the Libertarian and Green Parties are fighting court battles to get on the presidential ballot in various states, the following analysts are available for interviews: RICHARD WINGER Editor of Ballot Access News, Winger said today: “Since the 1890s, when ballot access laws first came into existence in the U.S., both major parties have used the ballot access laws for their own partisan advantage…. This year, though, partisan use of the ballot access procedures for independent candidates has been unusually active. Democrats have challenged Ralph Nader’s signatures successfully in Arizona, and a Democratic challenge of…

BRIGALIA BAM Dr. Brigalia Bam is the Chairperson of the Independent Electoral Commission of South Africa. She is the former General Secretary of the South African Council of Churches. She said today: “We are civic leaders, parliamentarians, diplomats, academics, electoral officials, journalists, and veteran election monitors. We come from 15 countries on all five continents. We have worked for decades in our home countries to reform our electoral systems, to make them more responsive, more open, and more fair. We have been invited by the U.S. non-governmental organization Global Exchange with the aim of assisting Americans in the effort to…

The U.S. government has been making demands regarding Iran’s nuclear program. On Thursday afternoon State Department spokesperson Richard Boucher was asked about “Mordechai Vanunu, the Israeli whistleblower” and his proposal that “there be a trade-off between the Iranian nuclear program and the ending of the Israeli one.” Boucher declined to comment on the proposal. When asked about Israel’s nuclear capacity, Boucher said: “I’m not making judgments or presumptions about that. We’ve had a view on the universal adherence to the Non-Proliferation Treaty that we’ve expressed many times, that applies in all cases.” Israel is not a signatory to the Non-Proliferation…

JOHN HICKEY John Hickey is the executive director of the Missouri Progressive Vote Coalition. He said today: “While John Ashcroft was governor of Missouri, he vetoed two bills that were designed to equalize access to voter registration between St. Louis County (then mostly white) and St. Louis City (then about 50 percent African-American). Ashcroft’s vetoes show a disturbing commitment on his part to maintaining separate and unequal access to voter registration for African-Americans. When Ashcroft was governor, the Election Commissioners in St. Louis City and St. Louis County established different policies for appointing volunteer deputy registrars (VDRs). In St. Louis…

KELLY DOUGHERTY Dougherty is a co-founder of the newly formed group Iraq Veterans Against the War. She was in the Colorado Army National Guard for eight years and was a military police sergeant for a year in Iraq before returning to the U.S. in late February. She said today: “When we first arrived in Iraq, part of what struck me was the poverty and desperation of the Iraqi people, but they acted friendly towards us, often smiling and waving. As we continued to occupy Iraq, I began to feel a growing sense of apprehension, as though the situation was going…

Today a group of 25 veteran former agents, analysts and other experts from a number of government agencies involved in national security are releasing a letter critical of the 9-11 Commission. Among the 25 signers are John M. Cole, former FBI intelligence operations specialist, and Diane Kleiman, a former special agent with U.S. Customs assigned to JFK International Airport. Other signers, available for interviews, are: SIBEL EDMONDS Edmonds worked as a language specialist for the FBI. After reporting security breaches, cover-ups, and blocking of intelligence, Edmonds was retaliated against and ultimately fired in March 2002. Since that time, all her…

“Michigan Republicans turned in 45,000 of the 50,500 petition signatures on behalf of Nader for a ballot spot.” — Detroit Free Press, Sept. 4, 2004 “We have not been accepting signatures obtained through organized Republican Party efforts in the three or four states where we have learned of such activity.” — Op-ed article by Ralph Nader in the Washington Post, Sept. 5, 2004 “The Michigan Court of Appeals ruled Friday [Sept. 3] that Nader qualified to be on the ballot as an independent, despite Democratic objections that 45,000 of the 50,000 signatures turned in on Nader’s behalf were collected by…

ROBERT HICKEY Hickey is author of the just-released report “No Holiday For Missouri’s Outsourced Workers: Outsourcing, Executive Campaign Contributions and the 2004 Presidential Election.” He said today: “The report looks at all companies that have been approved for the federal Trade Adjustment Assistance program for sending Missouri jobs overseas since January 2001 when Bush became president. For each company, the political contributions made by the CEO and the directors were collected from the Center for Responsive Politics. When contributions to Bush and Kerry were compared, the company CEOs gave more than 13 times as much money to Bush as to…