FRANCES FOX PIVEN Author of the recent book The War at Home: The Domestic Costs of Bush’s Militarism, Piven said today: “The new budget proposals continue the Republican strategy of emasculating the parts of government that serve ordinary Americans in order to build the military, subsidize corporations, and slash taxes on the affluent. With deficits rising and the dollar weakening, the policy threatens not only the well-being of millions of Americans, but the stability of the American economy.” Piven is Distinguished Professor of Political Science and Sociology at the Graduate School and University Center of the City University of New…

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is currently traveling to Europe, Israel and the Israeli-occupied territories. The following are available for interviews: GEORGE MONBIOT Monbiot is a columnist for the London-based Guardian and author of the book The Age of Consent: A Manifesto for a New World Order. More Information HOUZAN MAHMOUD Mahmoud is the U.K. head of the Organization of Women’s Freedom in Iraq and author of the recent article “Why I am not taking part in these phoney elections” published in the Independent in London. More Information FIONA DOVE Dove is director of the Transnational Institute in Amsterdam. More…

LEE PRICE Price is research director at the Economic Policy Institute. He said today: “Four years ago, President Bush assured us that we could afford his massive tax cuts tilted toward the well-to-do and still maintain a budget surplus large enough to maintain Social Security commitments. Now, four years later, we have deficits largely caused by tax cuts that have cut revenue more than 2 percent of GDP indefinitely. Wanting everyone to forget his commitments of four years ago and the fact that private accounts would require ‘massive new borrowing’ immediately, the President bemoans the projection that it would take…

The following analysts will be available Wednesday night and Thursday to comment on policy proposals in the State of the Union address: DIANA ZUCKERMAN Zuckerman is president of the National Research Center for Women & Families. She wrote the article “Social Security and Women.” More Information BILL SPRIGGS Spriggs wrote the recent articles “African Americans and Social Security: Why the Privatization Advocates Are Wrong” (in Dollars and Sense magazine) and “Another Mistaken Racial Stereotype: Contrary to the right’s claims, Social Security is a good deal for blacks” (in the American Prospect). He is a senior fellow at the Economic Policy…

The Senate is expected to debate the nomination of Alberto Gonzales for attorney general until Thursday, a nominee that lawyers at the Center for Constitutional Rights describe as one of the architects of Guantánamo as well as the torture and abuse of detainees. U.S. District Court Judge Joyce Green on Monday ruled that special military tribunals used by the Pentagon to determine so-called “enemy combatant” status and the continued detention of those detained at Guantánamo Bay are illegal. (For background on the ruling and the role of the Center for Constitutional Rights in the case, see below.) The following legal…

ANTONIA JUHASZ Juhasz wrote the recent article “Of Oil And Elections.” She said today: “The front-runner for the new Prime Minister of Iraq is Adel Abdul Mahdi, Iraq’s current Finance Minister who announced on Dec. 21 that his government was hoping to privatize its oil and that this would be ‘very promising to the American investors and to American enterprise, certainly to oil companies.’ … Mahdi’s party, the United Iraqi Alliance, the leading Shia political party, is expected to win the majority of votes once they are tallied, particularly given the fact that, as reported by AP, polls were largely…

ANTONIA JUHASZ Juhasz wrote the recent article “Of Oil And Elections.” She is a scholar with Foreign Policy In Focus. More Information ABBAS KADHIM Kadhim has written several pieces on the elections, including “The Expatriate Vote,” “Hellish Elections” and “Wag the Vote.” He is originally from Najaf, where he has family. He joined in the uprising against Saddam Hussein following the 1991 Gulf War. After the U.S. failed to back the Iraqis trying to overthrow the Iraqi dictator, Kadhim went to Saudi Arabia, where he was detained in a camp for over a year. He is now teaching at the…

Activists from Asia are addressing how to best recover from the tsunami that devastated parts of the region a month ago. Now at the World Social Forum, a global gathering of activists and non-governmental groups taking place in Porto Alegre, Brazil: LIEM SOEI LIONG Liem Soei Liong works with TAPOL, a London-based Indonesian human rights campaign. He said today: “Aceh bore the worst of the tsunami’s impact — most of the estimated 200,000 killed were in Aceh. Unfortunately, the Indonesian military is continuing its military operations in the area, with only twenty-five of the forty-five thousand Indonesian troops engaged in…

Bill Clinton, Bill Gates and Tony Blair were among the speakers today at the World Economic Forum, a gathering of CEOs and government officials in Davos, a Swiss ski resort. They addressed issues of poverty in Africa. AP reports that the singer Bono praised Gates, saying: “He is a brainy man and he thinks extreme poverty is stupid.” Meanwhile, the World Social Forum is meeting in Porto Alegre, Brazil, including tens of thousands of activists and thousands of non-profit organizations from over 100 countries working against what they call the corporatization of the globe. A focus of the World Social…

Rep. Lynn Woolsey (D-CA) plans to introduce a congressional resolution today in the U.S. House of Representatives calling on President Bush to begin the immediate withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq. Woolsey, who is in her seventh term in the House, told the Institute for Public Accuracy: “Removing some 130,000 soldiers from Iraq immediately is not logistically feasible, but we must take the first steps. We should not abandon Iraq; there is still a critical role for the United States in providing the development aid that can help create a civil society, support education and rebuild Iraq’s economic infrastructure. But…