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30 May, 2004

Saudi Attack Sparks Fears Of Oil Crisis
By Nick Mathiason and Mark Townsend

Oil prices are set to surge after al-Qaeda gunmen killed at least 16 people, including a Briton, and seized 50 hostages during an indiscriminate rampage through the Saudi Arabian city of Khobar

Tens Of Thousands Hit By Floods In Caribbean
By Peter Prengaman, David Randall and Annabel Fallon

A disaster of grotesque proportions is unfolding in the Caribbean where floods on the island of Hispaniola have delivered death and destruction to one of the world's poorest regions on a scale far greater than first thought

Energy Crisis Looms Over China
By Eva Cheng

With the price of oil hitting almost US$42 per barrel on May 18, China's energy import bill is set to blow a major hole in the country's fiscal account. China's oil imports have soared 35.7% during the first quarter of 2004, to 30.14 million tonnes. Oil imports grew 31.2% in 2003

We Germans Can Never Escape
By Thomas Kielinger

The stream of images from wartime events such as D-Day means that Germans can never put their past behind them

Verdict 2004:Triumph non-Brahmins
By Chandrabhan Prasad

This is a historic moment for the Dalits in India's contemporary history. The Congress party too has the unique opportunity of making up for its past indifference towards the Dalit cause

Invoking Regressing Symbols
By Kalpana Sharma

Sushma Swaraj's threat to put on the garb of the Hindu widow if Sonia Gandhi became the Prime Minister smacks of sinister, backward politics which also reinforces the plight of the women in the Indian society

Ameena's Dilemma
By Beena Sarwar

This is the story of a mother and her two daughters who educated themselves against the wishes of the community in Pakistan

Jawaharlal Nehru -- 40 Years After
By Niranjan Ramakrishnan

Nehru's achievements were many, as were his failures. For good or bad, however, his foundations shaped the India we see today

29 May, 2004

How To Silence An Awkward Newspaper
By John Pilger

The editor of the Daily Mirror, Britain's most famous mass-circulation newspaper, was sacked because he ran the only English-language popular paper to expose the "war on terror" as a fraud and the invasion of Iraq as a crime

Catch-22 Revisited
By David Leigh

The world has focused on US soldiers' abuse of Iraqi prisoners. But the leaked inquiry reveals incompetence worthy of Joseph Heller's novel

Daily Life In Iraq
By Dahr Jamail

It's been interesting watching the new influx of retail goods: Pepsi, 7-up, and Coke are all here in force. Snickers, Toblerone, and other western products as well....What other "progress" can I report?

BR Ambedkar: A Personal Tribute
By Chandrabhan Prasad

Dalit history may always seek the most uncomfortable question: "Why it is that post-Ambedkar, Dalits have not added even one chapter to the saga of the great trailblazer? Why it is so that when more than half the Dalit population is illiterate?"

A Critique Of Hindutva
By Praful Bidwai

A study of the rise of Hindutwa or militant political Hinduism in India

28 May, 2004

A Modest Proposal To Save The Planet
By Mayer Hillman

An extract from 'How We Can Save the Planet' by Mayer Hillman advocating radical changes to the way we conduct our daily lives that would ensure a future for our children

A Film That Could Warm Up The
Debate On Global Warming

By Robert B. Semple, Jr.

With all its faulty science and melodrama the latest Hollywood disaster movie "The Day After Tomorrow" might wake up the public to the dangers of climate change

Bush And Sharon - The Oil Connection
By Conn Hallinan

The Americans can ill afford another war in the Middle East, but the Israelis might be persuaded to take the field. Is giving Sharon a free hand in the West Bank a quid pro quo for an eventual American-supported Israeli attack on the last two countries in the region with any semblance of independence?

Slaughter In The Streets
By Dahr Jamail

Driving anywhere in Baghdad on any given day, the black funeral announcements of untimely deaths are hanging from buildings, homes, and fences everywhere

27 May, 2004

Suicide For Survival
By Binu Mathew

According to official figures, 50 farmers have died since the Y S Rajashekhar Reddy government took over on May 14. However, according to the Andhra Pradesh Rythu Sangam, a farmers outfit of CPI(M), 92 farmers have killed themselves in the last two weeks. According to another estimate, 220 farmers have committed suicide from Jan 1 to May 13

Mehdi Army Grows
By Dahr Jamail

The fighter is married and has six children, but said he will be honored to become a martyr. "God will save my children if I die because the Mehdi is the army of the people," he stated. "This is an intifada of the people"

Flood Toll Soars To 2,000
By Sibylla Brodzinsky

The death toll from mudslides and flooding in the Dominican Republic and Haiti soared to around 2,000 last night as rescuers discovered more than 1,000 bodies in a ruined Haitian town

The View From Hubbert's Peak
By Mike Davis

The oilmen in the White House, of course, have the best view of the lush terrain on the far side of Hubbert's peak. No wonder, then, that a map of the 'war against terrorism' corresponds with such uncanny accuracy to the geography of oil fields and proposed pipelines. From Kazakhstan to Ecuador, American combat boots are sticky with oil

In Solidarity With The Iraqi People
By Ghali Hassan

The invasion and occupation of Iraq is a form of globalisation by armed conquest. This armed conquest is the relic of colonialism and we should not allow it to succeed

26 May, 2004

Fast Arctic Thaw Portends Global Warming
By Alister Doyle

Global warming is hitting the Arctic more than twice as fast as the rest of the planet in what may be a portent of wider, catastrophic changes, the chairman of an eight-nation study has said

America's Brutal Culture Of Unseen Oppression
By Robert Chesshyre

The maltreatment of Iraqi detainees and Muslim "terrorists" dehumanises not just those who man the cages and take the callous photos, but also the society in whose name the cages were built and the guards recruited

They Must Pay The Price
By Gideon Levy

On a day when bodies of children were being stuffed into a big refrigerator used to store potatoes, and when thousands of homeless people were fleeing for their lives (some of them refugees rendered homeless for the second or third time), life in Israel went on as usual, as though what was happening in Rafah was not being done in the name of the country's citizens

Action Alert - Farmers Sucide in Andhra Pradesh
Write To The Chief Minister

Sixty two farmers have committed suicide since the newly elected chief minister of Andhra Pradesh announced financial relief to the families of the deceased. It is believed that the farmers are taking their life with the hope that their families will benefit from the benefit package, free electricity for agriculture , waiver of electricity dues and a Rs.150,000 financial assistance

Influencing Economic Policy Using
The Stock Market

By C.P. Chandrasekhar

Recent upheaval in the Indian stock market was due to the manouerings of the financial profiteers seeking to influence economic policy in their favour

Stock Market And The Real Economy
By Jayati Ghosh

The current downslide in the stock markets is really not a matter of serious concern for most Indians, and it should certainly not be much of an issue for the new government either

25 May, 2004

Face To Face With Injustice
By Dahr Jamail

I think of how beneath the fury of the fighting of Fallujah in April, lies a bottomless ocean of sadness. Under the bloodshed and fighting that rages in the South even now, there is unfathomable grief

Sharon's Method
By Uri Avnery

The directive for the onslaught on Rafah came from the political leadership, in order to gratify the primitive emotions of a part of the public. Simply put: they hurt us, so we hurt them tenfold. Ten eyes for an eye, ten teeth for a tooth. That's how votes are won

Why I Burned My Israeli Military Papers
By Josh Ruebner

By burning my military papers, I stand in solidarity with more than 1,300 Israelis who have stated openly, at the risk of jail time, that they refuse to serve Israel's occupation of Palestinians in the West Bank, Gaza Strip, and East Jerusalem and commit war crimes and flagrant breaches of international law

Anti-Brahman Upsurge Of Elections 2004
By Chandrabhan Prasad

Frightened by the anti-dalit, anti-poor policies of the NDA government, most non-Brahman, non-Baniya castes reached the polling booths with the resolve to vote the NDA out of power. A caste-wise study would conclusively prove that the XIVth Lok Sabha has the least number of Brahman-Baniya MPs since 1952

Three Cheers For Indian Democracy
By Ram Puniyani

Rot is setting in different aspects of India's polity and administrative machinery. Social welfare schemes related to education and health are collapsing. The sufferers of all this are of course the poor and deprived. And they have voted against the policies, which are ruining their lives

India Rejects Neoliberalism And Communal Politics
Report By Insaf

Although the BJP led coalition was comprehensively beaten in the recent elections one should not look away from certain important factors. The progress made by the Congress appears to be the result of circumstantial and accidental factors while the BJP appears to be well entrenched and spread all over India despite apparent set backs

24 May, 2004

Bringing Electricity To Their Asses
By Dahr Jamail

In the dark humor that has become so popular in Baghdad these days, one recently released detainee said, “The Americans brought electricity to my ass before they brought it to my house!”

The Marine's Tale: 'We Killed
30 Civilians In Six Weeks'

By Natasha Saulnier

"In a month and a half my platoon and I killed more than 30 civilians," Mr Massey said. He saw bodies being desecrated and robbed, and wounded civilians being dumped by the roadside without medical treatment. After he told his commanding officer that he felt "we were committing genocide", he was called a "wimp"

Death Of A Professor
By Luke Harding

Mohammed Munim al-Izmerly, a distinguished chemistry professor, mysteriously die in Iraq prison. An independent Iraqi autopsy reveal that Dr Izmerly had died because of a "sudden hit to the back of his head"

Palestinians Still Unable To Bury Rafah Dead
By Cynthia Johnston

On a blood-stained floor in a makeshift morgue in Rafah, the bodies of 16 Palestinians killed in Israel's bloodiest Gaza Strip raid in years lie in white shrouds, waiting to be buried

Death Of Rawan Abu Zaed
By Mohammad

Rawan Abu Zaed went to buy some sweets from the grocer's. She didn’t know that going to the grocer's would cost her her life. Two bullets:one in her neck and the other right through her head

A Call Of Desperation:Go For Nuclear Power
To Combat Global Warming

By Michael McCarthy

The scientist and celebrated Green guru, James Lovelock warns that there is simply not enough time for renewable energy, such as wind, wave and solar power before global warming overwhelms our civilisation, and the only solution is the massive expansion of nuclear power as the world's main energy source

In Praise Of Higher Fuel Prices
By William E. Rees

Everybody complain about fuel costs. But to avoid a possibly unprecedented human crisis in coming decades, they should be urging their governments to allow the price of oil and natural gas to rise even more

The Fight Must Go On
By Ganesh S. Iyer

The elections have seen the rout of the BJP from the political arena.The monster of communalism still stalks Indian society and has the potential to catapult its practitioners to power. The fight against communalism must go on

23 May, 2004

Russia All Set To Back Kyoto
By Geoffrey Lean

Russia's President Vladimir Putin - who will effectively decide whether the Kyoto Protocol stands or falls - announced on Friday that his country would "rapidly move towards ratification" in the wake of a complex deal with the European Union

Berg beheading: Some Questions Raised
By Ritt Goldstein

A leading surgical authority and a noted forensic death expert raises serious questions about the authenticity of the Berg beheading video. They suggest the video might have been staged

Iraq's Seething With Rage
By Dahr Jamail

As if the unremitting stream of horrendous photographs documenting the widespread torturing of Iraqis within Abu Ghraib prison (among other detention facilities throughout Iraq) are not enough, the recent wedding party massacre has brought the fury to an entirely new level

India Drowning?
By Neeta Deshpande

As the Sardar Sarovar dam rises slowly, Neeta Deshpande remembers the villages now submerged and wonders about the future

22 May, 2004

Yet More Horror Pictures, Stories
From Abu Ghraib

By Andrew Buncombe in Washington, Justin Huggler
and Leonard Doyle

The abuse scandal at Abu Ghraib prison continued yesterday with the publication of fresh pictures and sworn statements that detailed a teenage boy being raped, prisoners being ridden like animals and other Iraqis being forced to eat pork and drink alcohol in contravention of their religion

A Uterus Is No Substitute For A Conscience
By Barbara Ehrenreich

The Abu Ghraib did something else to me, as a feminist: They broke my heart. I had no illusions about the U.S. mission in Iraq -- whatever exactly it is -- but it turns out that I did have some illusions about women

21 May, 2004

Horrific Details Of The Wedding Party Massacre
By Rory McCarthy

"I fell into the mud and an American soldier came and kicked me. I pretended to be dead so he wouldn't kill me. My youngest child was alive next to me."

What About The Women Prisoners?
By Luke Harding

A note slipped out from inside the jail written by a woman prisoner claimed that US guards had been raping women detainees and several of the women were pregnant, the women were forced to strip naked in front of men. The secret inquiry launched by the US military in January has confirmed that the letter was entirely and devastatingly accurate

One Step Ahead Of The Bulldozer
By Amira Hass

How Wa'il Mansur's home was demolished by the IDF on Thursday morning in Rafah

Who Really Smuggled Weapons To Rafah?
By Arjan El Fassed

Israel's ongoing assault on human lives and property, killing civilians and demolishing homes is, according to Israeli spokespersons, "aimed at preventing a huge shipment of arms from being smuggled". What no one asks, however, is the question who supplies Israel's military occupation of Gaza

BJP's Allergy To Democracy
By Praful Bidwai

Sonia Gandhi's renunciation of the primeministership exposes the BJP as an egregiously intolerant party, which is deeply uncomfortable with democracy, and has contempt for political decency and Constitutional law

Violence against Dalit Women In Nepal
By Padmalal Bishwakarma

Any violence on the Dalit community is ultimately born by Dalit
women. Specifically during the eight-year of Maoist war, many of Dalit youths have lost their lives by being the victim of both
Maoists and state. It is the Dalit women who have to bear all such unbearable sufferings socially, economically, culturally and
politically at great risk of her own and her children's life

20 May, 2004

Wedding Party Massacre
By Rory McCarthy

Iraqi officials last night said an American helicopter fired on a wedding party in western Iraq killing more than 40 people, including many children

Thumbs Up America- More Photos Surface
By ABC News

More Photos Surface of soldiers giving thumbs up sign by body of dead Iraqi prisoner

Children And Youth Massacred In Rafah
By Amira Hass and Arnon Regular

Eight Palestinians were killed and dozens were wounded yesterday afternoon when IDF tanks fired shells at a crowd of protesters in Rafah refugee camp in the Gaza Strip. Four of those killed were children under 14

'140,000 People, 40 Beds And A War'
By Chris McGreal

A visit to Rafah's only one makeshift hospital

Genocide By Public Policy
By Sam Bahour and Michael Dahan

What is happening in the West Bank, East Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip today is dangerously close to genocide, close enough that photographs of terrified Palestinians in Rafah loading their meager belongings onto carts and fleeing their homes are all too reminiscent of another time, another place another people

The Nowhere People
By Nick Pretzlik

Israelis are proud to announce that their country is the only democracy in the Middle East. But the 150,000 strong Bedouin community of Israel has no democratic rights

Arundhati Roy Interviewed
By Amy Goodman of Democracy Now!

Arundhati Roy On the Indian Elections, Her Support for the Iraqi Resistance & the Privatization of War

Dalit Warrior
By P L Mimroth

Society and authorities in Rajasthan collude to torture a man simply because he refuses to be ill-treated as a Dalit

19 May, 2004

Homes Wrecked Lives Destroyed
By Donald Macintyre

Israel was accused by Amnesty International of committing a war crime by its destruction of more than 3,000 Palestinian homes in Israel and the occupied territories since the intifada began three and a half years ago

Gazans Pile Up Their Belongings And Flee
By Amira Hass

The streets of Rafah were filled yesterday evening with horse-drawn carts, trucks and pick-ups, all laden to the brim with any and every item that the town's residents could remove from their homes

Ramadi- A Delicate Lid
By Dahr Jamail

The city of Ramadi, about 120km west of Baghdad, appears to be much more stable than nearby Falluja, where the U.S. military currently won’t enter the city after the failed siege of April.But one must not forget that calm is a relative term in occupied Iraq

Sonia Gandhi's Dilemma
By Niranjan Ramakrishnan

A combination of religious and political interests in India is trying to subvert election results by forcing the congress president Sonia Gandhi keep out of the prime ministership applying a distinction based purely on race -- bypassing the constitution!

Exit Chandrababu Naidu
By George Monbiot

The poster boy of neoliberalism, Chandrababu Naidu is voted out in Andhra Pradesh

18 May, 2004

12 Palestinians Killed In Rafah Incursion

Twelve Palestinians were killed today as the Israeli army made one of its most sweeping incursions yet into the Rafah refugee camp in Gaza

Death And Destruction In Gaza
By Tamer Ziara

Frantic Rafah residents are running away from their homes as Israel is reigning on them death and destruction, with hundreds of home demolished and the threat of more demolition

Israeli Troops Bury Family Alive
Under Demolished House

By Palestine Media Center

Israeli Occupation Forces buried a husband, his wife and her sister alive in a refugee camp on Friday when they refused to evacuate their home before the occupation troops demolished it together with at least 39 houses in the southern Gaza Strip

Israel's Revenge In Zaytoun, Gaza
By Eoin Murray

The past few nights have been sleepless. The Israeli forces have attacked from land, sea and air. The centre of Gaza the people of Zaytoun (which means 'olive') have been imprisoned in the scene of some of the most intense fighting since the Intifada began

17 May, 2004

Gaza: Horror Beyond Belief
By Ghada Ageel

Since Tuesday, May 11, thousands of people have been denied the simple right to return to their homes; this includes infants, children, students, employees, women, and men of all ages. Ghada Ageel recounts the humiliating experience she and her family experienced at a Gaza check point

How A Secret Pentagon Program
Came To Abu Ghraib

By Seymour M. Hersh

The roots of the Abu Ghraib prison scandal was not the criminal inclinations of a few Army reservists but a decision, approved last year by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld

'They Tied Me Up Like A Beast
And Began Kicking Me'

By David Rose

As America struggles to come to terms with military abuse in Iraq, similar stories are emerging from Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Tarek Dergoul, a Briton released from the camp in March, talks here for the first time about his two-year ordeal

Why Dont They Count The Dead?
By Kim Sengupta and Marie Woolf

Since the start of the invasion, 566 members of the American military and 211 US civilians have died. The British figures are 59 and 8. But the Americans and the British do not bother to keep count of the people they have "liberated" and then killed

Press Freedom In Iraq
By Dahr Jamail

With a wave of adrenaline I yelled, “I am press! I just want to get a comment from someone!” Two soldiers gestured their heads “no” with their heads while another waved me away, all the while the soldier kept his gun trained on me

Examinations, Fainting Children
Girl Blog From Iraq

The end-of-the-year examinations have started in most of the schools. It's already unbearably hot and dusty and the heat gets worse as summer progresses. Last year children were fainting in the summer heat in schools with no electricity. We're hoping to avoid that this year

Who Commands The Private Soldiers?
By David Leigh

Allegations of abuse have raised wider questions about the role - and accountability - of civilian contractors in Iraq

Is Sonia Gandhi Eligible To Become
The Prime Minister?

By Ram Puniyani

Is being a citizen not good enough for holding any post of the people find you fit enough for that? Sonia Gandhi or no Sonia Gandhi the guidelines should be derived from the constitution

‘Feeling Good’
By Beena Sarwar

Indian elections, a view from Pakistan

Bye, Bye, Mr. American Pie Vajpayee
By Niranjan Ramakrishnan

Atal Behari Vajpayee's tenure as prime minister of India will be remembered, as a squandered opportunity, mistaking galloping consumption for real upliftment