With its international mandate in Iraq set to expire in 11 months, the Bush administration will insist that the government in Baghdad give the United States broad authority to conduct combat operations and guarantee civilian contractors specific legal protections from Iraqi law, according to administration and military officials. 

As the middle and poorer classes get crushed under a mounting pile of debt, and living costs grow faster than wages, we're becoming a country of two classes: the top 1% and everyone else.

The news that US citizen Jose Padilla has received a prison sentence of 17 years and four months should provoke outrage in the United States, although it is unlikely that there will be much more than a whimper of dissent.  

from the Centre for American Progress ….. 

Bush's Stimulus Misses The Target 

This past weekend, as most Americans celebrated the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., markets all across the world were experiencing precipitous declines. 

With less than a year remaining in President Bush's term, the public is finally beginning to crack open the administration's secrets.  

A humanitarian crisis is underway as the Gaza Strip's only power plant began to shut down on Sunday & the tiny coastal territory entered its third full day without shipments of vital food and fuel supplies due to Israel's punitive sanctions.

The Gaza Strip's power plant has completely shut down on Sunday because it no longer has the fuel needed to keep running. One of the plant's two electricity-generating turbines had already shut down by noon.

from Crikey ….. 

The Wall Street gurus who presided over the sub-prime mortgage crisis currently shredding global share markets have awarded themselves bonuses totalling $US33.2 billion ($38 billion). 

In a concession to the crisis - which has forced America's largest banks to write off billions in bad investments and raise billions more to shore up their capital reserves - the bonuses were down nearly 5 per cent on the previous year. 

keep power in our hands: campaign against NSW electricity privatisation …..  

By Dr Patricia Ranald 

A Pentagon office that claims to monitor terrorist threats to U.S. military bases in North America - and was once reprimanded by the U.S. Congress for spying on antiwar activists - has just awarded a multi-million dollar contract to a company that employs one of Donald Rumsfeld’s former aides.

A long-awaited final report from the Food and Drug Administration concludes that foods from healthy cloned animals and their offspring are as safe as those from ordinary animals, effectively removing the last U.S. regulatory barrier to the marketing of meat and milk from cloned cattle, pigs and goats. 

The American president came to the Middle East in an attempt to deliver peace.

Instead, George W. Bush's visit to the Holy Land has only deepened the divide between the Israelis and Palestinians. 

When James Cojanis heard the first rumblings of Armageddon, he was sitting in his San Jose home with the radio tuned to a popular Christian show called The Prophecy Club. Featured that day was a charismatic Texas oilman named Harold "Hayseed" Stephens.

Hundreds of British non-Muslims have been recruited by al-Qaeda to wage war against the West, senior security sources warned last night. 

As many as 1,500 white Britons are believed to have converted to Islam for the purpose of funding, planning and carrying out surprise terror attacks inside the UK, according to one MI5 source. 

The reason the United States gave for invading Afghanistan in October 2001 was "to destroy the infrastructure of al-Qaeda, the perpetrators of 9/11".  

The women of Rawa say this is false.