Commentary Don't mess with Texas Strike the Root by Daniel Patrick Welch

"Teach them a lesson they'll never forget. So goes the thinking in Texas-on-the-Potomac. And what a lesson it has been! They'll never mess with us again, nosirree Bob! As this childish thinking worms its way around the neocon braintrust, now giddy with "success" of their own definition (like toppling the Taliban?), it is instructive what lessons might be drawn by more rational -- albeit scared to death -- observers around the world." (04/10/03)

http://www.strike-the-root.com/3/welch/welch2.html

Commentary Not to worry, I've found the WMD Strike the Root by Steve Hesske

"In their rabid, messianic quest to find WMD in Iraq , have the troops and the media overlooked the obvious, maybe even tripped over the obvious? I’m just some knucklehead in a cabin in Montana who occasionally glances at TV coverage of the regime cleansing, but in doing so, I’ve located a proliferation of WMD in Iraq . They all belong to America , a nation with a long and deep track record of indiscriminate use of WMD." (04/10/03)

http://www.strike-the-root.com/3/hesske/hesske3.html

Commentary The things which are Caesar's Fount of Truth by Doug Newman

"In recent decades, we have taken the injunction to 'Render unto Caesar the things which are Caesar's' to mean that we should pay our taxes, sit down, shut up, and be totally uncritical of our government. Don't ask what things are Caesar's much less whether Caesar has any competence whatsoever in doing whatever it is you would like him to do. Jesus doesn't assign specific duties to Caesar." (04/10/03)

http://www.geocities.com/fountoftruth/caesars.html


Commentary Gulf War Syndrome II Alternet by Steve Rosenfield

"Soldiers now fighting in Iraq are being exposed to battlefield hazards that have been associated with the 'Gulf War Syndrome' that afflicts a quarter-million veterans of the 1991 war, said a former Central Command Army officer in Operation Desert Storm.... 'People are sick over there already,' said Dr. Doug Rokke, former director of the Army's depleted uranium (DU)project. 'It's not just uranium. You've got all the complex organics and inorganics [compounds] that are released in those fires and detonations. And they're sucking this in.... You've got the whole toxic wasteland .... That's why people started getting sick right away, when they started going in months ago with respiratory, diarrhea and rashes -- horrible skin conditions.'" (04/09/03)

http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=15590

Commentary The full service Pentagon Village Voice by Mark Fiore

RummyCo: Let us handle all your war and post war needs. Cartoon by Mark Fiore. (04/10/03)

http://www.villagevoice.com/issues/0315/fiore.php

Commentary Baghdad: the day after Independent by Robert Fisk

" American control of the city is, at best, tenuous -- a fact underlined after several marines were killed last night by a suicide bomber close to the square where a statue of Saddam Hussein was pulled down on Wednesday, in the most staged photo-opportunity since Iwo Jima.... And already America's army of 'liberation' is beginning to seem an army of occupation. I watched hundreds of Iraqi civilians queuing to cross a motorway bridge at Daura yesterday morning, each man ordered by US soldiers to raise his shirt and lower his trousers -- in front of other civilians, including women -- to prove they were not suicide bombers." (04/11/03)

http://argument.independent.co.uk/commentators/story.jsp?story=396051

Commentary The 'democratic domino' theory BBC News byPaul Reynolds

"There are some in the Bush administration who hope that the fall of Saddam Hussein will be followed by a 'democratic domino' effect across the Middle East.
It is a reverse of the old theory which held that unless the United States fought in Vietnam, nations right across south-east Asia would collapse into communism like dominos. It didn't really happen in south-east Asia, and there are others in Washington who say that the new prediction will prove wrong in the Middle East." (04/10/03)

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/2935969.stm
=========
News Looters ransack Baghdad hospitals BBC News

"Law and order broke down on the streets of Baghdad following the push by US troops into the centre of the Iraqi capital on Wednesday ... The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) says two key Baghdad hospitals, and many other smaller ones, have been ransacked, as looting spreads across the capital... [Britain's International Development Secretary] Clare Short said British and American troops were required, under the Geneva Convention, to provide humanitarian assistance to civilians, to maintain order, and to keep the civil administration running." (04/10/03)

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/2936721.stm

News US-backed militia terrorises town Financial Times

"Hay Al Ansar, on the outskirts of Najaf in Iraq, was glad to be rid of Saddam Hussein's Ba'ath party government, when the city was seized by US forces last week. But they appear to be just as terrified, if not more so, of their new rulers - a little-known Iraqi militia backed by the US special forces and headquartered in a compound nearby. The Iraqi Coalition of National Unity (ICNU), which appeared in the city last week riding on US special forces vehicles, has taken to looting and terrorising their neighbourhood with impunity, according to most residents." (04/08/03)

http://news.ft.com/servlet/ContentServer?pagename=FT.com/StoryFT/FullStory&c=StoryFT&cid=1048313570322&p=1012571727085

News Woman awarded compensation for bad hairdo Abanova

"A woman in St Louis has been awarded £4,000 after claiming a bad hair treatment left her depressed and led to her early retirement. Geremie Hoff, 56, sued the Elizabeth Arden Salon for emotional distress, depression, counselling and lost income." (04/10/03)

http://www.ananova.com/news/story/sm_769281.html?menu=news.quirkies

News Spitzer sets sights on Wal-Mart in toy gun suit Forbes

"New York State Attorney General Eliot Spitzer Thursday said his office is suing Wal-Mart Stores Inc., alleging that the world's largest retailer sells toy weapons that could be mistaken for real firearms. The suit, filed in State Supreme Court in Manhattan, seeks to stop Wal-Mart from selling toy guns in New York State that Spitzer claims violate a state law requiring them to bear distinctive orange markings." (04/10/03)

http://www.forbes.com/markets/newswire/2003/04/10/rtr935694.html

News Dad who plugged prowler spurns deal NY Daily News

"A Navy veteran who shot an intruder in his toddler's bedroom decided against pleading guilty to a gun charge yesterday.Ronald Dixon rejected a deal that would have spared him from having to do jail time because he does not want a criminal record, his new attorney said." (04/08/03)

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/story/73562p-68062c.html


News Bongs legal in CA, says state court San Francisco Chronicle

"In another sign of the state-federal split over drugs, a state appellate court ruled Tuesday that possession of marijuana pipes is legal in California, just six weeks after bong-sellers around the nation were the targets of federal raids ... But federal law, which overrides state laws, continues to classify marijuana among the most dangerous narcotics, in the same category as heroin. Federal prosecutors have stepped up raids on medical marijuana suppliers in California and won convictions, though the state legalized medical marijuana in 1996." (04/09/03)

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2003/04/09/BA275131.DTL

Commentary Amid Allied jubilation, a child lies in agony, clothes soaked in blood Independent by Robert Fisk

"On television, it looks so clean. On Sunday evening, the BBC showed burning civilian cars, its reporter -- 'embedded' with US forces -- saying that he saw some of their passengers lying dead beside them.
That was all. No pictures of the charred corpses, no close-ups of the shrivelled children. So perhaps I should warn those of what the BBC once called a nervous disposition to go no further. But if they want to know what America and Britain are doing to the innocent of Baghdad, they should read on." (04/08/03)

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/story.jsp?story=395117

Commentary A once-oppressed people walking like giants
Independent by Robert Fisk

"The great Lebanese poet Kalil Gibran once wrote that he pitied the nation that welcomed its tyrants with trumpetings and dismissed them with hootings of derision. And the people of Baghdad performed this same deadly ritual yesterday, forgetting that they -- or their parents -- had behaved in identical fashion when the Arab Socialist Baath Party destroyed the previous dictatorship of Iraq's generals and princes. Forgetting, too, that the 'liberators' were a new and alien and all-powerful occupying force with neither culture nor language nor race nor religion to unite them with Iraq.... And so last night, as the explosion of tank shells still crashed over the city, Baghdad lay at the feet of a new master. They have come and gone in the city's history, Abbasids and Ummayads and Mongols and Turks and British and now the Americans." (04/10/03)

http://argument.independent.co.uk/commentators/story.jsp?story=395707

Commentary Imprisoned by the Patriot Act In these Times by J.D. Lloyd

"[An INS agent] told me I was under arrest. When I told her that I had a work visa valid until December 2002, she said that I was violating my work visa because I was not working. 'I just came out of my classroom,' I said. The agent told me, 'You were working till an hour ago, but now you are not.' They kept me for a day in the Long Beach jail, and the next day I was transferred to the L.A. County Jail. After spending a day there, I was taken to the Mira Loma Detention Center in Lancaster. So, one day I was teaching mathematics at Cerritos College, and the next thing I knew I was in INS custody in Lancaster." (04/04/03)

http://inthesetimes.com/comments.php?id=140_0_2_0_C

Commentary Due process vanishes Wired by Ryan Singel

"Asif Iqbal, a Rochester, New York, management consultant, must get FBI clearance every Monday and Thursday when he flies to and from Syracuse for business. Iqbal can't get off a government watch list because he shares the same name as a suspected terrorist .... The aviation list, intended to catch terrorists before they board planes, has persistently and widely snagged innocent American travelers, according to government documents obtained by the Electronic Privacy Information Center through a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit. The documents -- which include numerous e-mails, letters and call logs detailing the attempts of seemingly ordinary Americans to remove themselves from the list -- reveal that the lists are only getting longer." (04/08/03)

http://www.wired.com/news/privacy/0,1848,58386,00.html

Commentary Beyond duct tape Laissez Faire Times by Bill Walker

"What groups might think to benefit from a WMD strike on the US? A partial list: 1. The US kleptocracy, which has reaped vast increases in power from terrorism and war. 'War is the health of the State', and terrorism drives citizen support for war. 2. Angry relatives of the thousands of victims of 'Shock and Awe'..." (04/10/03)

http://freedom.orlingrabbe.com/lfetimes/beyond_ducttape.htm

Commentary The stench of colonialism Yellow Times by Marc Sirois

"The symbolism was impossible to miss. The President of the United States traveled across an ocean to confer with his British partner in multiple wars against Iraq, collective security, and self-determination. George W. Bush and Tony Blair could have met anywhere -- London, Madrid, Geneva, etc. -- but instead chose Belfast. How do you keep a straight face when you discuss what you call the 'liberation' of the Iraqi people by discussing strategy in the very place where the British subjugation of the Irish people remains at its most palpable?" (04/09/03)

http://www.yellowtimes.org/article.php?sid=1223&mode=thread&order=0

=====

News Hong Kong in hot flush over ad blunder
Guardian

"With the burgeoning Sars epidemic spreading fear among travellers worldwide, the Hong Kong tourist board must be ruing the day it commissioned a series of magazine ads telling readers a visit to the city will 'take your breath away'. Shortness of breath is one of the main symptoms of Sars -- severe acute respiratory syndrome -- a deadly new strain of pneumonia that started in southern China and quickly moved to Hong Kong before spreading around the world." (04/09/03)

http://media.guardian.co.uk/advertising/story/0,7492,932861,00.html

News Cuba jailings draw international outrafe BBC News

"A White House spokesman said the recent crackdown was proof that President Fidel Castro's government remained a 'totalitarian blight' on the region. The EU Commission also called for the immediate release of the dissidents, who were prosecuted for treason in closed courts and who have been handed down lengthy sentences. On Wednesday, Luis Enrique Ferrer, a member of a Cuban reform group, received 28 years -- the longest sentence so far." (04/09/03)

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/2925985.stm

News Artist takes on vandals with 'nude' shutters Ananova

An artist has put up shutters painted with portraits of nudes to deter vandals from breaking his shop windows.
Mr Mann, whose paintings sell for up to £400, specialises in vivid nudes -- many of whom are depicted with shrunken genitalia and distorted faces. He said: 'My windows kept getting tanned in by drunk people who didn't like my pictures so this is like a v's up to the vandals." (04/09/03)

http://www.ananova.com/news/story/sm_769010.html?menu=news.quirkies

News Indian village has no need for police Ananova

"An Indian village which has evolved its own punishment system has not needed to call in the police for 25 years.
The village council of Rajsamdhiyala, Gujarat, has kept police away by evolving a method of fines to keep crime under check. Offences such as littering outside houses, consumption of alcohol, gambling or cutting down trees attract fines from 70p to £7." (04/09/03)

http://www.ananova.com/news/story/sm_768929.html?menu=news.quirkies

News Terrorism kit so dumb it's a winner Sydney Morning Herald

"The Australian Government's $15 million fridge magnet campaign to educate Australians about terrorism has scooped an international award as one of the most stupid security measures introduced since September 11. The competition, run by Privacy International, which is best known for its annual Big Brother awards for intrusive practices, received almost 5000 nominations from 35 countries. The Government took out the Most Egregiously Stupid Award for the kit which urged Australians to report anything suspicious while asking them to be 'alert but not alarmed'." (04/10/03)

http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/04/09/1049567739732.html

News Mid-East reacts to fall of Baghdad BBC News

"There may be excited crowds welcoming the Americans in some areas of Baghdad, but for many in the Arab world this is still a black day. It is not that anyone is mourning the collapse of the regime of Saddam Hussein, but the Americans are still being seen as foreign occupiers. 'It is only the thieves and the looters who are celebrating,' said one Islamist lawyer in Cairo. 'The Americans have gobbled up an Arab country before our very eyes,' he said." (04/09/03)

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/2932833.stm

News US Military police acting as ‘censors’ in this war Arab News

"The American forces have put blanket restrictions on all unembedded reporters in Iraq, effectively banning them from traveling inside the country. Obtaining the necessary escort in order to report freely as an unembedded journalist is extremely difficult, if not impossible. Basically, the only journalists authorized to be in Iraq are those embedded with the troops, and they are escorted at all times. What those journalists are allowed to see and report on is controlled by the unit’s military commander. Yesterday, this Arab News journalist and others who were traveling together were detained by US Military Police for over four hours." (04/07/03)

http://www.arabnews.com/Article.asp?ID=24844

Commentary An Iraqi War quiz NA Samizdat by Carl Bussjaeger

"If you support the US war against Iraq, and object to anti-war protests, answer these few questions before opening your mouth. You do not need to share your answers with anyone else, but you should most certainly consider them very carefully." (04/03/03)

http://202.80.33.17/nas/warquiz.html


Commentary We see too much, we know too much Independent by John Pilger

"We now glimpse the forbidden truths of the invasion of Iraq. A man cuddles the body of his in-fant daughter; her blood drenches them. A woman in black pursues a tank, her arms outstretched; all seven in her family are dead. An American Marine murders a woman because she happens to be standing next to a man in a uniform. 'I'm sorry,' he says, 'but the chick got in the way.' Covering this in a shroud of respectability has not been easy for George Bush and Tony Blair. Millions now know too much; the crime is all too evident." (04/06/03)

http://argument.independent.co.uk/commentators/story.jsp?story=394406

Commentary Telling the Story Joseph Sobran website

"Many hawks feel that free speech ends at the water’s edge. (Not that they’re crazy about it on our own shores.)... American journalists are supposed to be 'embedded' in the war effort, observing 'message discipline.' That is, they are expected to stop practicing journalism without a government-issued license. In war, the adage has it, truth is the first casualty. But if your cause is just, why do you need lies and concealment? If your troops are fighting for freedom -- including 'Iraqi freedom' -- why not allow events to be reported freely? If you are sitting at home, cheering the war while watching it on television, shouldn’t you at least be willing to face what you’re supporting? Or does the war have to be edited for family viewing?" (04/03/03)

http://www.sobran.com/columns/2003/030403.shtml

Commentary Body counts, Rummy's plan, and the grisly stuff they don't want you to see San Francisco Chronicle by Mark Morford

"Dang that pesky collateral damage. Darn those brutal civilian deaths. Hundreds and hundreds of 'em, bloody decapitated mutilated bombed-out burned-out women and children and families, over there in Iraq. Just another irritating little side effect, doncha know, of forcibly liberating a people who didn't really ask to be liberated and who are pretty much getting reamed from both ends and aren't exactly rushing out into the streets by the grateful thousands .... What happened there, anyway? Just bad PR? Someone miss a memo? Did no one tell them we are the Great Liberator, the bringer of peace and calm and nice big oil conglomerates that will soon help them "manage" all their hundreds of billions' worth of delicious natural resources? Haven't they seen the joy and happiness we have brought to Afghanistan?" (04/04/03)

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/gate/archive/2003/04/04/notes040403.DTL

Commentary Which two wars? The Libertarian Enterprise by Alan Hutch

"Post-Cold War military doctrine, as stated in the 1993 'Bottom-Up Review' and the 1997 Quadrennial Defense Review, requires that the United States be prepared to fight two regional conflicts, almost simultaneously, with little or no warning and little or no help from our allies.... If the professionals of the armed forces maintain that they can fight and win two significant wars simultaneously, I'm inclined to believe them. The problem is, I count at least a dozen wars being fought with armed troops numbering in millions and comparable numbers of POWs, KIA, and casualties. My question is: Which two shall we fight?" (04/07/03)

http://www.webleyweb.com/tle/libe218-20030407-04.html

Commentary Ominous shadow over the First Amendment Las Vegas Review Journal by Vin Suprinowicz

"If the courts can and will now ban books simply by dubbing them 'nonsense' because they challenge what 'everybody knows,' will they next ban celebrated UCLA biomedical researcher Dr. Peter Duesberg's book, 'Inventing the AIDS Virus,' which challenges the notion that HIV causes AIDS? .... The work of John Lott and professor Gary Kleck, demonstrating that crime rates go down wherever more law-biding citizens own and carry guns? ... The next hearing date in the Schiff case is set for 1:30 p.m. Monday, when the government will seek to make permanent the judge's injunction against any further sales of the book 'The Federal Mafia.' At which point, the first book will have been banned in America solely for its political content." (04/06/03)

http://www.reviewjournal.com/lvrj_home/2003/Apr-06-Sun-2003/opinion/20962051.html

Commentary Biblical vengeance in the 21st century
Counter Punch by John Santon

"As American made projectiles rip through Iraqi tissue, fracture bone, severe heads and scatter what was once a human body onto fields, floors and walls, the Bush fascists in business and government are salivating for a bite of the carcass that is Iraq. European and Arab leaders want their share too and, as of late, are distancing themselves from the anti-Bush, anti-war stance they held not so long ago when the US bypassed the United Nations to grab Iraq for itself in clear violation of international law. The world over, corporations and governments, hardly distinguishable anymore, are playing the same dreadful game." (04/05/03)

http://www.counterpunch.org/stanton04052003.html

Commentary The dolphin that refused to fight Counter Punch by David Lindorff

"News that Takoma, the Navy's mine-detecting dolphin, has gone AWOL while on duty in the Persian Gulf, sets off a host of thoughts.... Dolphins, after all, are known to have brains that are larger than we humans are possessed of. And... there is no indication that dolphins engage in humanity's uniquely barbaric practice of war. It's possible then, that once he or she realized that her efforts were not a game anymore but were part of a campaign designed to enable one group of humans to kill large numbers of other humans, Takoma decided to split the oil-befouled waters of the Persian Gulf for the more tranquil and dolphin-friendly Indian Ocean." (04/03/03)

http://www.counterpunch.org/lindorff04032003.html


===
News New World Order video game debuts Game Infowire

"In New World Order, players meet Agent John Dobbs, one of the best military operatives in the world and GAT’s (Global Assault Team) newest recruit. Formed by some of the world’s most powerful nations, the GAT is a top-secret organization that has been brought together to stop The Syndicate, a group of militant separatists and terrorists who have set out to fill the world with fear, chaos and destruction -- unless Agent Dobbs and his team get to them first." (04/03/03)

http://www.gameinfowire.com/news.asp?nid=1970



News Afghan leader's key ally killed by Taliban forces
Independent

"A close ally of Afghan President Hamid Karzai was shot and killed in southern Afghanistan in what appeared to be the latest in a wave of attacks by resurgent Taliban, a provincial government official said yesterday.... The shooting is the latest in a series of attacks that have racked southern Afghanistan in recent weeks, including the killing of an International Red Cross worker and an ambush on a US military convoy that killed two American servicemen." (04/06/03)

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/asia_china/story.jsp?story=394430

News Cathedral condoms upset priest Ananova

"German souvenir packets of condoms with the image of a historic cathedral have been criticised by a Roman Catholic clergyman. The prophylactics featuring St Mary's Cathedral in Erfurt were the idea of local tourism officials. But St. Mary's Parish Priest Reinhard Hauke says the contraceptives represent an affront to the church's pro-life stance." (04/06/03)

http://www.ananova.com/news/story/sm_767287.html?menu=news.quirkies

News Wal Mart halts gun sales in CA LA Times/Canton Repository

"The California attorney general’s office on Friday said Wal-Mart stores in the Central Valley committed nearly 500 violations of the state’s gun laws, including selling weapons to felons and releasing firearms to buyers before the end of the required 10-day waiting period .... A spokesman for Wal-Mart Stores Inc. said the company agreed to temporarily halt firearms sales in California -- the first time the largest retailer in the United States has stopped gun sales across an entire state -- because the company is committed to correcting the problem." (04/05/03)

http://www.cantonrep.com/index.php?Category=23&ID=93160&r=1

News Nostalgic small town puts cannabis on its flag MAPINC/Moscow Times

"All leaders wanted to do was celebrate the history of their small town by creating a flag everyone would be proud to see flying above the rooftops. Instead, they have been mocked on national television for making a local plant their emblem. The local plant in question is cannabis.... In the 18th and 19th century, Novozybkovo was a major supplier of hemp, the tough coarse fiber of the cannabis plant. A factory in the town supplied the Russian Navy with the hemp used for ropes, and the plant was honored when it was placed on the town's coat of arms in the first quarter of the 19th century. " (04/05/03)

http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v03/n496/a02.html?397

News Pot café in N.B. inspires Montreal activists
Montreal Gazette

"On April 1, a Nova Scotia court became the third in Canada to throw out marijuana possession laws. Two days later, a Saint John, N.B., café that allows customers to smoke marijuana opened to the public ... 'This opens a door in Quebec," said Dylan Maxwell, owner of the Je l'ai boutique, a Duluth Ave. store specializing in hemp products and pot-related paraphernalia.'It's another question whether someone would (open a similar café here). You can only make money selling coffee at these places.' Selling marijuana is still illegal." (04/06/03)

http://www.canada.com/montreal/montrealgazette/story.asp?id=6A97E022-9CB6-48F9-A056-3043F3FC1464