By order of Secretary Rice, the State Department will stop publishing its annual report “Patterns of Global Terrorism,” ceding responsibility for counting and analyzing worldwide terror attacks to the new National Counter-Terrorism Center. The order comes despite controversy over the… Read moreNational Counter-Terrorism Center takes over
Hopes for a moderately progressive pontiff who could loosen up the Chuch line on the supposed evils of condoms in the age of AIDS–or even an African or Latin American one who could help Catholicism rally against the aggressive inroads… Read morePope Benedict XVI: The empire strikes back
The business-continuity newsletter Continuity Central and the ecologist EarthTimes.org are among the few media outlets to take note that the long-awaited study of why the World Trade Center collapsed has been released by the National Institute of Standards and Technology…. Read moreNIST releases WTC collapse study
The death of Pope John Paul II has occassioned a great deal of speculation in the press about the influence of Opus Dei, the secretive ultra-conservative Catholic organization, in choosing his successor. One of the more strictly factual accounts, "Pope… Read moreOpus Dei in the news
Pope John Paul II, who died April 2, leaves a mixed legacy. In his native Poland, and elsewhere in the Communist world, he was a catalyst of revolutionary change in the ’80s, but this same anti-Communism caused him to ally… Read morePope leaves mixed legacy—will successor be Black?
From the LA Times, April 1: Fred Korematsu, the Japanese-American whose court case over his refusal to be interned during World War II went to the U.S. Supreme Court and became synonymous with this nation’s agonized debate over civil liberties… Read moreFred Korematsu dead at 86
Reads the latest communique from the Biotic Baking Brigade, dated March 30: William Kristol, founder of the Project for the New American Century (a leading neo-con think tank) and a key figure in American foreign policy for over 20 years,… Read morePNAC piggie gets just desserts
According to documents obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union, torture in occupied Iraq has not been confined to Abu Ghraib jail, where abuse and sexual humiliation of inmates caused worldwide outrage last year. The new revelations concern a facility… Read moreU.S. Army documents: Abu Ghraib was tip of iceberg
JTA reports that more than 500 scholars have now signed a petition blasting C-Span’s decision to air a talk by Holocaust-denier David Irving. JTA reports, “The petition was organized by the David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies in response… Read more500 scholars blast C-Span over Irving
President Bush has tapped Defense Deputy Secretary Paul Wolfowitz to take over as head of the World Bank. Bush told a news conference March 15 that Wolfowitz, now Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld’s top deputy, is “a compassionate, decent man who… Read moreBush nominates Wolfowitz to World Bank, keeps straight face
The administration of California’s Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has followed the Bush White House in producing "video press releases" neatly disguised as actual news items for distribution to TV news stations—Bush to promote the Iraq war, Arnold to promote his anti-union… Read more“Covert propaganda” in California
In another gesture of perverse irony, the Bush administration has appointed John Bolton, a longtime anti-UN ideologue, as ambassador to the UN (replacing John Danforth, who is stepping down). Currently State Department undersecretary for arms control (where he has exhibited… Read moreAnti-UN ideologue appointed UN ambassador
