Middle East expert Robert Fisk recently left Iraq where he was chronicling the rising resistance to the U.S. occupation. 10 U.S. soldiers have been killed in ambushes across Iraq in the past 15 days. Fallujah has been a hotbed of Iraqi resistance since April when U.S. troops fired into large crowds of civilians twice killing at least 18 people. Amy Goodman of "Democracy Now" interviewed Fisk on the situation.

Why has Bush shown enthusiasm for intervention in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict? There is politics: in Afghanistan, anarchy reigns. In Iraq, plans about a "democratic Iraqi government" have been shelved. In the U.S., news-stories are circulating, insinuating that the administration deliberately deceived the public about the existence of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. Thus, Bush needs an achievement in the Middle East. Uri Avnery comments.

U.S. debt is at $6.1 trillion and last year’s deficit alone was $158 billion, and climbing. On the global front, a UN agency reported, “Half the world lives on less than $2 a day, and of that total, a billion people survive on $1 a day.” Nevertheless, the U.S. relationship with Israel, since the post WWII period, has cost the taxpayers $3 trillion. Our treasury is being held hostage by the pushy Israeli Lobby and a servile Congress. Israel’s feeding frenzy is bleeding our nation bone dry. Enough is enough!

In the 1960s, neoliberal think tanks set out to overturn progressive public policy in the U.S. These right wing organizations include Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, the Carthage Foundation, the Earhart Foundation, the Charles G. Koch, David H. Koch and Claude R. Lambe charitable foundations, the Phillip M. McKenna Foundation, the JM Foundation, the John M. Olin Foundation, the Henry Salvatori Foundation, the Sarah Scaife Foundation, and the Smith Richardson Foundation. Richard Behan reports.

The Federal Communications Commission, despite sharp party-affiliated divisions, voted to relax key media ownership restrictions in the United States, permitting greater concentration of companies. The standards of American journalism have been shamed by scandals at the New York Times and by over-close, compliant relationships with political power before, during and after the war in Iraq. Serge Hamili reports.

The International Labor Organization recently released a report largely ignored by mainstream media. The numbers: 270 million workers are injured on the job yearly; 160 million develop work-related illness; 2 million die on the job. Ignacio Ramonet reports.

Relations between the US and Saudi Arabia have been tense since September 11, 2001, and were not improved by last month's suicide bombings in Riyadh, which killed some 40 people, mostly residents in foreign compounds. Saudi rulers are facing a radicalised Islamist current in society and also demands for reform within the country. Alain Gresh reports.

The New York Times sacrificed its top editor, Howell Raines, for the wrong reasons, argues Harper's publisher John MacArthur. If critics think 27 year-old Jayson Blair was loose with the facts, look at how the Times covered Iraq. MacArthur asks "What's a few made-up features compared with promoting an unjustifiable war?"