Jonathan Steele notes the widespread opposition of the citizens of Europe to the US war on Iraq. He also points to the substantive closeness of Bush and Kerry on foreign policy issues, and expects little to change with the 2008 US elections. Steele argues that Nato is a threat to Europe and must be disbanded, pointing out that Europe's security doesn't depend on the US. He concludes "Europeans must reach their decisions from a position of genuine independence. The US has always based its approach to Europe on a calculation of interest rather than from sentimental motives. Europe should do no less. We can and, for the most part, should be America's friends. Allies, no longer."

The state Department of Natural Resources is considering the sale to private developers of thousands of acres in and around some of Maryland's most scenic parks and forestland.

Looks like the CIA career staff don't like the Bush neocons blaming them for "intelligence failures," and leading the country off a cliff.

SEE (skip the 911 stuff):
http://baltimore.indymedia.org/newswire/display/8754/index.php

An analysis of progressive's failure to recognize a radical paradigm shift; the Bush neocons are playing by new laws of the jungle. Provides many examples evidencing a slide toward corporate fascism in the US.

Note reference to "right-wing fundamentalists." The Iraqi resistance knows about US politics.

In a telephone interview with Al-Jazeera television, Saif al-Deen al-Baghdadi, an official of the insurgents' political office [in Mosul], urged militants to fight U.S. forces outside Fallujah.

"I call upon the scores or hundreds of the brothers from the mujahedeen ... to press the American forces outside" Fallujah, al-Baghdadi said.

"We chose the path of armed jihad and say clearly that ridding Iraq of the occupation will not be done by ballots. Ayad Allawi's government ... represents the fundamentalist right-wing of the White House and not the Iraqi people."

A Model for the Developing World

"I think that the greatest fear the U.S. government has about Cuba's health care system is that Americans might start asking key questions. Why does Cuba, with very little money, have such an advanced medical program? Why does the United States, the richest country in the world, operate a medical "system" that would be the envy of societies that existed in the Middle Ages? The problem is not with our health care workers, who are on par with the best in the world, but the profit-dominated system we have to work in."

this makes a much better argument for universal health care than the argument that uses canada as a model

The easy smile on Kerry's face as he conceded to Bush should have made a few things clear.

For a year, Julee Lacey stopped in a CVS pharmacy near her home in a Fort Worth suburb to get refills of her birth-control pills. Then one day last March, the pharmacist refused to fill Lacey's prescription because she did not believe in birth control. States are passing laws to protect pharmcists who do this.