The American government and its subjects are deep in debt.

A very well written commentary about the coming Fascist state.

December 15, 2000 Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador was elected mayor of Mexico City on a Democratic Revolution Party ticket (PRD). Ixchel Delaporte reports on Lopez Obrador's three years in office and the hopes for democratization in Mexico.

"The symbol of the future is a boot permanently stamping on the human face. (George Orwell, 1984)"

A sad story that is repeated almost on a daily basis.

Former United Nations weapons inspector Scott Ritter argues that "the misrepresentation and distortion of fact carried out by President Bush and Prime Minister Blair is no joke, but rather represent an assault on the very fabric of the concept of a free and democratic society which they espouse to serve." US Congressional investigation, Ritter says, should focus on the actions of the Bush administration in shaping the intelligence agencies' estimates to be consistent with the political objectives of the administration's Iraq policy-makers.

Mainstream media is falling into line with the Bush administration in framing the crimes of Saddam Hussein, e.g., the Washington Post website offered a summary of "Events in the Life of Saddam Hussein" from the Associated Press. Stephen Shalom notes that this chronology is seriously incomplete and corrects it to include--indented and in brackets--some of the most serious omissions.

Iraqi Media Network's Al Iraqiya radio and television station is run by a California-based multinational--Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC). Yet Iraqi television viewers usually tune to either Al Jazeera or Al Arabiya, the popular Middle Eastern satellite channels. SAIC's biggest source of income is surveillance especially for the US spy agencies: it is reportedly the largest recipient of contracts from the National Security Agency (NSA) and one of the top five contractors to the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). Pratap Chatterjee reports.