Interviewer Leigh Sales managed to remind Rice that acts of terrorism had soared since the U.S. invasion, but Spin Queen didn't miss a beat. "It shows that we are actually pursuing them for the first time and they are fighting back". By this logic the White House will have won the war, once the terrorists have blown up the whole world.

Sales did not ask Rice how she felt about the consequences of the invasion, about the million dead Iraqis, the millions of refugees, the wrecking of Baghdad, the brutality of the occupiers. No mention of a resistance. Everything bad in the world, according to Rice, is created by terrorists, whose mission is to "bomb and murder innocent people for their own ideological purposes". A mission best left to the U.S. air force.  . . read more

Drawing from a host of media reports, a jig-saw-puzzle picture of sexual torture employed in the War on Terror begins to emerge. Scotland’s Sunday Herald reports that a former Iraqi prisoner claimed that there is a photo of a civilian translator raping a male juvenile prisoner; he stated, “They covered all the doors with sheets. I heard the screaming… and the female soldier was taking pictures.”... Such interrogation practices were not limited to Iraq. According to a report in the Sydney Morning Hearld: “Female interrogators tried to break Muslim detainees at Guantanamo Bay by sexual touching, wearing a miniskirt and thong underwear and in one case smearing a Saudi man's face with fake menstrual blood"...

The clock is ticking down on the Bush administration. For all their respective protestations, one can only wonder whether the next president will (secretly) approve the use of cruel, humilating and degrading interrogation techniques, especially sexual terror. Hidding behind plausible deniability is one of the oldest practices of those in power. Morality and the law nearly always take second place to expedience and necessity, whether real or invented. [More] . . read more

Naturally, every politician inside the American Beltway misses the aforementioned contradiction and agrees with Dick Cheney that the Russians must not be allowed to have their way. After all, it is Washington's world now and, even if there is hardly a horse's hair worth of difference between the governments in Washington and Moscow, Moscow can not be allowed to think that it can be Washington's equal on the world stage.

It is in historical moments like this that the citizen can truly see how little they matter. We have two powerful regimes trifling over a piece of territory that most of the world could care less about. Both of these regimes have proven that they are more than willing to kill thousands of people, destroy hundreds of square miles of land and water, and waste billions of dollars in doing so just so they can establish their position in their battle to control their world. It is their world because no matter how it turns out they will profit and we will pay. [More] . . read more

As we have seen in the recent running of the Olympic torch - turned into a protester obstacle course - everything is on the table. The repression of speech by Olympic officials occurs precisely because many athletes want to talk... And yet, while I support the right of any athlete to speak out and not be silenced by Olympic bureaucrats to make things pleasant for China's rulers, we should also look critically at what it is that people are protesting...

None of this 2008 crop of athletes is daring to say that maybe protest begins at home. They are raising concerns about China's policies in Tibet or Darfur, but not the U.S. wars in Iraq or Afghanistan. There are concerns about China's labor standards, but not the way their own sponsors, like Nike, exploit those standards... Blaming China for the ills of the world ignores the stubborn fact that there is a reason the games are in Beijing. Western complicity in China's crimes isn't challenged by bashing China. It's only covered up. [More] . . read more

The great issue facing Australia is the division between our different ethnic and religious groups; and between all of us late comers and the First People’s of the land. Good Friday is all about reconciliation - reconciliation between humanity and God through the cross of Christ. That will never change.

A public holiday about reconciliation, the very message of Good Friday, is of great importance for Australia. The public apology by the Prime Minister was a major first step towards reconciliation and a public holiday would make reconciliation a part of Australia’s national identity.

In our multicultural, multi faith society, we have to respect others. To have a religiously based public holiday may not be appropriate any more. . . read more

We need to learn the painful lessons of the Iraq War if we're going to secure this country and renew America's leadership. The first thing we have to understand is what happened in Iraq. Because there are two ways to look at this. The first way is to say that Iraq is a disaster because of George Bush's mismanagement. Or because of the arrogance and incompetence of Dick Cheney or Donald Rumsfeld in prosecuting the war. Or because Iraq's Prime Minister just hasn't been up to the job.

But I take a different view. I think the problem isn't just how we've fought the war - it's that we fought the war in the first place. Because the truth is, the war in Iraq should never have been authorized, and it should never have been waged. The Iraq War had nothing to do with al Qaeda or 9/11. It was based on exaggerated fears and unconvincing intelligence. And it has left America less safe, and less respected around the world.  . . read more

We live on the ground floor so we headed to the basement. 

Not very far from our home is the headquarters of the police and there was a massive bomb. The chief of police was killed. Two streets away there was another bomb and more people were killed. The office of the president is about one kilometre from our house and it was also bombed. 

We went downstairs to the basement and tried to hide ourselves from the shelling. The child of one of our relatives, who lives in our building, finally came home from school. We hadn't been able to find her. All the phone connections were jammed. She came home and she was in a very serious state of shock. She was pale and trembling and she was describing dead bodies in the streets. On her way home she passed Hamas people in uniform and they were dead. 

I had been very apprehensive when I woke up this morning. I had some bread, some cheese and a glass of tea. Like all the people in Gaza I felt that something was going on and something very serious. When Israel allowed the delivery of food and fuel [when it ended the blockade of Gaza yesterday] I said to myself and my friends that Israel is really planning a massive strike. They don't want to be blamed for starving the people. 

I was sitting in the living room with my family trying to figure out what to do today for lunch, it's our main meal. What to cook and how to cook, whether we have enough to eat. There was no rice so I wanted to have lentil soup and my wife said "No, there's no lentils in the market." I said "What else can we do?" She said "I bought some cans of food." We were discussing this when suddenly the whole thing erupted. Suddenly there was a big explosion. 

Right now I feel very anxious about what's going to happen. I'm worried about how many more people are going to die. 

Dr Eyad Al Serraj is a practising psychologist in Gaza City.  . . read more

As the two car convoy was waiting nearby, an American helicopter nearby opened fire on the vehicles. As the vehicles were hit, the drivers attempted to seek cover, but both vehicles were repeatedly shot and disabled. The helicopter landed but instead of assisting those shot and needing medical help, the American soldiers killed any survivors and then wrote numbers on the foreheads of some.

Several children including a young girls body are clearly visible, and the wounds suffered by the men are horrific. The vehicle is clearly shot with many rounds and the seats and road is covered with blood. Iraqi police were called to the scene to remove the bodies, and some video footage was taken - it has been repeatedly removed from YouTube but links to the video can be found here. It is clear that these people were unarmed civilians.

This story has not yet migrated to mainstream media, and probably never will. Surely it’s time Australia started to question its long held alliance with the U.S. military, the most lawless, trigger happy, unaccounable and sadistic bunch of lunatics on the planet.  . . read more

Why, more to the point, do we believe destruction is good? Perhaps it's a deep birth metaphor: bloodiness, pain, and labor produce a child when the struggle is over. Aztecs thought warriors who died in battle and women who died in childbirth were entitled to special recognition in the afterworld. Warriors who face death before their natural time are counted noble when they die...

War not only destroys bodies and land and community of the 'enemy'. It corrupts the human conscience of the aggressor. This is why warmongers always argue their war as righteous, revenging attack, as the action of victims not violators. Intentions do not change the acts. [More] . . read more