Common Dreams

History shows such laws are soon followed by offences like 'being an enemy of the people'. By Eric Margolis

CNN's Pentagon correspondent Barbara Starr should be given some kind of award for the most outrageously off-target reporting on the newly released photos and videos of US torture and abuse of prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. By Jeremy Scahill

An extensive international study on the effects of climate change in the Arctic has reached some startling conclusions on issues ranging from how fast polar ice is melting to the impact on Inuit communities. By Michelle Macafee

Amnesty International and Global Witness today made public a simple, new guide, 'Are you looking for the perfect diamond?', to help shoppers ensure the diamonds they buy are conflict-free - - that they have not been traded to fund armed conflict and civil war.

Remember the `War on Terror'? The Bush administration has subtly redubbed it `The Long War' Some analysts see the name change as part of a battle to widen presidential powers. By Tim Harper

A World Trade Organisation decision that called European safety bans on genetically modified food illegal under its global trade rules could usher in a new phase of potentially hazardous "Frankenfoods" worldwide and further erosion of local protections, say environmental and advocacy groups.

This is the column I never wanted to write. I suppose the anti-abortion contingent is dancing in the streets at Judge Samuel A. Alito's confirmation to the U. S. Supreme Court, but it leaves me numb. It also leaves me confused. By Joyce Marcel

The world has gotten itself into a real jam. I mean a humdinger of a jam! As in John Paul Sartre's existential drama, No Exit, which so nicely portrays the inescapability of self-chosen evil, the inevitability of a self-made Hell, there seems to be no way out for the world. By Doug Soderstrom

A day of international protests against the occupation of Iraq, on Mar. 18, will mark the start of a series of demonstrations and mobilisations organised at the sixth World Social Forum, which ended Sunday in Venezuela. By Humberto Márquez

While contemplating the ill-starred presidency of G.W. Bush, I looked about for some sort of divine analogy. By Gore Vidal

By some time between last night and early this morning, the White House staff would have had the singularly uncomfortable task of informing President Bush that, in spite of all his Evangelical Zionist beliefs, the terrorists had in fact won the free and fair parliamentary elections in the Palestini

All markets are systems of rules that determine what sort of people are winners and what sort are losers. Politics is largely conflict among the different sorts – or classes – over who gets what.

Just four countries plant 99 percent of the world's genetically engineered (GE) crops, despite more than a decade of hype about the benefits of agricultural biotechnology. By Stephen Leahy

The Hearings by the Senate Judiciary Committee on President Bush's nomination of Judge Samuel Alito for a lifetime appointment to the U.S. Supreme Court are over. By Glenn Sugameli

Some 100,000 social activists from across the Americas and the world will soon be arriving in the Venezuelan capital, where they will condemn war and imperialism, and lend their support -- although not unconditionally -- to the changes introduced in this country by President Hugo Chávez.

Celebrated writer Arundhati Roy on Saturday refused to accept the prestigious Sahitya Akademi Award in protest against the Indian Government toeing the US line by "violently and ruthlessly pursuing policies of brutalisation of industrial workers, increasing militarisation and economic neo-liberalisa

Clean Water Act cases in Supreme Court could have far-reaching consequences

When the terror suspects held at Guantanamo Bay prison are brought before United States military judges next week, among them will be a minor captured as an "enemy combatant" by the U.S. army in Afghanistan some three years ago. By Haider Rizvi

An Out-of-Touch George Bush Now Presides Over a Lost Foreign War and a Morass of Influence Peddling. By Eric Margolis

Alice Walker, Cindy Sheehan, Susan Sarandon, Margaret Cho, Barbara Lee and Others Join Iraqi Women to Urge the Withdrawal of Foreign Troops and Foreign Fighters from Iraq

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) today issued new guidelines for responding to a radiological "dirty" bomb that would permit doses to the public equivalent to tens of thousands of chest X-rays without requiring intervention and cleanup.

Kurdish leaders have inserted more than 10,000 of their militia members into Iraqi army divisions in northern Iraq to lay the groundwork to swarm south, seize the oil-rich city of Kirkuk and possibly half of Mosul, Iraq's third-largest city, and secure the borders of an independent Kurdistan.

In 1994, the United States was the first nation to call for the elimination of landmines that killed and maimed hundreds of thousands of innocent people around the world. By Haider Rizvi

Fueled & stupefied by the zeal of our ever expansive consumption, we have failed to learn what it really means that the world is round, that the round earth is a closed spherical aquarium, with only so much clean water, so much clean air, so much oil, and arable soil, so many precious metals, so

Suddenly this week, scattered outposts in the media have started mentioning the "I" word, or at least the "IO" phrase: impeach or impeachable offense.

Senator Byrd on Monday expressed his strong concerns about possible violations of the Constitution in the Bush Administration's admitted practice of spying on American citizens. By US Senator Robert C. Byrd

World Trade Organisation (WTO) officials released a draft text Saturday of the meeting's final outcome pact, although disagreements among the group's 149 member countries -- most sharply between the richest and poorest -- could still scuttle the document. By Emad Mekay

Hundreds of South Korean protesters who have been scuffling with police at a WTO meeting in Hong Kong switched to peaceful Buddhist tactics Thursday: repeatedly kneeling and kowtowing as they marched to the convention centre where the trade talks were being held. By Helen Luk

A global public opinion survey shows people losing faith in governments, business and even non-governmental organizations. By Sanjay Suri

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