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The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy : "Five years ago, Atlantic Monthly commissioned two academics, John Mearsheimer of Chicago University and Stephen Walt of Harvard, to write a significant article about the influence of the Israeli lobby on American foreign policy. When the piece was at last completed, the magazine declined to publish, deeming it too hot for delicate American palates. It eventually appeared in 2005, in the London Review of Books, provoking one of the most bitter media and academic rows of recent times. The authors were accused of antisemitism, and attacked with stunning venom by some prominent US commentators. Mearsheimer and Walt obviously like a fight, however, for they have now expanded their thesis into a book. "

The Predicted Financial Storm Has Arrived : "Contradictions now wrack the world's financial system, and a growing consensus exists between those who endorse it and those who argue the status quo is both crisis-prone as well as immoral. If we are to believe the institutions and personalities who have been in the forefront of the defense of capitalism, we are on the verge of a serious crisis-if not now, then in the near future. "

Fake Photos Helped Lead US to War in Iraq Add faked photos to the list of lies told by the Bush­Cheney Administration before its invasion of Iraq. In a town hall meeting in Bloomsburg, Pa. this week, Rep. Paul Kanjorski, a 12-term congressman, said that shortly before Congress was scheduled to vote on authorizing military force against Iraq, top officials of the CIA showed select members of Congress three photographs it alleged were Iraqi Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs), better known as drones. Kanjorski said he was told that the drones were capable of carrying nuclear, biological, or chemical agents, and could strike 1,000 miles inland of east coast or west coast cities.

Iraqi Children Robbed of Childhood - by Ahmed Ali BAQUBA - The violence around the continuing U.S. military operations in this city has robbed children of their childhood. Only two provincial schools and one private kindergarten school are functioning in this city of 280,000, located 30 mi. north of Baghdad. Most children know neither school nor play. Or even the food they want. "We parents can hardly meet the basic requirements of food," Mahdi Hassan, a father of four, told IPS.