"Economy of Scale." Republicans flatter small-business owners as the economic backbone of the nation, and these entrepreneurs tend to respond in kind, with campaign contributions at least double those benefiting Dems. But Joshua Kurlantzick reports that George W. Bush has been a disaster for American small businesses, which employ more than half the private-sector workforce. He's gutted the Small Business Administration, and a new tax agenda heralded as small-business-friendly has instead (surprise!) only enriched wealthy individuals and megacorps. Likewise with Bush policies on health insurance, military contracting and international trade. Read the rundown in Harper's Magazine (July).
"I ain't marching any more." "They said it was war with one evil man, but ... I saw it as an attack on innocent people." So says Mohsin Khan, a Brit who went AWOL from the Royal Air Force last year rather than serve in Iraq. He's not alone: In an article in The Guardian (June 12), Natasha Walter explores the law surrounding conscientious objectors in the U.K. and the U.S., and talks with British and American soldiers who consider Bush's war illegal, immoral or both. www.guardian.co.uk/antiwar/story/0,12809,1235782,00.html
"New Report Documents Extensive US War Crimes in Iraq." Abu Ghraib merely scratches the surface of a much deeper problem: The Bush Administration's record in Iraq is one in which war crimes including "unlawful killings, mass arrests, and collective punishment [and] outright theft and pillage" are routine, according to a new report by the Center for Economic and Social Rights. The international human rights organization says the White House's self-exemption from the Geneva Conventions created the climate for such abuse. Find a link to the June 10 report at Electronic Iraq.
electroniciraq.net/news/1548.shtml
"State Dept. Understated Terrorism Attacks." Still claiming they can wage war on a strategy called terror -- the conceptual equivalent of waging war on, say, wishful thinking -- the Bushies spent the spring touting a report that terrorist attacks in 2003 numbered just 190 worldwide. That would be the lowest level in 34 years. Turns out, though, that the number of attacks and related fatalities actually rose last year, a State Department spokesman acknowledged. But as Barry Schweid reports for the Associated Press (June 11), the correct numbers aren't yet in.
news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20040611/ap_on_go_ca_st_pe/powell_terror_report
