Today's Stories

June 18, 2008

Vijay Prashad
Obama's Genuflections

June 17, 2008

Conn Hallinan
The Brain Trauma Vets

Wajahat Ali
Chomsky Speaks: On Iran and Iraq

Marjorie Cohn
Reviving Habeas Corpus

Uri Avnery
Two Professors: Mearsheimer and Walt in Israel

David Macaray
Adversarial Relationship

Rannie Amiri
Forgotten Lives in a Forgotten War

Website of the Day
Pentagon Money

June 16, 2008

Uri Avnery
An Apology

Corey D. B. Walker
The Racial Politics of Symbols

Howard Lisnoff
Files Upon Files

Dennis Loo
2008 Elections: Of Whales and Worms

Paul Craig Roberts
Obama and the Fall Into Tyranny

June 13 / 15, 2008

Douglas Valentine
McCain: War Hero or Go-To Collaborator?

Alexander Cockburn
Change, What Change?

Jeffrey St. Clair
The Politics of Timber Theft

Peter Linebaugh
On Wat Tyler Day

Ishmael Reed
The Colossus: Sonny Rollins, Take One

Joe Bageant
Old Dogs and Hard Time

Harry Browne
Ireland Shows the Way!

Andy Worthington
The Supreme Court's Gitmo Decision: What Does It Mean?

Jeff Sharlet
The F-Word

Binoy Kampmark
They Gassed Us: Agent Orange in OZ

Alan Farago
His Little Piece of the Pie

Brian Cloughley
America the Detested: the Pakistan Airstrikes

Manuel Garcia, Jr.
How to Stretch Gasoline

Reza Fiyouzat
Oil and Racism

Patrick Bond /
Richard Kamidza
How Europe Underdevelops Africa

David Yearsley
Music in the Rubble

Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Thank You, Dennis Kucinich!

Ronnie Cummins
Don't Panic; Go Organic

Dan Bacher
Bush Tries to Raid Salmon Disaster Funds

Michael Dickinson
Jesus in Megiddo Prison

Seth Sandronsky
My Father's World

Poets' Basement
Tu Fu / Rexroth

Website of the Weekend
Torture and the American Psyche

June 12, 2008

Judith Levine
As Cranes Fall and People Die

Patrick Cockburn
Amid Iraqi Fury, U.S. Offers Concessions on Military Bases

Saul Landau
The Iraq War Becomes Suicidal

Christopher Brauchli
Bush Bling-Bling: Government by Crony

Norman Solomon
Deadly Diplomacy

Helen Redmond
Why Can't We All Get KennedyCare?

Laura Carlsen
No Rest for the Working Poor

Jeremy R. Hammond
Threats Against Iran Escalate

Anne Landman
Pinkwashing: Can Shopping Cure Breast Cancer?

Website of the Day
Fire in Watts

June 11, 2008

Paul Craig Roberts
Why Oil Prices Are So High

Ralph Nader
Wall Street Gamblers

Joshua Frank
Why I Can't Support Barack Obama

Clifton Ross
Conversation in Miami: the Neoliberal Left and Socialism

Muhammad Idrees Ahmad
Whatever Happened to "Democracy Now?"

Stephen Lendman
Exposing Pentagon and CIA Corruption

Diane Farsetta
Talking Back to Bill O'Reilly

Ron Jacobs
The Sixties Painted Black

Deborah Rich
Hay Belly Nation: the FDA and the O-Word

Hop Wechsler
A Friend of Women? My Bill Clinton ... and Ours

Website of the Day
A New Path to the Waterfall

June 10, 2008

Alan Farago
John McCain and the Company He Keeps

James G. Abourezk
Deadly Fallout From Obama's Groveling Before Israel Lobby

Saree Makdisi
Banned in the U.S.A. (Almost)

Malini Johar Schueller
A Picture From Beirut

John Ross
Killing Foods, Killing People

Wajahat Ali
Rumi and Sufism

Peter Morici
Bernanke Aggravates Recession Risks

Jordan Flaherty
Inside Angola Prison, Louisiana's Last Slave Plantation

Gary Macfarlane
Collaboration on the Clearwater: Is It Legitimate?

Joanne Mariner
The Gitmo Trials: an Inglorious Start

Website of the Day
The End of the Clinton Machine?

June 9, 2008

Uri Avnery
No, I Can't: Obama, Israel and AIPAC

Nikolas Kozloff
McCain & the Republican Insitute: Promoting Iraqi Occupation for "a Million Years"

Allan Nairn
Drawing Your Last Breath Hungry

Dennis Loo
Threats on Iran and the "Batterer's Defense"

Harry Browne
Irish Euro Vote Comes Down to the Wire

C. Hand
U. S. Bid to Hike Iran's Gas Prices Seems Doomed

Peter Morici
An Unsustainable Trade Deficit

Kenneth Couesbouc
A Ripe Time for Inflation

Martha Rosenberg
The Inconvenient Senator Grassley

James L. Secor
Chinese Superstition or Unconscious Oracle?

Website of the Day
Pay Bo Diddley!

June 7 / 8, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
Obama Goes Over the Top

Ishmael Reed
How Miles Davis Changed My Life

Jeffrey St. Clair
What a Miner's Life is Worth

Nikolas Kozloff
Meet the King the Beers: John McCain and Latin America

Dave Lindorff
The High Cost of a Single War-Like Remark: Oil Prices, Israel, Iran and the U.S.

Robert Fantina
When Truth is the Casualty

Conn Hallinan
Iran and Rumors of War

Neve Gordon
The Occupation and the Politics of Death

Tom Barry
The Deterrence Strategy of Homeland Security

Patrick Irelan
Raiding the Packing House

Tim Wise
Your Whiteness is Showing

David Ker Thomson
The Hard Question

Joshua Frank
"Socialist" Wins Republican Nomination in Montana

David Yearsley
Disaster Music

James T. Phillips
1968: Year of the Rat

Joe Allen
The Real Bobby Kennedy

P. Sainath
Making Life Brighter in Kondapur

David Macaray
Should Unions be More Democratic?

B.R. Gowani
Experience and the Two-for-One

Fred Gardner
What Happened (at the DA's Office)

Peter Harley
Technology to the Rescue? Kurzweil and the Human Machines

Michael Dickinson
Surrender the Bones of Geronimo!

Jen Roesch
Where are the Real Women in Sex and the City?

Poets' Basement
Gibbons, Landau, and Buknatski

Website of the Day
Partying with the Waltons

June 6, 2008

Frank Barat
An Interview with Ilan Pappé and Noam Chomsky on the Future of Israel / Palestine

Patrick Cockburn
U.S. Extorts Iraq to Approve Military Deal

Gary Leupp
Cheney Enrages Iraqis Over Security Deal

James Abourezk
Name That Terrorist

Peter Morici
Recession Grips the Jobs Market

Faheem Hussain
What is NATO Doing in Afghanistan?

Andy Worthington
Guantánamo's Britons Go on Hunger Strike

Ayesha Ijaz Khan
How Will Musharraf Go? Impeachment or Safe Exit?

Dave Lindorff
Congress Needs to Defend Itself

Website of the Day
Backstage with Bo Diddley

June 5, 2008

Patrick Cockburn
Bush's Secret Deal Would Ensure Permanent U.S. Occupation of Iraq

Sharon Smith
Hillary's Wreckage

Nikolas Kozloff
Obama's Electoral Dilemma: Latinos or Reagan Democrats?

Linn Washington, Jr.
Police Brutality and Cover-Up in Philly

Omar Barghouti
60 Years of Nakba, 41 Years of Occupation ...

Scott Pellegrino
Jim Crow Radio: Bob Grant's Lifetime Achievement Award

John Walsh
Obama Woos AIPAC

Dan Bacher
The Parching of California

DC Larson
Nazi Rockers ... F-Off

Robert Jensen
Masculine, Feminine or Human?

Website of the Day
Ohio Cops Attack Long Walkers

June 4, 2008

Eric Walberg
Princess Patricia and the Taliban

Gary Leupp
Iran and EFPs: Chronology of a Lie

Ralph Nader
Disenfranchised Youth

Dave Lindorff
Of Whiners and Poor Losers

George Wuerthner
Farm Economics

Victor M. Rodriguez
The Puzzle of Race and Politics

Remi Kanazi
Why a Cultural Boycott of Israel is Needed

Stephane Luçon
Renault's Romanian Fairyland Suspended

Farzana Versey
The Tablighi Jamaat Movement

Laray Polk
The Militarization of Space

Website of the Day
Red State Rebels

June 3, 2008

Paul Craig Roberts /
Lawrence M. Stratton
Legislating Tyranny

Mike Whitney
The Withering Economy

Steve Early
San Juan Showdown

Manuel Otero
Why Hillary Won Puerto Rico: the View from the Colony

George Bisharat
The Hope of a Victimized People

Nikolas Kozloff
Obama's VP Quandry

Dan Bacher
Death on the Salmon Highway

Website of the Day
Censoring Bill Knott?

June 2, 2008

Uri Avnery
The Olmert Scandal

Nikolas Kozloff
Obama's Latino Problem Getting Worse

Allan J. Lichtman
Revisionist History: Bush, Borah and Hitler

Malini Johar Schueller
The Color of Randomness: Returning to the US From Beirut Via Syria

Robert Weissman
What's Driving Skyrocketing Oil Prices?

Peter Morici
Bailing Out Wall Street

Manuel Garcia, Jr.
Don't Get Burned: How to Protect Yourself From Raytheon's Pain Gun

John Ross
Celebrating Catholic Fanaticism in Mexico

Ahmad Al-Akhras
Encounters with the Watch List

Website of the Day
Man on Earth

May 31 / June 1, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
The Worst is Yet to Come

Jeffrey St. Clair
Arkansas Bloodsuckers

Gary Leupp
How McClellan Prettifies Bush

Stan Cox
Broken Agriculture

Rannie Amiri
Lebanon: the Domino That Wouldn't Fall

P. Sainath
A Guaranteed Day's Work--in the Fields, at 110 Degrees, for $2 a Day

Binoy Kampmark
Going Bankrupt in Vallejo

Robert Fantina
Bush, Rice and McClellan

Seth Sandronsky
Will There be Water Riots, as Sacramento Goes Dry?

Corporate Crime Reporter
Death Penalty for Bush?

Anthony DiMaggio
Gaming the Ghetto: Grand Theft Auto IV, Racist Media and the Concrete Jungle

Karl Grossman
A Half-Trillion for Nukes

Matt Reichel
From Vegas to the Heartland and Back Again

Paul Myron Hillier
Of Gas and God

Andy Worthington
Suicide at Guantánamo

David Yearsley
And the Winner is ... Wayne Shorter

Daniel Cassidy
Free Lunch

Charles Thomson
If Hitler Had Been a Hippy ...

Gary Corseri
A Dream Deferred: Activism and the Arts

Wajahat Ali
Sex and the City Through a Man's Eyes

Ron Jacobs
Robins Weep

Poets' Basement
McNeill and Davies

Website of the Day
Last Charge of the Light Horse

May 30, 2008

Bassam Aramin
Here's the Truth You've Been Running From

Andrew Cockburn
Petraeus' Iran Obsession

Saul Landau
How We Got Into This Mess

Nikolas Kozloff
Meet South America's New Secessionists

Robert Sandels
Turning Back the Clock on Cuba

Dave Lindorff
Talk is Cheap

Martha Rosenberg
Raiding Big Meat; Arresting the Wrong People

Harvey Wasserman
Lieberman & McCain: Linking Internet Censorship and Atomic Reactor Terror

Doug Giebel
A Plague on Both Your Houses (of Congress)

Shaun Harkin
The Trial of the Raytheon 9

Website of the Day
The Once and Future Environmental Movement

May 29, 2008

Jeffrey St. Clair
Bill Clinton and the Rich Women

Nikolas Kozloff
Puerto Rico, Obama and the Politics of Race

Col. Dan Smith
Deceiving the Dead

Karl Grossman
The Most Lucrative Incentive for Nuclear Power in the History of the United States

William S. Lind
Inside the Washington Game

Robert Weissman
What to do About the Price of Oil

Dave Lindorff
Why Puerto Rico Won't Matter

David Macaray
A Union Fable

Chris Genovali
Fear and Loathing in the Northern Rockies

Laura Carlsen
Mexico's Battle Over Oil

Website of the Day
Support Antiwar.com

May 28, 2008

Wajahat Ali
The Libertarian Dark Horse: An Exclusive Interview with Ron Paul

Ralph Nader
What's Really Driving the High Price of Oil?

Brian McKenna
Why I Want to Teach Anthropology at the Army War College

Corporate Crime Reporter
Why Vincent Bugliosi Wants to Prosecute George W. Bush for Murder

Brian Cloughley
The Attack on Damadola

Eric Walberg
Opium for the Masses from Afghanistan

Michael Dickinson
Raytheon's Pain Ray: Coming to a Protest Near You

Ijaz Khan
Opening Windows in Pakistan

Website of the Day
Older Than America

May 27, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
In Her Mind She's Killed Before: the Plot to Assassinate Ralph Nader

Greg Kafoury
Is Obama Turning (Further) Right?

Jean Bricmont
Western Delusions

Tim Wise
Farrakhan is not the Problem

Ricardo Alarcón
Puerto Rico's Turn

Stephen Soldz
APA Supports Psychologist Engagement in Bush Regime Interrogations

Andy Worthington
The Guantánamo 16

Alan Singer
Vapid, Stupid and Insulting: Chuck Schumer Speaks to the Graduates

Richard Neville
Storm in an A-Cup

Susie Day
Gone with the W

May 26, 2008

Uri Avnery
The Syrian Option

Bill Quigley
War Immemorial Day

Col. Dan Smith
Retreating from Hell: a Different Memorial Day

Cindy Sheehan
Why Memorial Day is a Double-Whammy for Me

Marjorie Cohn
Hillary's Assassination Politics: Her Last Shot?

Fred Gardner
Does the VA Care?

Raymond J. Lawrence
Pain Pays: Getting Rich at NY Presbyterian Hospital

Harvey Wasserman
Mugging the Election System

Moncia Benderman
Truth Matters

David Rovics
In Praise of Utah Phillips

Website of the Day
Fox News Jokes About "Knocking Off" Osama and Obama

May 24 / 25, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
Death-Wish Hillary Primes Manchurian Candidate

Jeffrey St. Clair
Yellowstone: How Sununu Shrank the Ecosystem

Barbara Rose Johnston
Dam Legacies, Damned Futures

Nikolas Kozloff
U.S. Fourth Fleet in Venezuelan Waters

Adriana Kojeve
The Environment and the 2008 Elections

Robert Fantina
Justice Department's Revelations on Torture

Dave Lindorff
Bush's War on Children in Iraq

David Yearsley
The War on Kitsch

Nelson P. Valdés
The Buying of "Democracy" Agents in Cuba

Kathleen M. Barry
Celebrating Ethnic Cleansing

John Ross
Mexico's Narco Opera Reaches for High Point

Allison Kilkenny
Apathy Doesn't Live in Bronx

Fred Gardner
Orangeburg, 1968

Elizabeth Schulte
Can the Whole World be Fed?

Daniel Gross
Remembering the Wendy's Massacre: the Dangerous Side of Retail Work

Christopher Brauchli
The Search for a Token Right-winger

Richard Rhames
A Nation of Sheep

Daniel Cassidy
My Mother

Poets' Basement
Davies, Klipschutz and Willson

Website of the Weekend
Happy Birthday, Bob

May 23, 2008

Paul Craig Roberts
War Abroad, Poverty at Home

Alan Farago
The Radical Extremists of the Building Industry

Conn Hallinan
Ballots and Bullets: From Beirut to Bolivia

Mark Engler
The World After Bush

George Wuerthner
Cars and Cows: Living Large in America

Kamran Matin
The Kurds and American Neo-Imperialism

Sandy Boyer /
Shaun Harkin
The Long Incarceration of Pol Brennan

Robert Weitzel
A "Holey" Instrument of Peace in Iraq

Cindy Sheehan
An Uphill Battle

Liaquat Ali Khan
Pakistan's Futile Constitutional Amendment

Website of the Day
A Message from the Moral Compass of the McCain Campaign

May 22, 2008

Vijay Prashad
Racist Grammar

Joanne Mariner
A Military Commissions Cheat Sheet

Sharon Smith
60 Years of Apartheid

Jeff Birkenstein
Disaster Redux: Some Early Thoughts on the Earthquake in China

Brendan McQuade
From Obama to the PRTs in Iraq

Peter Morici
The Sorry State of the Banking Industry

Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Restoration Boulevard

Dave Zirin
What I Want to Ask Mary Tillman

Ron Jacobs
CPR for the Antiwar Movement

Stephen Lendman
Immoral Hazard

Website of the Day
Hagee: God Sent Hitler to Drive the Jews to Israel

May 21, 2008

Jeffrey St. Clair
The Gothic Politics of Hillary Clinton

Nikolas Kozloff
U.S. Military Bases in South America

Alan Farago
Miami, Cuba and the Presidential Campaign

Dave Lindorff
Big John and the Scary, Scary Iran Threat

David Model
Genocide in Iraq?

Eric Walberg
Afghanistan: Who is the Enemy?

Franklin Lamb
Lebanon Gets a President

Kenneth Couesbouc
Tax Against Tyranny

Website of the Day
Child Labor and War-Affected Children: a Photo Essay

May 20, 2008

Ralph Nader
A Trip Inside Google

Uri Avnery
With Friends Like These

Patrick Irelan
The Empire and the Fleet

Ray McGovern
Come Out, Admiral Fallon, Wherever You Are

David Macaray
The UAW Strike Against American Axle

Chris Genovali
Big Oil on the Water: Skating Around the Tanker Issue

Ibrahim Fawal
Birmingham, Israel and the Nakba

Christopher Ketcham
Let Us Now Praise Famous Suicides

Andy Worthington
Guantánamo Trial Delayed

Martha Rosenberg
Merck is a Repeat Offender

Website of the Day
Defend the Students Who Pied Tom Friedman

May 19, 2008

Saul Landau
Cuba Will Live

Paul Craig Roberts
The Metamorphosis of the Conservative Movement

Brian McKenna
Brotherly Love in Philly's Badlands

Patrick Cockburn
City of the Dead: Mosul on Lockdown

B. R. Gowani
The Central Problem Pakistan Needs to Tackle

Dr. Trudy Bond
Psychologists and Torture: If Not Now, When?

Cindy Sheehan
Whose War is It?

John Mohawk
The Warriors Who Turned to Peace

Remi Kanazi
When Free Speech Doesn't Come for Free

Robert Day
I Get a Horse

Website of the Day
Evolve or Die

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Enough is Enough

Bush in London

By DAVID WILSON

When George W Bush had tea with the Queen on Sunday afternoon at Windsor Castle the BBC reported that he apparently “showed particular interest in a suit of armour worn by Henry VIII.” The man shows particular interest in all things to do with violence and war just so long as he doesn’t have to get too close. By the time of Henry VIII the days were long gone when Kings and Emperors stepped inside their suits of armour and headed out for the battlefield.  Henry’s suit was no more genuine of its purpose than George Bush’s pilot’s jacket on that warship under that sign, ‘Mission Accomplished’.  But Henry recedes into memories of multi-marriage and jolly obesity besides this particular ‘long-distance’ warrior, who is to our age and times particularly foul. It’s not his ignorance and imbecility with language, his simian simper, his half-smile facial twistings, his ‘I’ve wet my pants’ cowboy gait. All that might make him almost attractive to us. No, it’s the fact that all this combines to be used as a façade to allow a tremendous barbarity to advance behind the man, and behind the man lurks evidence that Bush is an absurd Dauphin, neither the real power nor the main cog or engine for the awfulness of the world he sits astride and shits upon.  Bush reminds me of a Jules Verne machine,  made of metal and absurd and unworkable in its structure and mechanics, but representative of a reality that is neither absurd nor unworkable, but is truly awful. Millions of dead awful.

With this in mind many of us were in Parliament Square on the afternoon of George’s visit to London and had planned to march up Whitehall past No 10 Downing Street where Bianca Jagger, Brian Eno,  Dennis Halliday, David Edgar, Haifa Zangana and others would deliver 28 statements accusing George Bush of war crimes and expressing their anger that our government was hosting his visit and continuing to armour up for his wars.

Whitehall is a traditional route for marches, protests and processions. Stop the War Coalition have marched the route, picketed Downing Street, even camped on the road outside. Never, ever, in my fifty years of marching has it been closed off entirely; ‘green’zoned’.

A rally in Parliament Square had been good-humoured and full of chants, music, whistles and drumming. “Give Peace a Chance’ could be heard from a sound system. And yet there were signs of things to come. A young man I know was detained and searched under one of the growing numbers of ‘Terrorism’ acts! Then at 6.45 pm we set off towards Whitehall to march to Trafalgar Square. Led by Tony Benn,  (age 82) Walter Wolfgang (age 85), Bianca Jagger and Brian Eno  who carried with them their statements together with a pair of children’s handcuffs,  (a symbol of the war criminals they might be passing en route)  we were forbidden entry into the road. Bianca had her handcuffs grabbed from her by a policeman who had been trained to recognize a security threat when he saw one. We were met by a phalanx of metal pens, concrete road obstructs, riot-geared police, their wagons and their ferocity. Those at the front who dared place their hands on the steel barriers were whacked by truncheoned police. I have the number of one of them. PL 397. One young police-whacked man who, in the words of an off-duty nurse, told me would need at least nine stitches to his head, was prevented access to an ambulance. Two people remain hospitalized as I write this a day later.

Enough is enough. On top of the attempt to extend detention without trial, on top of the Belmarsh detention camp in the UK, on top of the increasing atmosphere of the ‘Crusades’ when ‘Muslim’ comes to be used in the derogatory way that ‘Jew’ was used in the Third Reich, it is time to take back the liberties which the State, from Hennry VIII on, has reluctantly conceded to the people on the demand of the people.

In the knowledge that this affront to our rights was being planned Chris Huhne, the Liberal Democrats Home Affairs spokesman, had sent a letter to the government condemning the proposed closure of Whitehall to the demonstrators. Like the messages that never reached Downing Street it  probably ended its days a paper aeroplane in the Prime Minister’s office. His message to us was read out in Parliament Square.

"Just because the votes of these protesters cannot be bought, it does not mean that their voices should not be heard by those in 10 Downing Street. In this country we have a long tradition of peaceful protest and I would be shocked if British civil liberties were curtailed at the request of a foreign government. George W Bush and Gordon Brown are out of touch with their own voters and I wish you well in ensuring that the voices of ordinary citizens are heard by them today. " Chris Huhne, Liberal Democrat Home affairs Spokesman.

When he got home with his statement still in his pocket Brian Eno declared:

“Isn’t democracy supposed to be listening to the voice of the people? They spoke today. Did anyone hear them? The anti-war movement is the most conspicuous example of reconciliation between races, faiths and classes that this country  has ever seen. Any government with its eyes open would celebrate and nurture this, not try to stop it.

And Bianca Jagger did the same:

“Our civil liberties are becoming another casualty of the ‘war on terror’. I was born in a dictatorship and look with great concern at recent erosions of our liberties. At the demonstration today all I wanted to do with others was to peacefully deliver my letter to the Prime Minister. I was prevented from doing so and instead witnessed brutality towards the demonstrators.”

What they and others had written and which never reached the letter-box of Downing Street, let alone the hands and mind of its occupants, must now reach the rest of the world as we prepare our response. You are still free to read and to think and to act. Please do so:

IAIN BANKS, novelist

Please charge Dubya with being a war criminal, a peace criminal and unfit to be in charge of anything larger or more important than a pretzel. Actually, including a pretzel.

MOAZZAM BEGG, former Guantanamo detainee and spokesman for Cageprisoners

History will judge G.W. Bush as the man who wreaked devastation and destruction on the earth even as he was having men tortured in the world's most notorious and secret prisons. Justice cannot be done until such men are brought to book for their crimes.

WILLIAM BLUM, US writer and journalist

I charge George W. Bush with breaking the hearts and crushing the idealism of an entire generation of young Americans who have been forced into the realization that America, their beloved America,  has no regard for international  law and human rights, and worst of all, tortures people, routinely  and  cruelly.  They are compelled to wonder: What kind of world is this  we've been born into?

KEITH BURSTEIN, composer

George Bush - with the assistance of Tony Blair- has demolished any  moral authority formerly commanded in the world by the US and the West. The veil has  been torn open on the true nature of US global power, never to be replaced. When Bush comes to Britain he should be detained like Pinochet and sent for trial for crimes against humanity.

CARYL CHURCHILL, playwright

Killers often think they're making the world a better place. It's not a defense.

LOUISE CHRISTIAN, lawyer

George Bush bears a heavy responsibility as the leader of most powerful country in the world who has  comprehensively turned his back on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1948 and the whole concept of international law, has authorized world wide oppression, detention without charge and torture and has attempted to put himself and his army beyond the reach of the rule of law. He has betrayed the Founding Fathers of America who were inspired by liberty, fraternity and equality.

JULIE CHRISTIE, actor

The Bush administration has been responsible for the de-stabilisation of the whole world which has made us all victims of its policies. It is not too late to impeach this fantasist and terrifyingly dangerous President. Wiping out hundreds of thousands of people does still seem to be worse than having an inappropriate affair with an Intern.

DAVID EDGAR, playwright

Powerful UN members are refusing to agree a definition of terrorism unless it excludes the actions of states. Our own Terrorism Acts define terrorism as the use of force for a political objective, against the state. Thank goodness the Nuremberg trials - and now the International Court of Justice at the Hague - provide an alternative way to get the heads of government who order illegal acts of indiscriminate violence against other people's countries.

BRIAN ENO, musician and producer

I feel ashamed that my country has chosen to honour this world-class bungler and his ideological comrade, our ex-Prime Minister, as though they were experienced elder statesmen. Their callow disregard for the democratic values they claim to defend is hypocrisy of the highest order. Their blinkered self-righteousness (God told me to do it) makes them intellectual equals to the terrorists they claim to be fighting (for didn't God tell them to do it as well?). And their astonishingly childish military hubris led them into an imperial adventure that our children, and their children, will have to pay for.  Let's make that two pairs please.

DAVID GENTLEMAN, artist

George Bush criminally lied and deceived a panicky United States into starting an illegal, bungled, shameful and counter-productive war. Bush also persuaded the eagerly gullible Blair to believe anything that might seem to justify needlessly dragging Britain in as well. These two men, forever handcuffed together by history, will be remembered only for the futility, the terrible consequences and the unnumbered victims of their joint folly.

LINDSEY GERMAN, Coordinator, Stop the War Coalition

George Bush was responsible for launching the war on terror and is responsible for its failure. He was determined to take us into war in Iraq despite the lack of evidence justifying war. We have caused up to a million dead in Iraq, four million Iraqis are refugees, yet none of the architects of the war have been held to account. We should not forget the role of the British government. Our former Prime Minister went along with Bush at every stage and the present PM, Gordon Brown, was the Chancellor who bankrolled the war and who has now reneged on his promise to begin the withdrawal of troops.

BEN GRIFFIN, former soldier

President George W Bush, a vile war criminal, visits a subservient client state to be feted as "The Leader of the Free World". Meanwhile the subjects of said client state get pissed, buy junk and watch TV. WAKE UP

KATE HUDSON, Chair of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament

I charge George Bush with illegally attacking Iraq on trumped up charges, imposing a brutal occupation, wrecking the infrastructure and public services, using chemical weapons on civilian populations, littering the country with cluster bombs and depleted uranium munitions, causing hundreds of thousands of deaths and untold human sorrow and suffering. He must be brought to justice.

BIANCA JAGGER, human rights advocate

George W Bush is responsible for flagrant violations of human rights and international law. His immoral, illegal and unwinnable wars have cost the lives of more than a million people. Bush is responsible for extraordinary renditions, detentions without trial and the atrocities at Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib, and he must be held accountable. An international tribunal must be established, along with the inquiry into US war crimes that Amnesty International has called for. If Bush and Blair had presided as CEOs over comparable fraudulent and deceptive practices in the City, they would have been immediately and unceremoniously sacked.

SABAH  JAWAD, Iraqi Democrats Against Occupation

We call for George Bush and his criminal gangs on both sides of the Atlantic to stand trial for the unimaginable war crimes they have committed against Iraq and the Iraqi people. If there is any justice in the world they should be locked up.

TERRY JONES, actor and former ‘Monty Python’

You'll not catch me calling President Bush a War Criminal! He could put me away without explanation or recourse to law the moment I next stepped into the Land of Freedom!

A.L. KENNEDY, writer and novelist

Mr. Bush continues to contravene human rights law in his treatment of prisoners in US custody across the world, in his abduction of "suspects" and in his enthusiastic endorsement of torture. He has dragged the US and its allies into two illegal wars of pre-emptive aggression, using illegal weapons and repeatedly contravening laws set in place to protect non-combatants.

NIGEL KENNEDY, violinist

IT IS NO LONGER POSSIBLE TO AVOID BEING LABELLED WAR CRIMINALS OURSELVES if we continue to vote for or tolerate leaders who deprive people in different parts of the world of their way of life or, in many cases, of life itself. George Bush and his allies should no longer get away with respecting international law and human rights only at their own convenience.

ROGER LLOYD PACK, actor

To add to the extensive list of crimes committed by the heinous war criminal George Bush, I charge him with being responsible for the birth of hundreds of babies deformed as a result of the chemical bombs dropped on Basra and other cities during the Iraq War.

ADRIAN MITCHELL, poet

George W Bush you face disgrace
For crimes against the human race.
Put these handcuffs on your wrists -
Terrorist of Terrorists.

ANDREW MURRAY, Chair of Stop the War Coalition

George Bush bears the moral responsibility for the violent deaths of hundreds of thousands of civilians in Iraq alone.  He should be in the War Crimes Tribunal in The Hague, not Downing Street and if Gordon Brown wants to speak for Britain, he will tell him so.

JOHN PILGER, journalist

Criminal power always fears people. That's its greatest fear. That's why even a House of Commons committee worries out loud about the draconian surveillance that now distinguishes a Britain dominated by Washington. The MPs are worried because they know that if the state goes too far the people will act. History tells them that. The reason George Bush is surrounded by an army of police today and why we cannot march along Whitehall is because the system Bush represents fears our voices. It fears our many voices, and it fears just one voice, like Brian Haw. All potentially are a threat, because we speak the truth. And it's truth, not Al Qaeda, that is Bush's enemy -- as the dead and maimed and dispossessed in Iraq and Afghanistan bear witness."

HAROLD PINTER, playwright and Nobel Prize winner

There is no more suitable candidate for Leading War Criminal than George Bush. The only person that comes anywhere near him is Tony Blair. They are both beneath contempt. Bush should certainly be arrested and sent to Guantanamo Bay where he can rot forever.

CLARE SHORT, former Cabinet Minister

Where is Brown on this issue? Has Britain got any bottom line? All that rhetoric about Brown being the change after Blair has been exposed as nonsense.

CAROL VINCENT, Big Brother contestant and arrested on 15 June on her way to deliver this statement after being hit repeatedly on her hands and arms

George Bush senior got the ball rolling as a hawk instead of a dove and his son continued with this behaviour. The USA was clearly on a flight trail to take over the Middle East and its resources regardless of the human cost. Undoubtedly George W Bush is a war criminal and Blair was his puppet. Gordon Brown had the opportunity to bring the troops home, but has chosen instead to continue with Blair’s wretched alliance with the US, but Not in My Name.

TIMBERLAKE WERTENBAKER, playwright

Not just responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people, George Bush seized the very word Democracy illegally, mocked it, tortured it and did his best to kill it. This is a crime against the future.

WALTER WOLFGANG, Labour Party NEC

George Bush is a war criminal who has murdered uncounted hundreds of thousands of Iraqis.

HAIFA ZANGANA, Iraqi writer & novelist

If democracy is to return to America and Britain, both Bush and Blair have to be charged with war crimes against the Iraqis.  As the US Commander-in-Chief, he is guilty of the crimes committed in Abu Ghraib, and those committed by his soldiers; in particular, the rape of A’beer Qassim Hamza al - Janaby, the fourteen year old girl who was gang-raped and set on fire by US marines after they had killed her parents and her four year old sister.

David Wilson can be reached at: David.wilson@talktalk.net

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