WARNING: These are brutally graphic war images that many readers will find disturbing. They should NOT be viewed by children or the faint of heart. With that disclaimer:

At the website, you can see an Arab man's face sliced off and placed in a bowl filled with blood. Another man's head, his face crusted with dried blood and powder burns, lies on a bed of gravel.

A man in a leather coat who apparently tried to run a military checkpoint lies slumped in the driver's seat of a car, his head obliterated by gunfire, the flaps of skin from his neck blooming open like rose petals.

Six men in beige fatigues, identified as US Marines, laugh and smile for the camera while pointing at a burned, charcoal-black corpse lying at their feet.

The captions that accompany these images, which were apparently written by the soldiers who posted them, laugh and gloat over the bodies.   more »

Cherie Blair yesterday wrecked Gordon Brown's carefully calibrated and confident attempt to woo the British public when she was reportedly overheard branding the chancellor a liar during his speech to the Labour party conference.

With Tony Blair due to make an emotional farewell speech to the conference in Manchester today claiming "Labour's core vote is the country", Downing Street went into overdrive to deny that his wife had so contemptuously dismissed the chancellor.

Ironically, Mr Brown had been using his speech to effect a public reconciliation with the prime minister, saying he regretted their differences.

The news agency reporter who overheard Mrs Blair's remark stood by her story and, given the known animus between Mrs Blair and the Browns, the agency was widely believed, including by cabinet ministers.

Some were in despair last night that the meticulous attempts this week to patch up the relationship between the two architects of New Labour had been so carelessly damaged.   more »

The left and center-left within the United States are feeling reinvigorated, angry and anxious about the course of U.S. policy. There is a slow but clear radicalization of the left and even the center-left.

When that happens, the militarist right will retaliate aggressively.

When Ned Lamont won the Connecticut Senate primary, a reader of the Wall Street Journal wrote a letter saying that "we have reached a tipping point in this country -- if we allow the left to govern as the majority our country is finished."

He calls Republican leaders "inept." He, and many others, will be looking for fiercer leaders.

Everyone worries about civil war in Iraq. How about in the United States? Scary times ahead.   more »

The fact that Bush's supremely political presidency treats "homeland security" as a slogan rather than a necessity is the fundamental flaw in the current commander-in-chief's deeply flawed tenure. And his handlers are well aware of the problem.

That's why they have worked so hard, along with their amen corner in the media, to create the false impression that Clinton and the Democrats were somehow more responsible for the 9-11 terror attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon than Bush and the gang that couldn't shoot straight.

Unfortunately, the so-called "leaders" of the opposition party have done a lousy job of challenging the spin job... until now.

Clinton used an appearance with "Fox News Sunday's" Chris Wallace to challenge the lies of the Bush administration and its media acolytes.

The interview, which was broadcast over the weekend, got to the heart of what's wrong not with the Bush presidency but with a media that covers that presidency from the on-bended-knee position.   more »

Harlem’s Congressman Charles Rangel, one of the senior House Democrats, took the lead in denouncing Chavez.

In a statement issued by his Washington office, Rangel said, “George Bush is the president of the United States and represents the entire country. Any demeaning public attack against him is viewed by Republicans and Democrats, and all Americans, as an attack on all of us.”

Rangel amplified on this position at a press conference, declaring, “You don’t come into my country, you don’t come into my congressional district and criticize my president.”

The language is noteworthy, since it is doubtful that there are more than a handful of residents of Harlem who share Rangel’s view of Bush.


Most working-class New Yorkers, and particularly minority workers, regard Bush not as “my president” but as “their president”—i.e., the president of the wealthy and powerful.   more »

We could have known tomorrow's headlines five years ago. In particular, this headline, which is supposed to be shocking and apparently has people in Washington going nuts, seemed positively ho hum:

"Spy Agencies Say Iraq War Worsens Terrorism Threat: U.S. Intelligence Assessment Is Said to Find a Rise in Global Islamic Radicalism."

Just so that we are clear on this, we should be reminded that the stated policy of the Bush administration, just before bombing Iraq's cities and overthrowing its Sunni government, was to bring freedom, democracy, and pluralistic happiness to the country.

Five years later, the puppet government in Baghdad is still in a bunker, tanks patrol streets, there are curfews and speech controls, major parts of the country have effectively seceded, the water is dirty and disease ridden.   more »

In the mid-1990s, Blair was chosen to head a political project to transform Labour into a right-wing party of big business. To do so, he did not need to start from scratch.

Make no mistake, social reformism had already been buried well before Blair came to a position of leadership.

The days when Labour had advocated serious reforms in the interests of working people are long gone.

The party’s last reformist hurrah was in the early 1970s and ended with the Callaghan government’s imposition of austerity measures dictated by the International Monetary Fund. This provoked a mass strike movement against Labour and ended with the coming to power of Thatcher in 1979.

For 18 years, the Conservatives were able to carry out their monetarist economic programme chiefly because Labour and the trade unions sabotaged any and all struggles against Thatcher, while they themselves lurched ever further to the right.   more »