Naomi Klein

On April 6, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz spelled it out: there will be no role for the UN in setting up an interim government in Iraq. The U.S.-run regime will last at least six months, "probably longer than that."

Gordon Brown has a new idea about how to “make poverty history” in time for the G-8 summit in Scotland. With Washington so far refusing to double its aid to Africa by 2015, the British Chancellor is appealing to the “richer oil-producing states” of the Middle East to fill the funding gap. “Oil wealth urged to save Africa,” reads the headline in London’s Observer.

The global antiwar protests that surprised the world on February 15 grew out of the networks built by years of globalization activism, from Indymedia to the World Social Forum. And despite attempts to keep the movements separate, their only future lies in the convergence represented by Cancún.

On April 6, deputy defence secretary Paul Wolfowitz spelled it out: there will be no role for the UN in setting up an interim government in Iraq. The US-run regime will last at least six months, "probably
longer than that". And by the time the Iraqi people have a say in choosing a government, the key economic decisions about their country’s future will have been made by their occupiers. "There has to be an effective administration from day one," Wolfowitz said. "People need water and food and medicine, and the sewers have to
work, the electricity has to work. And that’s coalition
responsibility."

My first run-in with Muqtada al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army came on March 31 in Baghdad. The US occupation chief, Paul Bremer, had just sent armed men to shut down the young cleric’s newspaper, Al Hawza, claiming that its articles comparing Bremer to Saddam Hussein incited violence against Americans.

Pas facile d’attirer l’attention des médias cet été. Le 27 juillet, 300 jeunes soldats philippins ont investi un centre commercial de Manille avec des explosifs C-4, en accusant leur gouvernement, un des alliés les plus proches de Washington, d’avoir fait exploser ses propres bâtiments pour recevoir du financement militaire américain. Malgré ce tapage, ils n’ont pas réussi à défrayer les manchettes internationales.

"The Iraqi people gave America the biggest ’thank you’ in the best way we could have hoped for." Reading this election analysis from Betsy Hart, a columnist for the Scripps Howard News Service, I found myself thinking about my late grandmother.

Thomas Friedman, New York Times’ foreign affairs columnist, wrote about the joys of call-centre work in Bangalore on February 29. These jobs, are giving young people "self-confidence, dignity and optimism" - and that’s not just good for Indians, but for Americans as well. Why? Because happy workers paid to help U.S. tourists locate the luggage they’ve lost on Delta flights are less inclined to strap on dynamite and blow up those same planes.

What does it take to become a major news story in the summer of Arnold and Kobe, Ben and Jen? A lot, as a group of young Philippine soldiers discovered recently. On July 27, 300 soldiers rigged a giant Manila shopping mall with C-4 explosives, accused one of Washington’s closest allies of blowing up its own buildings to attract US military dollars-and still barely managed to make the international news.

The central question we need to answer is this: What were the real reasons for the Bush administration’s invasion and occupation of Iraq?

L’invasion de l’Irak a pavé la voie à ce qui pourrait constituer le plus grand boom pétrolier de l’histoire. Tous les signaux convergent : les multinationales sont libres d’avaler les entreprises nationales, elles renvoient leurs profits exponentiels à la maison, elles profitent de « congés de taxes » et elles paient des droits risibles de un pour cent au gouvernement.

April 9, 2003, was the day Baghdad fell to U.S. forces. One year later, it is rising up against them.

Can we please stop calling it a quagmire? The United States isn’t mired in a bog or a marsh in Iraq (quagmire’s literal meaning); it is free-falling off a cliff. The only question now is: Who will follow the Bush clan off this precipice, and who will refuse to jump?

Cancel the contracts. Ditch the deals. Rip up the rules.Those are a few suggestions for slogans that could help unify the growing movement against the occupation of Iraq. So far, activist debates have focused on whether the demand should be for a complete withdrawal of troops, or for the United States to cede power to the United Nations.