Leigh M. Smith

A comprehensive site I stumbled over in reading on the history of the Spanish Civil War covers the role of Anarchist (see also the struggle site) thought and action during the conflict.

Salon has an interesting, though certainly conjectural article on a conflict between the CIA and the Pentagon. In particular, it provides an hypothesis as to the curious timing of the departure of George Tenet, the Director of Central intelligence too close to the election to install a new Czar.

There has been a fine tradition of patriotic women blowing the whistle on the outrages of the current U.S. presidency.

A number of near simultaneous events have thrown the plight of the Kurdish people into the spotlight.

After two years being held without charge, contrary to the Geneva conventions and kept in demeaning and inhumane conditions and allegedly subjected to torture, Australian David Hicks has finally been charged. The U.S. military press release is here.

The Centre for Constitutional Rights has the memo implicating the cabinet of the Bush administration in planning to torture prisoners. The Project to Enforce the Geneva Conventions has reproduced the Wall Street Journal article. Methinks he doth protest too much.

Further to the Vietnam histories, I can recommend Ross’s well referenced posts, concerning Australia’s involvement in Vietnam (part 1), and it’s political purpose (parts 2 and 3) for doing so.

Since much is made of the comparison between Iraq and Vietnam in the U.S. press, a recent reviewing of Errol Morris’s documentary “Fog of War” (interviewing Robert McNamara, the U.S Secretary of Defence during the Kennedy and Johnson administrations), made me do a bit of digging to refresh my history of the Vietnam conflict. Given…