US: Spy Agency Targets Bush Critics
Date: Wed, 20 Jul 2005 03:45:57 -0700

Developments in Iraq and the Middle East are having a telling impact on politics and policies the world over. IPS is keeping track of them through its network of correspondents providing independent accounts rather than those that suit governments. Following is the latest bulletin of reports
====================================================================
US: Spy Agency Targets Bush Critics
By William Fisher
NEW YORK – Those who remember recent history will not be surprised to learn that the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has been amassing files on the American Civil Liberties Union, Greenpeace and other critics of the George W. Bush administration.
ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=29557

***
US: “PlameGate” Is Hardly a Summer Squall
By Jim Lobe
WASHINGTON – While to people living outside the Washington ‰Beltway,‰ the current affair over the disclosure by top White House officials of the identity of a covert intelligence officer may seem somewhat esoteric, the stakes could not be higher.
ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=29541

***
US: Watching the Watchdogs
By William Fisher
NEW YORK – For the past few years, U.S. citizens have lived with an increasingly secretive government.
ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=29536

***
US: Welcome to RightWorld
By Jim Lobe
WASHINGTON – It’s always difficult to play defence and offence at the same time, but when the geo-political ground is shifting beneath one’s feet and damaging leaks are spurting out of the White House and Downing Street plumbing like Fourth of July fireworks, it’s more difficult than usual.
ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=29523

***
BRITAIN: Iraqi Shadow Seen Over Train Attacks
By Sanjay Suri
LONDON – An Iraqi connection was conspicuously missing from the first statements British Prime Minister Tony Blair made on the bomb blasts in London Thursday last week. But new developments suggest a powerful link between the British invasion and occupation of Iraq and the bomb attacks.
ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=29515

***
MEDIA-EGYPT: By Law, Some Editors Retire At Last
By Adam Morrow
CAIRO – In what has been called the biggest shake-up to Egypt’s state-run print media in recent history, the Higher Press Council in early July appointed a host of new chairmen to the biggest government-owned publishing houses, and replaced longstanding editors-in-chief of the most widely distributed national newspapers.
ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=29513

***
RIGHTS-AUSTRALIA: Smuggler Jailed But Iraqi Boat People Wrangle Rages On
By Bob Burton
CANBERRA – The sentencing of a former Baghdad goldsmith for helping organise a people-smuggling operation that ended in tragedy has not quelled controversy over the Australian government’s role in the October 2001 drowning of 353 Iraqi asylum-seekers on their way to this country from Indonesia.
ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=29509

***
“Islamic Extremism” Alienates Most in Muslim World
By Jim Lobe
WASHINGTON – Concerns about “Islamic extremism” and disapproval over violence motivated by it are growing in both Muslim and non-Muslim countries, according to a major new survey that also found declining support for Osama bin Laden in most of the Islamic world, with the exception of Jordan and Pakistan.
ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=29500

***
RIGHTS-US: Abuse Probes End With Single Reprimand
By William Fisher
NEW YORK – The U.S. Army general widely considered the architect of abusive prisoner interrogation techniques at Guantanamo Bay, Abu Ghraib and detention centres in Afghanistan used “creative” and “aggressive” tactics, but did not practice torture or violate law or Pentagon policy, the head of the U.S. Southern Command has determined.
ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=29497

***
IRAQ: No, This Certainly Is Not Switzerland
By Trish Schuh
KARBALA, Iraq – It should have been a little more than an hour’s drive south from Baghdad. But it took an hour just to exit the checkpoints, with U.S. military hummers intermittently veering into oncoming traffic.
ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=29491

***
US: “Bush’s Brain” Besieged
By Jim Lobe
WASHINGTON – Battered by sagging poll numbers, new doubts in the aftermath of the London bombings about the effectiveness of its war on terrorism, and no let-up in the bad news out of Iraq, the White House has found itself this week embroiled in yet another controversy, one that threatens the credibility, if not the tenure, of the man widely known as Pres. George W. Bush’s “brain.”
ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=29487

====================================================================
More IPS Special Coverage – ipsnews.net/middle.asp
====================================================================

Inter Press Service News Agency (IPS), the world’s leading provider of information on global issues, is backed by a network of journalists in more than 100 countries. Its clients include more than 3,000 media organizations and tens of thousands of civil society groups, academics, and other users.

IPS focuses its news coverage on the events and global processes affecting the economic, social and political development of peoples and nations.

*****
Visit Inter Press Service at www.ipsnews.net