Is the end of the world imminent? Have we run out of oil? Prior to 9/11 what dealings did the United States have with Iraq? Did the Bush administration deliberately allow the 9/11 terrorist attacks to happen?
If U.S. Justice Department head John Ashcroft stopped flying commercial aircraft two months before 9/11, and several employees at the Pentagon cancelled their flight plans the night of September 10, citing ‘security concerns’, how is it that the first reaction of President Bush to the destruction of the World Trade Center was “there’s one terrible pilot.”
Conspiracies abound. How near is the truth?
Mike Ward, a regular contributor to Pop Matters (the newest link, under A&E) suggests answers to each of the questions above, in the process linking to any number of economists, new urbanists and future theorists.

Now that the television network upfronts are complete, VanRamblings resumes regular posting.
From the Washington Post, this morning, the backstory to the release of new photos, and a disturbing new video of Iraqi prisoner abuse.
The latest allegations are contained in statements taken from 13 detainees shortly after a soldier reported the incidents to military investigators in mid-January. The detainees said they were beaten and repeatedly sexually humiliated by American soldiers working on the night shift at Tier 1A in Abu Ghraib during the holy month of Ramadan, according to copies of the statements obtained by The Washington Post.

Some of the detainees described being abused as punishment or discipline after they were caught fighting … Many provided graphic details of how they were sexually humiliated and assaulted, threatened with rape, and forced to masturbate in front of female soldiers … “After that, they took us to our cells, took the mattresses out and dropped water on the floor and they made us sleep on our stomachs on the floor with the bags on our head and they took pictures of everything.”

U.S. Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld, said there’d be more photos, and video, of Iraqi prisoner abuse. Obviously, he’s known of the existence of these images for months, and had done nothing to prevent the continued breach, by the U.S., of the provisions of the Geneva Convention.