François Houtart (Chairman) - Belgium
 
Director of the Tricontinental Center (Cetri), which purpose is to «bring to knowledge the point of view of the South in the actual context of globalization, to diffuse alternative proposals, elaborated by the South, and to contribute to an in depth thinking on social movements ».
After graduating in Philosophy and Theology, he was ordored priest in 1949. Licensed in Political and Social Sciences as well as from the Higher International Applied Urbanism Institute of Brussels, he is the author of numerous publications concerning socio-religious researches, and participated as an expert to the works of Concile Vatican II (1962-1965). He participated in the Bertrand Russell War Crimes Tribunal on US Crimes in Vietnam in 1967. He is a spiritual father and a member of the International Committee of the World Social Forum of Porto Alegre, Executive Secretary of the Alternative World Forum, and President of the International League for rights and liberation of people. Currently Houtart is senior adviser to the President of the United Nations General Assembly, Miguel d’Escoto Brockmann.
Unavoidable character of the alter-globalization movements, he participated to numerous works on globalization, social stuggles, and regularly collaborates with Le Monde Diplomatique. More...


 Pierre Klein  (Secretary) - Belgium
 
Professeur de droit international à l'Université libre de Bruxelles et directeur du Centre de droit international de cette Université. Il a dispensé divers enseignements de droit international public à l'Université d'Ottawa, à l'Université McGill, à l'Université du Québec à Montréal, à l'Université catholique de Louvain, à l’Université d’Abomey-Calavi (Bénin) et à l’Université nationale du Vietnam à Hanoï. Il est l’auteur ou le co-auteur de trois ouvrages (Droit d'ingérence ou obligation de réaction ? - Les possibilités d'action visant à assurer le respect des droits de la personne face au principe de non-intervention, La responsabilité des organisations internationales dans les ordres juridiques internes et en droit international et Bowett's Law of International Institutions et de plus de trente-cinq études de droit international publiées dans la Revue belge de droit international, l'Annuaire français de droit international, le Journal européen de droit international/European Journal of International Law, la Revue québécoise de droit international, la Revue de droit de l'U.L.B., ainsi que dans des ouvrages collectifs. Parallèlement à ses activités académiques, il intervient également en qualité de conseil dans plusieurs affaires portées devant la Cour internationale de Justice. More...


 Samir Amin (Commission) - Egypt / Senegal
 
Egyptian-born and trained in Paris, one of the better known thinkers of his generation, both in development theory as well as in the relativistic-cultural critique of social sciences. Between 1957 and 1960, worked for the economical development administration in Egypt. From 1960 to 1963, councellor for the governement of Mali. In 1970 Director ot the African Institute for the Economical Development and Planification. Currently Director of the Third World Forum in Dakar, Senegal, an international pool of academics from Africa, Asia and South-America.
Promotor of the conscious self-reliance of developing countries, he has written extensively on economics, development and international affairs. More...

 


 Jean Bricmont (Commission) - Belgium
 
Jean Bricmont is professor in theoretical physics at the University of Louvain, Belgium. Researcher in statistic physics, he is also President of the French Scientific Information Association, and shares his time between his scientific research and his involvment in the struggle against imperialism.
Strong critic of the intellectual world, he is the co-writter with Alan Sokal, of Les impostures intellectuelles which denounces the drifts of post-modernism, especially the systematic abuses of words and theories barrowed from science lexical by authors of this stream.
Recognized as a specialist of United States’ foreign policy, he regularly contributes to discussions and thinking platforms dealing with the alternatives to neoliberalism, and resistance to the United States’ diplomacy.
Author of numerous books, he co-writed with Noam Chomsky, Anne Morelli and Naomi Klein : La fin de’la fin de l’Histoire’ (The end of ‘The end of History). This book was in reaction to the terrorist attacks of 9/11 and to Francis Fukuyama’s thesis. More...

 


 Denis Halliday (Commission) - Ireland
 
Appointed by Secretary-General Kofi Annan to the post of United Nations Humanitarian Coordinator in Iraq as of 1 September 1997, at the Assistant Secretary-General level, and served as such until end September 1998. During this period, the Security Council Resolution 986 “Oil for Food” Programme, introduced in 1996/97 to assist the people of Iraq under the Economic Sanctions imposed and sustained by the Security Council, was more than doubled in terms of oil revenues allowed. This enabled the introduction of a multi-sectoral approach, albeit modest, to the problems of resolving malnutrition and child mortality. Mr Halliday resigned from the post in Iraq and from the United Nations as a whole effective 31 October 1998 after serving the Organisation since mid 1964 - some 34 years. More...

 


  Sabah Al Mukhtar (Commission) - Iraq / UK
 
President of the Arab Lawyers Association (UK).
Partner and founder of the Arab Lawyers Network, London.
Acts as a consultant of Arab law in London.
Vice chairman of the Muslim Council of Britain, Legal Affairs Committee.
Secretary of PRICE, a Fund established under UK law with the aim of promoting remedies for injurious consequences of economic sanctions and other forms of economic coercion. More...

 


 Nawal El Saadawi (Commission) - Egypt
 
Leading Egyptian feminist, socialist, medical doctor and novelist. Director of Health and Education in Cairo, editing a magazine called “Health” and focusing on preventive medicine. But her wrinting’s on women’s issues and her fearlessness in confronting cultural taboos led her being fired from her post in 1972.
In 1981 she was imprisoned by Anwar Sadat for “alleged crimes against the State” and was not released until after Sadat’s assassination by his successor, Hosni Mubarak.
In 1992, the Arab Women’s Solidarity Association she had founded was closed down for opposing Egypt’s role in the U.S.-led Persian Gulf War.
Nawal El Saadawi is one of the most widely translated contemporary Egyptian writers, her work available in 12 languages. More...

 


 Karen Parker (Prosecution) - USA
 
Attorney who practices human rights and humanitarian law fulltime. She is responsible, in part, for the evolution of international law in such areas as economic sanctions, weaponry, environment as a human right, and the rights of the disabled. She also consults and serves as an expert witness in legal disputes involving the application of armed conflict law. As for affiliations, she is currently the chief delegate forInternational Educational Development - Humanitarian Law Project, a nongovernmental organization (NGO) accredited by the United Nations Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC). She has also represented or served as a consulting attorney for Disabled Peoples International, Human Rights Advocates, and the Sierra Club Legal Defense Fund. More...
 

 Felicity Arbuthnot (Prosecution) - UK
 
Felicity Arbuthnot is a journalist specialising in social and environmental issues with special knowledge of Iraq, a country which she has visited thirty times since the 1991 Gulf war.
With former UN Assistant Secretary General and UN Co-ordinator in Iraq, Denis Halliday, she was senior Iraq researcher for John Pilger©ˆs Award winning documentary: "Paying the Price - Killing the Children of Iraq (Carlton/ITV March 2000)
Arbuthnot has been nominated for a number of Awards for her coverage of Iraq, including the (EC) Lorenzo Natali Award for Human Rights Journalism, the Millenium Prize for Women; the Courage of Conscience Award and an Amnesty International Media Award. More...

 


 Jim Lobe (Defence) - USA
 
He has worked as a correspondent for Inter Press Service (IPS) for most of the last 23 years.
As an analyst and political adviser for Foreign Policy in Focus, Jim Lobe has followed the ups and downs of neo-conservatives since the well before their rise in the aftermath of the attacks of Al Qaeda on New York and the Pentagon on September 11. His expertise has been recognized by major international media, including the BBC’s “Panorama” news magazine and the London-based Al Hayar newspaper, among others.
His articles can be read on many web site which are dedicated to strengthen and support independent and alternative journalism, such as “antiwar.com”, presentdanger.org” , “why-war.com” and “alternet.org”. More...

 


   Tom Barry (Defence) - USA
 
Policy Director of the Interhemispheric Resource Center (IRC).
Based in New-Mexico and founded in 1979, the IRC is a nonprofit policy studies center whose overarching goal is to help forge a new global affairs agenda for the U.S. government and people-one that makes the United States a more responsible global leader and partner.
Policy Director ot Foreign Policy in Focus (FPIF), a joint project of the IRC and the Institute for Policy Studies. More...


 

   Amy Bartholomew (Witness) - Canada
 
 Amy Bartholomew is an associate professor at Carleton university, Ottawa, Canada. She has a B.A. (Colorado), an M.A. from Carleton University, an LL.B. from the University of Ottawa and a Ph.D. in progress (New School for Social Research).

Her research interests include postfoundational legal and social theory from Habermas to postmodernism, theories of justice and injustice, theories and practices of human rights, the implication of multiculturalism and globalization for human rights, justice and constitutionalism, and feminist theories of law.   More...



 Ramsey Clark (Witness / Video testimony) - USA
 
Director of the American Judicature Society in 1963. Assistant Attorney General of United States by President John F. Kennedy, served to 1965; From 1964 to 1965: national president of the Federal Bar Association. Nominated Deputy Attorney General by President Lyndon B. Johnson, served to 1967; On March 2, 1967, President Johnson appointed him Attorney General of the United States. He served in that capacity until January 20, 1969. Founder and chairperson of the International Action Center. After the Gulf War, in 1991, initiated a war-crimes tribunal, which tried and found guilty President George Bush and Generals Colin Powell and Norman Schwarzkopf, among others. He went on to write a book, The Fire This Time, describing the crimes he says were committed by U.S. and NATO forces during the Gulf War.
Ramsey Clark is a recipient of the Gandhi Peace Award. More...

 Armand Clesse (Witness) - Luxemburg
 
Director of the Luxembourg Institute for European and International Studies. He has published and edited various books on European and international affairs.
Armand Clesse is part of  the Luxembourg-Harvard Association, established in 1987 at the invitation of Jacques Santer, Prime Minister of Luxembourg.
In October 1990, Clesse founded the Luxembourg Institute for European and International Studies which provided an institutional framework for activities that were previously organized by the Luxembourg-Harvard Association. More...

 


 Michel Collon (Witness) - Belgium
 
Auteur du livre 'Attention Médias! Les médias-mensonges du Golfe', Bruxelles, EPO, 1992
Spécialiste des stratégies de guerre
Pour développer un journalisme alternatif, à la base, il donne régulièrement des formations à des non-professionnels.
Auteur des livres : attention médias, poker menteur, monopoly (édition EPO)
Liar's Poker illuminates the fundamental interests of the Great Powers and their strategic interests in controlling oil routes and key areas of the world. It offers the reader an efficient guide for understanding international policy for next 20 years. And the true long-term goals of these powers: dominating Russia and China. More...

 

 

Jacques Derrida (+ 2004) (Witness / video testimony / written testimony) - France

Jacques Derrida, the French thinker once described as the most influential philosopher in the world, has died at the age of 74 in a Paris hospital. The controversial theorist was diagnosed with aggressive pancreatic cancer last year.

Derrida has been credited with the invention of three philosophical concepts which dominated late 20th century thinking: 'postmodernism', 'poststructuralism' and 'deconstruction', though in later years he showed growing irritation as the words passed into daily use.

Derrida grew up in El-Biar, Algeria, moving to France at the age of 19. From 1952 he studied at Paris's Ecole Normale Superieur under two French philosophical greats, Michel Foucault and Louis Althusser. More...


 John Saxe-Fernandez (Witness) - Mexico
 
Chercheur et professeur à la Faculté de sciences politiques et sociales de l’Université nationale autonome de México (UNAM).

John Saxe es investigador y profesor de la UNAM, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, en la Facultad de Ciencias Políticas y Sociales. Autor de libros como El mundo actual (1999, con Pablo González Casanova), Globalización, imperialismo y clase (2001, con James Petras), Globalización del terror y amenaza bioterrorista (2001, con Gian Carlo Delgado), coautor y compilador de Globalización: crítica a un paradigma (Plaza & Janés/UNAM 1999). More...

 


 Sara Flounders (Witness) - USA
 
International Action Center national co-director, was part of the prosecutor team of the International Tribunal for U.S./NATO warcrimes in Yugoslavia. She visited Yugoslavia with Ramsey Clark while the bombs were falling, and participated in the tribunal hearings in over a half-dozen U.S. cities and in Berlin and Rome. Flounders, an activist for over three decades, is a spokesperson and organizer for International ANSWER.
Ms. Flounders edited and co-authored two books: "The Children Are Dying-The Impact of Sanctions on Iraq" and "Challenge to Genocide: Let Iraq Live." She also helped produce the videos: "Blockade-The Silent War Against Iraq," "Genocide by Sanctions" and "Let Iraq Live." Ms. Flounders coordinated research and helped to edit Ramsey Clark's groundbreaking 1992 book "The Fire This Time: U.S. War Crimes in the Gulf" (recently republished by the IAC).
Sara Flounders also coordinates the Depleted Uranium Education Project of the IAC to expose the use of radioactive depleted uranium weapons during the Gulf War. More...

 


 Geoffrey Geuens (Witness) - Belgium
 
Assistant at the Communication and Information Section of the University of Liège (Belgium). He is the author of l’Information sous contrôle (Information under control), Médias et pouvoirs économiques en Belgique (The Media and economical power in Belgium) Labor/Espace de Libertés, 2002, and Tous pouvoirs confondus-Etat, Capital et Médias à l’heure de la mondialisation (All powers confounded – State, Capital and Media at the time of Globalization), EPO, 2002.
Discover the members of the biggest elitist circles and the principle lobbies acting from the backstage to confront the actual confi guration of “globalization”: The trilateral Commission, the Council on Foreign Relations, the Bilderberg Group, Aspen France,… You were never invited? Of Course! Top secret and reserved to industrials, fi nancers, ministers, European commissioners, famous journalists and top graded militaries…
2003 : Cyril Berneron, administrateur de l’ Association les Amis du Monde Diplomatique annonce que le livre "Tous pouvoirs confondus" de l'auteur belge Geoffrey Geuens est retenu parmi les cinq finalistes qui concourent pour le Prix des Amis du Monde Diplomatique. More...


 Amal Al-Khedairy (Witness) - Iraq
 
AMAL AL-KHEDAIRY is the founder and director of Al-Beit Al-Iraqi, "Iraqi House', an arts and cultural center in Baghdad. Amal is a widely traveled expert in Iraqi history, regional culture, arts, archeology and music. She is fluent in French and English, in addition to Arabic. She is a powerful speaker and an excellent debater with a superior grasp of public affairs and international history. More...

 



 Saul Landau (Witness) - USA
 
Internationally known scholar, author, journalist, poet and activist. An Emmy-award-winning film maker, he does frequent radio and TV shows, and his work on human rights and Latin America have won him acclaim the world over.
Known for his work on foreign and domestic policy issues, Native American and South American cultures, and science and technology. Saul Landau's most widely praised achievements are the forty films he has produced on social, political and historical issues, and worldwide human rights. He has written over ten books, short stories, poems and novels and received an Edgar Allen Poe Award for "Assassination on Embassy Row," His last book is,  “The Pre-Emptive Empire : A Guide to Bush's Kingdom”. More...

 


 Ghazwan Al-Mukhtar (Witness) - Iraq
 
Ghazwan is an Iraqi who lives his ironies: a denouncer of Saddam regime inequities who continues to live in Iraq; a man who worked hard to provide for his family and his retirement, only to have his assets frozen in foreign banks as a result of U.N. Resolution 687; a well spoken professional who peppers his gravel-voiced diatribes with pungent American profanities. He’s been asked to join the Voices in the Wilderness Writers Project, a unique attempt to give Iraqis an Internet forum. VitW is the Chicago-based group that has been working since ’96 to end the economic sanctions against Iraq. Ghazwan studied geophysics at Cal Berkley, and graduated with an engineering degree from Marquette in ‘67. For most of his career, he sold medical supplies to hospitals. He says he has too scientific a mind to be a writer, yet he has written dozens of articles over the years, critical not only of the U.N. sanctions against his country, but also the former regime in Baghdad. More...

 


   Michael Parenti (Witness) - USA
 
Internationally known award-winning author and lecturer. He is one of the nation's leading progressive political analysts. His highly informative and entertaining books and talks have reached a wide range of audiences in North America and abroad.
His latest book “The Assassination of Julius Caesar” was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize Oct 2003. He is the author of seventeen books. Some 250 articles of his have appeared in scholarly journals, political periodicals and various magazines and newspapers. He appears on radio and television talk shows to discuss current issues and ideas from his published works. More...
 

 Hans von Sponeck (Witness) - Germany / Switserland
 
Joined the UN Development Program in 1968, and worked in Ghana, Turkey, Botswana, Pakistan and India, before becoming Director of European Affairs. Serving thirty-six years with the organization, his last post succeeded Denis Halliday as UN Humanitarian Coordinator for Iraq in October 1998, overseeing roughly 500 international staff and 1,000 Iraqi workers.
He was responsible for directing all UN operations in Iraq, managing the distribution of goods under the Oil-for-Food program and verifying Iraqi compliance with that program, Von Sponeck resigned in February 2000, in protest of the international policy toward Iraq, including sanctions. More...
 

 Immanuel Wallerstein (Witness / written testimony) - USA
 
He has since 1976 been Distinguished Professor of Sociology at the State University of New York (SUNY) in Binghamton. Founder and director of the Fernand Braudel Center for the Study of Economies, Historical Systems, and Civilizations in Binghamton. He also is the former President of the International Sociological Association.
He has published countless books and articles in three domains of world-systems analysis : the historical development of the modern world-system, the contemporary crisis of the capitalist world-economy and the structures of knowledge. His so called "World-Systems Theory" is a poltico-economic and comparative macro-theory of social development, in particular capitalism. More...

 


 Haifa Zangana (Witness) - Iraq / UK
 
Haifa Zangana, writer and humanist, grew up between the Baghdad of her mother and the Kurdistan of her father: a seamless mix of identity between the overwhelmingly male society of Baghdad, and the cool mountains of Kurdistan, where women never covered their faces and could inherit property.
Haifa was imprisoned by the Ba’ath regime in the early 1970s. She escaped execution, released because the Ba’athists needed the help of the Left to consolidate their supremacy.
"You are "either with us or against us", they say. As an Iraqi that means choosing between war and the dictator. To be on the side of the oppressed does not mean we are unaware of the complexity of the situation. To campaign for the lifting of sanctions, for an end to the paralysing bombardment and daily threat of war is to stand by the Iraqi people; it is that policy which will help them to change the oppressive regime. Any change should be initiated from within Iraq, not imposed by Bush or Blair." More...

 

Witnesses who confirmed, were scheduled, but couldn't make it.

 

 

 Scott Ritter (Witness) - USA

 

Scott Ritter was born in 1960 to a military family. During the Gulf War he served as a ballistic missile expert under General Norman Schwarzkopf, and joined Unscom in late 1991. He took part in more than 30 inspection missions and 14 as team leader. Initially, his relationship with Iraq was bad. His unannounced visits were said to have surprised Iraqi officials, who in 1997 accused him of being a US spy.
In early 1998 an inspection by Mr Ritter's team led to the most serious confrontation between Baghdad and the UN since the Gulf War, and eventually to Unscom leaving Iraq. In August 1998, Mr Ritter resigned from his job, accusing the Security Council and the United States of caving in to the Iraqis. Soon after his high-profile resignation, Mr Ritter was back in the headlines with further criticism of Washington and the UN. Only this time he accused Western powers of being too tough, rather than too soft, on the Iraqis. In late 1998, Mr Ritter called US and British military strikes against Iraq a "horrible mistake". He forced UN chief inspector Richard Butler to apologise to him after Mr Butler accused Mr Ritter of breaking the law by speaking publicly about his work in Iraq. In 1999 he published a book, Endgame, where he argued that Unscom's mission had been compromised by Washington's use of inspections to spy on the Iraqis. Last year he produced a documentary entitled Shifting Sands: The Truth about Unscom and the Disarming of Iraq. He said that his team was satisfied that Iraq had destroyed 98% of its weapons by 1995. Mr Ritter accused the US Government of deliberately setting new standards of disarmament criteria to maintain UN sanctions and justify continued bombing raids. He also said Iraq "did co-operate to a very significant degree with the UN inspection process" and blamed the US and the UK for the breakdown. Mr Ritter essentially repeated those views during his trip to Baghdad last year. More...

 

William Rivers Pitt (Prosecution) - USA

William Rivers Pitt is an internationally best-selling author of three books: 'War on Iraq - What Team Bush Doesn't Want You to Know' (By William Rivers Pitt and Scott Ritter  2002), 'The Greatest Sedition is Silence'  (June 2003), and 'Our Flag, Too - The Paradox of Patriotism' (June 200). He is the Managing Editor and Senior Writer for truthout.org.

Mr. Pitt is a political analyst for the Institute for Public Accuracy. He spent several years as a high school teacher of English Literature, Writing, Grammar, Journalism and History, and was a Dean. Mr.Pitt currently resides in Cambridge, Massachusetts . He is 31 years old.  Pitt, co-author of "War on Iraq : What Team Bush Doesn't Want You to Know", is an angry leftist. He is angry with the president and his administration for dismantling the Bill of Rights, distorting our national purpose and placing environmental policy, tax policy and our military power in the hands of corporate oil interests. He is angry with the media for ineptly reporting on important policy issues while endlessly chasing Gary Condit. He is angry at the Supreme Court for giving Bush the presidency. And he is angry with the American public because they "have not been minding the store." More...

 

Neil MacKay (Witness) - UK

Neil Mackay is the Sunday Herald's multi-award winning Home Affairs and Investigations Editor. Beginning his career in Northern Ireland before moving to Scotland in the mid-90s, Neil has been with the newspaper since its launch in February 1999. He is a regular guest on current affairs programmes on TV & radio both nationally and internationally. More...

 

 

Jacques Pauwels (Witness) - Belgium/Canada

Jacques Pauwels holds a history degree from the University of Ghent in Belgium (1969), a PhD in history from York University in Toronto (1976), and an MA (1984) as well as a PhD (1995) in political science from the University of Toronto. He is the author of The Myth of the Good War: America in the Second World War (James Lorimer, Toronto, 2002), a book in which he questions the orthodox view of America’s participation in that war. Pauwels argues that the social-economic and political elite of America had nothing against fascism, that Washington merely stumbled into the war, and that even in a war which would go down in history as America’s “good war”, the American leaders were not really interested in the triumph of democracy and justice but in business, money, profits. This book is particularly relevant today, when America is supposedly fighting yet another “good war” for purely idealistic reasons, and comparisons between the “War against Terrorism” and the Second World War are invoked ad nauseam by President Bush and duly echoed in the US media.  More...


Written testimonies

Ed Blanche, a member of the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London, is a Beirut-based journalist who has covered Middle Eastern affairs for three decades.

Jeffrey Blankfort is former editor of the Middle East Labor Bulletin and has written extensively on the Israel-Palestine conflict. His photographs of the Anti-Vietnam War Movement and the Black Panthers have appeared in numerous books and magazines and are currently part of a show, "The Whole World is Watching," He lives in San Francisco. He currently hosts radio programs on KZYX in Mendocino, CA and KPOO in San Francisco. He is a journalist and Jewish-American pro-Palestinian human rights activist in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Michel Chossudovsky is Professor of Economics at the University of Ottawa. He has taught as Visiting Professor at academic institutions in Western Europe, Latin America and Southeast Asia, has acted as economic adviser to governments of developing countries and has worked as a consultant for several international organizations including the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), the African Development Bank, the United Nations African Institute for Economic Development and Planning (AIEDEP), the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), the International Labour Organization (ILO), the World Health Organisation (WHO), the United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC).

Dr. Chossudovsky is past President of the Canadian Association of Latin American and Caribbean Studies. He is member of a number of research organisations including the Committee on Monetary and Economic Reform (COMER), the Geopolitical Drug Watch (OGD) (Paris)and the International People's Health Council (IPHC). (Centre for Research on Globalisation: http://globalresearch.ca)

William Clark is Manager of Performance Improvement at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. His research on oil depletion, oil currency issues and U.S. geostrategy received a 2003 Project Censored award, published in Censored 2004. He lives in Columbia, Maryland.

The invasion of Iraq may well be remembered as the first oil currency war. Far from being a response to 9-11 terrorism or Iraq's alleged weapons of mass destruction, Petrodollar Warfare argues that the invasion was precipitated by two converging phenomena: the imminent peak in global oil production, and the ascendance of the euro currency.

Energy analysts agree that world oil supplies are about to peak, after which there will be a steady decline in supplies of oil. Iraq, possessing the world's second largest oil reserves, was therefore already a target of U.S. geostrategic interests. Together with the fact that Iraq had switched to paying for oil in euros -- rather than U.S. dollars -- the Bush administration's unreported aim was to prevent further OPEC momentum in favor of the euro as an alternative oil transaction currency standard.

Meticulously researched, Petrodollar Warfare examines U.S. dollar hegemony and the unsustainable macroeconomics of 'petrodollar recycling,' pointing out that the issues underlying the Iraq war also apply to geostrategic tensions between the U.S. and other countries including the member states of the European Union (EU), Iran, Venezuela, and Russia. The author warns that without changing course, the American Experiment will end the way all empires end - with military over-extension and subsequent economic decline. He recommends the multilateral pursuit of both energy and monetary reforms within a United Nations framework to create a more balanced global energy and monetary system - thereby reducing the possibility of future oil- and oil currency-related warfare.

A sober call for an end to aggressive U.S. unilateralism, Petrodollar Warfare is a unique contribution to the debate about the future global political economy. (full article can be read at http://www.ratical.org/ratville/CAH/RRiraqWar.html)

Glen Rangwala trained as a political theorist in Cambridge, UK, switched to the study of international law, and then returned to Cambridge to complete a doctorate in political and legal rhetoric in the Arab Middle East. His specific interest is in Palestinian politics from 1967 to 1977, and the rhetorical relations between the West Bank resident population and the leadership of the Palestinian resistance movement in exile. He is also published on a number of other themes, including international humanitarian law, comparative human rights law, Iraq and nuclear weapons.

In between the academic work, he helped run the Campaign Against Sanctions on Iraq (based in Cambridge, UK) and Arab Media Watch. Some of his more mundane reference notes on the Middle East are also available on-line http://middleeast.reference.users.btopenworld.com/

a former Los Angeles Police Department narcotics officer who for over twenty years has been trying to bring to public attention his first-hand knowledge of CIA complicity in the drug trade flooding our inner cities with hard drugs as an apparent covert funding mechanism for the weapons trade for destabilizing populations around the world for their economic exploitation. He has become a lead spokesman for the Crack the CIA Coalition which has the endorsement of numerous prominent social activists and groups. For more information on his work and the recently released volume 2 of the CIA Inspector General's report acknowledging CIA complicity in the drug trade (a report in danger of being intentionally obscured by the impeachment process).

Professor of Law, University of Dar es Salaam, Dar es Salaam, Tanzania