"Leftwing looters raid shops"
Sophie Arie in Rome
The Guardian

A group of 200 leftwing protesters wearing balaclavas, carnival masks and bandanas over their faces, went on a "proletariat shopping spree" in a Rome hypermarket at the weekend, carrying off goods and handing them out.

They swarmed into the Panorama hypermarket on the outskirts of the Italian capital on Saturday shouting "free shopping for all".

After failing to negotiate a 70% discount with the supermarket's manager, the group barged loaded trolleys past cashiers and distributed the goods to a crowd outside.

"Russians Mark Revolution Day With Protests"

Mara D. Bellaby, Associated Press

MOSCOW (AP) — Carrying the Soviet hammer-and-sickle
flag and singing as
they marched, Russians marked the anniversary of the
1917 Bolshevik
Revolution on Sunday in both a celebration of Soviet
times and a protest
against a parliamentary proposal to scrap a
once-revered Soviet holiday.

At least 8,000 Communist Party backers and members of
the ultra-nationalist
National Bolshevik party gathered at a square once
named for Vladimir Lenin
and marched across Moscow toward a statue of Karl
Marx. They bore a giant
portrait of Lenin and banners proclaiming "U.S.S.R. —
our Homeland.''

Rob Eshelman submits:

US Conservatives Cast Wary Eye at EU Treaty
Frederick Studemann, Financial Times

US conservatives have teamed up with eurosceptics in Britain to tackle what they see as a threat to American strategic interests.

Organisations such as the American Enterprise Institute, home to leading neo-conservatives, and the Heritage Foundation, a more traditional conservative foreign policy think-tank, have expressed concern that "vital American strategic interests" are threatened by the European Union's constitutional treaty and its implications for foreign and security policy.

Two NYC Firefighters Say 9/11 "Black Boxes" Were Found

William Bunch, Philadelphia Daily News

Two men who worked extensively in the wreckage of the World Trade Center claim they helped federal agents find three of the four "black boxes" from the jetliners that struck the towers on 9/11 — contradicting the official account.

Both the independent 9/11 Commission and federal authorities continue to insist that none of the four devices — a cockpit voice recorder (CVR) and flight data recorder (FDR) from the two planes — were ever found in the wreckage.

But New York City firefighter Nicholas DeMasi has written in a recent book — self-published by several Ground Zero workers — that he escorted federal agents on an all-terrain vehicle in October 2001 and helped them locate three of the four.

"Why They Won"

Thomas Frank, NY Times

The first thing Democrats must try to grasp as they cast their eyes over the smoking ruins of the election is the continuing power of the culture wars. Thirty-six years ago, President Richard Nixon championed a noble "silent majority" while his vice president, Spiro Agnew, accused liberals of twisting the news. In nearly every election since, liberalism has been vilified as a flag-burning, treason-coddling, upper-class affectation. This year voters claimed to rank "values" as a more important issue than the economy and even the war in Iraq.

And yet, Democrats still have no coherent framework for confronting this chronic complaint, much less understanding it. Instead, they "triangulate," they accommodate, they declare themselves converts to the Republican religion of the market, they sign off on NAFTA and welfare reform, they try to be more hawkish than the Republican militarists. And they lose. And they lose again. Meanwhile, out in Red America, the right-wing populist revolt continues apace, its fury at the "liberal elite" undiminished by the Democrats' conciliatory gestures or the passage of time.

Anonymous Comrade writes:

What Does “Victory in the War on Terror By Any Means Necessary” Really Mean?

British political commentator Jonathan Dimbleby has recently — in a high profile 2 hour documentary for British TV channel ITV (30th Oct and 1st Nov) and in a supporting article in the U.K. Observer (30th Oct) — made the increasingly-heard argument that winning a war on terrorism requires waging and winning a war against global poverty (which in turn requires waging and winning a war on biodiversity loss, soil degradation, global warming, and so on, but let us leave the environmentalist aspects out of it for now). I would like to respond here to two main points made by Dimbleby in his Observer article which can be summarized as follows:

We posted a story from the Guardian about this case last year. It can be read here. There's a greater emphasis in this new report on the cultish characteristics of LaRouche. That can be taken with a pinch of salt.

The Student, the Shadowy Cult and a Mother's Fight for Justice
Mark Townsend, The Observer

His death at a bleak road junction in Germany seemed destined to remain shrouded in mystery. Shortly after leaving a meeting staged by far-right extremists, British student Jeremiah Duggan inexplicably ran in front of speeding traffic. Now the chain of events that led to the 22-year-old sustaining fatal head injuries early one morning on a Wiesbaden ring road are to be re-examined by police.

For his mother, Erica, it is the culmination of an 18-month battle to discover what happened during her son's final days.

All she did know was that her Jewish son would never return home after becoming embroiled with the LaRouche organisation, a shadowy cult led by a convicted fraudster with virulent anti-Semitic views. When police broke the news that Duggan had died they urged Erica 'to go nowhere near those people, they are dangerous.'

The Lancet Report on Civilian Casualties in Iraq

For the full report on civilian casualties in Iraq, go to The Lancet

"Seymour Hersh: Man On Fire"

Lakshmi Chaudhry, AlterNet

In an astonishingly candid and far-ranging interview, the journalist who exposed major stories from the My Lai massacre to the Abu Ghraib scandal, proves that his voice is every bit as powerful as his pen.

An interview with Seymour Hersh is never dull — to put it mildly. The Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist can be contentious, just as willing to challenge a question as answer it. He can be unpredictable, ever able to throw a hapless reporter off-balance with the unexpected. "Did you ever take a stewardess' course?" he might inquire just as you're trying to get him to discuss the role of the media.

"How to Cross Borders, Social or Otherwise"

Elizabeth Bard, The New York Times

In the basement of the New Museum of Contemporary Art's temporary home in Chelsea, a seemingly ironic invitation appears on a black-and-white label next to a flat-screen computer:

"The Status Project aims to aid those who seek change, for example moving from homelessness to a career in bank management, or from the legal identity of a 32-year-old American woman to a male Pakistani teenager.''

This is not a joke. Or rather, it is a joke, but one with potentially serious consequences.

Heath Bunting and Kayle Brandon, two British artists, are compiling a database exploring elements of legal status in Britain, with the ultimate goal of allowing people to create a new identity from information collected on the Internet. The first stage of their project is the focus of "Rules of Crime,'' a small show that runs through Nov. 13 at the New Museum.