30 years later the USA’s use of chemical weapons in Vietnam is still having terrible consequences on another generation of victims.
The smoking gun that proves, if proof was needed, that a US missile bombed the Baghdad market.

Not one but two new-ish interviews with Cat Power, the first from Pitchfork which came with the glamourous Nico-esque pic above and the second from Japan Times (from my search for the truth in the news) which is half-interview half-psychoanalysis – and they wonder why she says fame is creepy.

An internal memo from MTV Europe with guidelines for ‘suitable’ videos during wartime. Needless to say System of a Down’s “Boom!” heads the list and the B-52s are banned completely. But somehow Massive Attack have escaped the ban, tut..tut.. MTV is getting sloppy.
Via boomblog

Michael Moore’s acceptance speech for winning the documentary Oscar last night
We like nonfiction and we live in fictitious times. We live in the time where we have fictitious election results that elects a fictitious president. We live in a time where we have a man sending us to war for fictitious reasons. Whether it’s the fictition of duct tape or fictition of orange alerts we are against this war, Mr. Bush. Shame on you, Mr. Bush, shame on you. And any time you got the Pope and the Dixie Chicks against you, your time is up. Thank you very much.

Well someone had to say it!
MP3 of the Speech
Interview with Michael Moore afterwards.

Another big antiwar demonstration yesterday in Dublin which will no doubt be ignored once again by our government.

More from Indymedia.ie amd more details about future protests from the Irish Antiwar Movement.
From the BBC a live Baghdad webcam (real video)

The first casuality of war etc . In this war your one certainty is that you are being lied to. To help in the search for balance here’s some links (picked more or less at random) to newspapers from around the world.
Gulf Times, UAE
Palestine Chronicle
Tehran Times
Al Ahram, Egypt
Syria Times
Jordan Times
Arab Times, Saudi Arabia
Daily Star, Lebanon
Kuwait Times
Jamahiriya, Libya
East African Standard, Kenya
Times of India
The Nation, Pakistan
South China Morning Post
Jakarta Post
The Japan Times
Granma International, Cuba
Le Monde Diplomatique (in english)
Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (in english)
Sweden Globe
Guerilla News
Alternet
Indymedia
Many more in The Big Project
Todays Front Pages -front pages from newspapers around the world

I was out at the US enbassy to protest against the war today. There will be another on Saturday in every town and city across the country (Dublin 2pm Central Bank, Dame St) to protest against the war and against our Government’s shameful vote this afternoon to let US forces refuel at Shannon and for warplanes to overfly our airspace on their way to bomb Iraq. To paraphrase Yeats the Government has disgraced itself again.

Stina Nordenstam’s new album - the follow up to 2001s excellent This is Stina Nordenstam is complete and she is now taking photographs for the artwork and deciding on the final tracklist. Her site CQD is worth checking out though the message boards are a bit scary.
Some live Cat Power (real audio) from some US radio station – very sinilar performance to the Peel session.

From the National Security Archive at George Washington University declassified documents showing that in 1983 despite his regime’s invasion of their neighbour, use of chemical weapons, human rights abuses and nuclear aspirations that would “probably” include “an eventual nuclear weapon capability,” the US sent a special envoy Donald Rumsfeld to meet with Saddam Hussein to renew diplomatic links.
Disturbing evidence of how the US helped Saddam to produce biological weapons.