Well, it seems workers are battling to contain a large spill of crude-contaminated water—111,300 gallons—at ConocoPhillips' Kuparuk oil filed on Alaska's North Slope. State officials are concerned about impacts on the fragile tundra environment. How ironic that this comes days after the Senate voted to open the nearby ANWR to oil development. Fortunately, however, the compliant media have contained the crisis—by keeping it out of the headlines.

As Bush equivocates, former UN weapons inspector Scott Ritter states in a commentary for al-Jazeera that he was told by an anonymous "someone close to the Bush administration" that the U.S. military attack on Iran is slated for June 2005. An Israeli determination that Iran's uranium enrichment program could be functional by then was cited, Ritter says.

According to documents obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union, torture in occupied Iraq has not been confined to Abu Ghraib jail, where abuse and sexual humiliation of inmates caused worldwide outrage last year.

The German-based pro-Kurdish Flash-Bulletin website has posted a Feb. 16 letter from a group of Ezidi academics protesting that Ezidi children in eastern Turkey are being forced to study Islam in school by local village authorities—a practice they charge is part of the "Turkish state's assimilating policy against other ethnic and religious groups in general and Ezidis in particular." (Particularly cited is an unsourced press account from Oglakci village in the Viransehir region of Urfa province.) The writers of the letter accuse the Turkish government of bad faith in officially granting language and cultural rights to Kurds and other minorities in eastern Turkey, saying this policy is just a facade intended to facilitate entry into the European Union. The writers charge:

David Horowitz, center-right editor of the center-right Jerusalem Post, reports with concern some recent fascist nostalgia in Rome:

"Maybe we should shrug off the ongoing little rumpus in Rome
surrounding Lazio soccer team captain Paolo Di Canio's recent Fascist
salute to his loyal fans during his team's 3-1 victory over local
rivals Roma. After all, the player remarked of the gesture, 'it was
only to celebrate.' It was 'nothing to do with political behavior of
any kind,' insisted Di Canio, who has a tattooed homage to Benito
Mussolini on his arm and in his autobiography called the fascist
dictator 'a very principled, ethical individual.'

Right to Life, Unless You're Poor and Black
 http://www.diversityinc.com/public/13048.cfm

 This week, as Americans followed the legal battle over Terri Schiavo's
 feeding tube, a 6-month-old baby was "murdered" by Texas Children's
 Hospital officials, according to Arizona Republic columnist Mike Newcomb.
 Against the wishes of Wanda Hudson, the boy's mother, hospital officials
 took Sun Hudson off a ventilator that was helping him breathe. The mother,
 a 33-year-old poor black woman with no prenatal care, begged the hospital

From Digby's Blog:

Tom DeLay of Texas says:

"Mrs. Schiavo's life is not slipping away - it is being violently wrenched from her body in an act of medical terrorism... Mr. Schiavo's attorney's characterization of the premeditated starvation and dehydration of a helpless woman as 'her dying process' is as disturbing as it is unacceptable. What is happening to her is not compassion - it is homicide. She doesn't need to die, and as long as Terri Schiavo can breathe and her supporters can pray, we will not rest."

By now most people who read liberal blogs are aware that George W. Bush

Disgraced former Peruvian President Alberto Fujimori—now hiding from corruption charges in Japan, and officially barred from seeking office until 2010—hopes to run for president again in 2006, and is promoting his campaign with a new soft-drink, Fuji-Cola, a fizzy product he says "will quench the thirst of popular discontent." (BBC, March 22)