“The United Nations has formed a rapid reaction force to step in wherever art treasures are threatened by war or natural disaster.

The ‘cultural blue berets’, as they are being called, will initially be comprised of Italians and could include members of Italy’s paramilitary police, the carabinieri.

The move follows international outrage over the looting of priceless antiquities during the US-led coalition’s invasion of Iraq last year.” (age.com.au)

“A survey conducted this week by The Miami Herald in Miami-Dade County, which has one of the largest concentrations of Jews in the state of Florida, found that 82 percent of the Jews who live in the county plan to vote for John Kerry. Only 15 percent said they would be voting for George W. Bush.

This finding should come as something of a surprise to anyone who has been following the Republican Party’s efforts to bring Jewish voters to its side, and after innumerable assessments to the effect that, this time, a higher percentage of the Jewish electorate will vote for a Republican president.” (Ha’aretz)

“The video was first aired on MTV on Wednesday and immediately went to the top of the channel’s ‘hot video’ charts.

In it, the rapper leads a crowd of hooded people, including a mother with an eviction notice and a soldier given orders to return to Iraq, in a march to storm a government building. Once inside, the mob remove their hoods and stand in an orderly queue to vote.

Eminem, now wearing a smart suit and red tie, declaims in a style reminiscent of Martin Luther King:

‘In these closing statements, if they should argue, let us beg to differ, as we set aside our differences, and assemble our own army, to disarm this weapon of mass destruction that we call our president, for the present.’

The video was made by the Guerrilla News Network, a small independent company that has produced other music videos as well as a documentary about the dangers of depleted uranium in Iraq after the US-led invasion.” (Guardian.UK)

100,000 Iraqi civilians dead, says study: “About 100,000 Iraqi civilians – half of them women and children – have died in Iraq since the invasion, mostly as a result of airstrikes by coalition forces, according to the first reliable study of the death toll from Iraqi and US public health experts.

The study, which was carried out in 33 randomly-chosen neighbourhoods of Iraq representative of the entire population, shows that violence is now the leading cause of death in Iraq. Before the invasion, most people died of heart attacks, stroke and chronic illness. The risk of a violent death is now 58 times higher than it was before the invasion.” (Guardian.UK)

“The FBI has already investigated some of Halliburton’s Iraqi activities, but it is now treating the defence department’s dealings with the vice-president’s old company as a potentially criminal matter.” (Guardian.UK)

Maureen Dowd: “Dick Cheney peaked too soon. We’ve still got a few days left until Halloween.

It was scary enough when we thought the vice president had created his own reality for spin purposes. But if he actually believes that Iraq is ‘a remarkable success story,” it’s downright spooky. He’s already got his persona for Sunday: he’s the mad scientist in the haunted mansion, fiddling with test tubes to force the world to conform to his twisted vision.” (New York Times op-ed)

“A videotape made by a television crew with American troops when they opened bunkers at a sprawling Iraqi munitions complex south of Baghdad shows a huge supply of explosives still there nine days after the fall of Saddam Hussein, apparently including some sealed earlier by the International Atomic Energy Agency.” (New York Times)