Month: February 2004

This is the farm village that Cliff Kindy, leader of the Christian Peacemaker Team (CPT), refers to as the “razor wire place.” It’s actually a small town, around half of which the U.S. Army has unrolled concertina razor wire, and completed the effect with a checkpoint and curfew. Six CPT members are returning for an … Continue reading “Iraq Dispatch
American Troops Cut Down Iraqi Couple, Terrorize Village”

There is a story I have been hearing lately that goes something like this: “A Japanese Dairy Group opened a factory in China and began processing dairy products for consumption in Japan. The Japanese, being both fastidious and organized in character, kept the factory very clean and orderly in order to please the demanding market … Continue reading “Iron Stomachs”

Outside the Israeli settlement of Neve Dekalim a group of Palestinians waited patiently under a corrugated iron roof near an Israeli barrier to cross back to their village. The Gush Katif bloc of settlements in southern Gaza, of which Neve Dekalim is one, have cut their village Al-Mawasi off from the large Khan Younis town … Continue reading “Gazans Fear This Might Not Be Goodbye”

Following President Bush’s hour-long interview with NBC’s Tim Russert, we can now state conclusively that President Bush deliberately misled the American people and continues to do so. Item: Bush claims he was acting on the best intelligence there was when he decided to go to war. Fact: The intelligence given to Bush was full of … Continue reading “A Cynical Manipulation”

President George Bush’s proposed curbs on the spread of nuclear weapons, outlined at his National Defense University address on Wednesday, and the continuing disclosures about clandestine nuclear transfers from Pakistan to North Korea, Libya and Iran, occasion a good hard look at the murky goings-on in the nuclear world. At the heart of Bush’s proposals … Continue reading “How Not to Curb Nuclear Proliferation”

The limitless capacity of both major parties to distract us from what’s really important may be their true and only function. That thesis, at any rate, is certainly on display this election season. The Democrats are now howling that President Bush has no right to call himself a “war president” because he supposedly evaded actually … Continue reading “Both Parties AWOL”

One must be careful not to crow too quickly. Perceptions in a large and complex society can shift quickly, often for reasons that seem to make little sense to those of us inclined to be excessively rational or coldly analytical. But it seems more than possible that events and perceptions are converging in such a … Continue reading “For Bush, It’s All Unraveling”

GoodBye Gancarski I agree 100% with getting rid of Gancarski, if anything, it should have been done a lot sooner. I’m not sure I could have been as easy on him as you were (maybe you don’t think you were easy on him, but I was thinking of a Singapore-style public bare-assed caning). I can … Continue reading “Backtalk, February 13, 2004”

Multiple suicide bombings in Iraq early this week and escalating violence against U.S.-led multi-national military forces are stymieing U.N. efforts to return to the war-devastated country. The world body pulled its international workers out of the occupied nation after a suicide bombing against its offices there in August killed 22 employees, leaving only local staff … Continue reading “Violence Stymies UN Efforts to Return to Iraq”

Proposed new US curbs on the proliferation of nuclear weapons are fundamentally hypocritical, US academics, military analysts and peace activists said Wednesday. “(US) President George Bush seems committed to writing a new chapter in the grotesque saga of US nuclear policy: ‘do as we say, not as we do’,” Norman Solomon, executive director of the … Continue reading “New US Plans for Nukes Hypocritical, Say Experts”