Pakistan's government clearly seems to be moving toward putting on trial some of the individuals allegedly involved in clandestine transfer of nuclear weapons technology and components from Pakistan to North Korea, Iran and Libya. This is the signal that Islamabad is...
New York City Wants Easing of Patriot Act
New York, the city most affected by the 9/11 attacks almost two and a half years ago, has become the latest U.S. municipality to formally urge major reforms to the USA PATRIOT Act to eliminate threats to basic civil rights and due-process protections. The New York...
Cambodia’s Crisis Puts UN ‘Success’ Into Question
Over a decade after the United Nations claimed as a success story the restoration of democracy in war-ravaged Cambodia, the Southeast Asian country is exposing this achievement to be much less than what it has been vaunted to be. Democratic processes like elections...
Israel Out of Gaza? Not so Fast
Since taking office three years ago, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has made a series of bold political pronouncements, especially for a right-wing prime minister. But questions have arisen over what he meant before, and what he means this time. Sharon has said in the...
The Deadly Lies of Reliable Sources
Ninety-five days before the invasion of Iraq began, I sat in the ornate Baghdad office of the deputy prime minister as he talked about the U.N. weapons inspectors in his country. "They are doing their jobs freely, without any interruption," Tariq Aziz said....
Cui Bono on 9/11?
Cui Bono was the Latin legal term in old Rome for investigating a crime. Who benefited from 9/11 is the question? No one would accuse Bush of the strategy used by Roosevelt at Pearl Harbor to get America into the Second World War. But for others in...
Cui Bono on 9/11?
Cui Bono was the Latin legal term in old Rome for investigating a crime. Who benefited from 9/11 is the question? No one would accuse Bush of the strategy used by Roosevelt at Pearl Harbor to get America into the Second World War. But for others in...
In the Balkans, Same Old Evil
After spending some time virtually unnoticed, the Balkans is creeping back into the limelight. Events in the peninsula continue to develop along the policy lines drawn with blood and iron over the past decade, demonstrating that the forces intent on establishing an...
US Policy of Preemption is Nothing New
While critics and supporters of the Bush administration's preemption doctrine have described it as unprecedented in U.S. diplomacy, the release of a 34-year-old memo advocating "regime change" in Chile shows the policy has been around for quite some time. The...
Increasing Violence Threatens Iraqi Secularism
A pair of suicide bombings in the Kurdish area of Iraq and repeated demonstrations by supporters of a revered Shiite leader throughout the country has raised two nagging questions in the minds of many in the war-torn nation. Is the threat of terrorism beyond control...