Month: October 2004

PESHAWAR, Pakistan – As Afghanistan gets ready to start counting votes Wednesday from a historic presidential election, after several key candidates threatened to declare the poll illegal, Afghan refugees living in Pakistan were confident incumbent president Hamid Karzai would become the first-ever legitimate head of state and speed up efforts for much-needed peace in the … Continue reading “Karzai Favored by Afghans Living Elsewhere”

BOGOTA – Local secretariats of finance, roads and health – "that’s where the money is, that’s where the show is run," a member of a paramilitary militia in Colombia can be heard saying in the taped telephone conversation. The wiretapped conversation took place a few days after the October 2003 local and regional elections, and … Continue reading “Colombian Paramilitaries Extend Their Tentacles”

It was only a matter of time before someone said it: "[A]n old question haunts the continent: Where should the borders of Serbia lie?" So began Roger Cohen’s commentary in the International Herald Tribune on Tuesday, titled "The Serbian Question, Still on Europe’s Plate." Though the wars of the 1990s – which he blames squarely … Continue reading “Solving the ‘Serbian Question’”

The environmental group Greenpeace has echoed a call by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to permit the UN watchdog to return in force to Iraq to track nuclear-related materials looted after the 2003 U.S.-led invasion there and help protect and treat the population from exposure to deadly radiation The group’s appeal followed a report … Continue reading “Greenpeace Warns of Iraq Nuclear Contamination”

BANGKOK – Of the many initiatives undertaken to forge lasting peace between South Asia‘s squabbling neighbors, none can challenge the promise of Iran’s proposed natural gas pipeline to India traversing through Pakistan. New Delhi and Tehran first signed a memorandum of understanding for the pipeline in 1993, but the intervening decade saw India’s relations with … Continue reading “Iran’s Gas Pipeline May Turn South Asia’s Peace Pipe”

Larry Franklin’s October SurpriseJustin: First, you cannot use the words fundamentalists and evangelicals interchangeably; they are not. Evangelicals are spirit-filled Christians who know, because of their daily walk with God, that the most important thing in all history was Jesus’s death on Calvary. You have to keep that in mind when you are talking about … Continue reading “Backtalk, October 14, 2004”

UNITED NATIONS – When the League of Arab States was created in 1945, it was perceived as the ultimate symbol of Arab nationalism in a politically and militarily demoralized Middle East. But in recent years, the 22 members of the pan-Arab organization have been struggling to find common cause, and their meetings have been characterized … Continue reading “Is Al-Jazeera the New Symbol of Arab Nationalism?”

MONTEVIDEO – Freedom of expression worldwide has been under threat since agents of the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) last week seized two Internet servers hosting Web sites of the Independent Media Centers. In Latin America, Indymedia Brazil and Uruguay are directly affected. "The incident resembles a Kafka novel," Pablo Ortellado of Indymedia Brazil … Continue reading “Indymedia Seizure Hits Two Nations”

Two years ago, when The American Conservative magazine was launched, Franklin Foer of The New Republic accorded us a gracious welcome. “Buchanan’s Surefire Flop,” he titled his essay. It began, “Buchanan and his rich friends could not have chosen a worse time to start a journal of the isolationist right.” Foer went on: “9/11 hasn’t … Continue reading “The Resurrection of ‘America First!’”

In a recent newspaper column, Robert Novak reiterated his earlier reporting that the Bushies are planning to get out of Iraq ASAP – that is, as soon as politically feasible, starting right after the January 2005 elections. Citing unnamed administration officials in the first instance, the veteran conservative columnist – who opposed the invasion of … Continue reading “Neocons Universally Despised”