Month: March 2005

Following Russia’s formal ratification of the Kyoto Protocol last November, it went into force on Feb. 16, 2005. The Protocol obligates "industrialized" signatories to reduce by 2012 their emissions of six "greenhouse gases" – primarily carbon dioxide – to 5.2 percent below 1990 levels. The United States is not a signatory. Of course, it’s obvious … Continue reading “Kyoto Goes Nuclear”

The 2005 Review Conference of the Parties to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) will occur 2-27 May 2005 at the United Nations in New York and it may be the last. Under the NPT, the International Atomic Energy Agency is the designated "inspectorate" for verifying compliance by nation-states with their safeguards … Continue reading “Bye-Bye NPT?”

We at the Afghan Women’s Mission (AWM) often ask ourselves, why aren’t the major newspapers showing the American people what’s really happening in Afghanistan? AWM co-directors James Ingalls and I recently returned from a trip to Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan’s (RAWA) projects in Afghanistan and Pakistan. While we were there we saw … Continue reading “Afghanistan: Media Black Hole”

Journalists often refer to the Bush administration’s foreign policy as "unilateral" and "preemptive." Liberal pundits like to complain that a "go-it-alone" approach has isolated the United States from former allies. But the standard American media lexicon has steered clear of a word that would be an apt description of the Bush world view. Paranoid. Early … Continue reading “Little Reporting on Paranoia in High Places”

In a mirror image of those who blame everything wrong in the world on President George W. Bush, a surprising number of people are now giving him credit for the recent show of force by hundreds of thousands of Lebanese protestors demanding an end to Syria’s overbearing influence in their country. It is extremely doubtful … Continue reading “Blaming and Crediting Bush for Everything: Two Sides of the Same Coin”

The restoration of U.S. military aid to Guatemala 15 years after it was suspended for human rights abuses was assailed late Thursday by several rights groups, who said the move was premature. On a visit to the Guatemalan capital earlier in the day, U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld announced that the George W. Bush administration … Continue reading “US Restores Guatemalan Military Aid After 15-Year Hiatus”

In mid-February, Israel’s parliament backed Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s plan to withdraw from the Gaza Strip and four West Bank settlements. While the vote in parliament has set off a few disruptive demonstrations by anti-disengagement settlers and their supporters, increased violent resistance may be coming down the pike. On March 15, Ha’aretz, an Israeli daily … Continue reading “Rehearsals for the Rapture”

While U.S. President George W. Bush played nice to a deeply frustrated Mexican President Vicente Fox at the North American Summit in Texas Wednesday, U.S. media attention was focused more on Pentagon chief Donald Rumsfeld’s efforts to sound the alarm against Latin American troublemakers in his swing through the region this week. Topping his list … Continue reading “Washington Focuses on Southern ‘Axis of Evil’”

The idea that the people of Kyrgyzstan have risen up, all on their own, to establish “democracy” and the “rule of law” in a land that has never known either, is the sort of fairy tale that even the most naïve will probably greet with a considerable degree of skepticism. This is especially true if … Continue reading “The Lesson of Kyrgyzstan”

Renowned American historian and diplomat George F. Kennan died last week at the age of 101, a day after U.S. President George W. Bush announced that he was nominating Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz to head the World Bank. So it was not surprising that I ended up going over the obituaries for the … Continue reading “From Kennan to Wolfowitz”