Month: April 2005

NEW DELHI – Barely 10 days after launching a landmark bus service connecting the two divided parts of Kashmir, India and Pakistan Monday took a giant stride forward by declaring that the peace process between them is "irreversible" and will be pursued sincerely and purposefully. This is the cheerful outcome of a three-day hurricane-speed visit … Continue reading “India, Pakistan Take a Big Stride Forward”

Memo to: Paul Volcker As if you don’t have enough trouble in preparing your final report to UN General Secretary Kofi Annan on the so-called “Oil-for-Food Scandal,” now the U.S. Justice Department has jumped the gun and indicted Houston oilman David Bay Chalmers Jr. and his Bayoil USA company. For what? For paying “illegal kickbacks” … Continue reading “The Real Oil-for-Food Scandal”

"You know, Josh Burkeen is our rep down here in the southeast area. He lives in Colgate and travels out of Atoka. He was telling me lesbianism is so rampant in some of the schools in southeast Oklahoma that they’ll only let one girl go to the bathroom. Now think about it. Think about that … Continue reading “The High Priest of Empire”

That the world is “a carnival of buncombe,” as H. L. Mencken put it, is an idea that is proved every day – nay, every hour – as the news of our leaders’ cluelessness unfolds, but this past week must have had the old iconoclast shaking the earth over his coffin with waves of seismic … Continue reading “Our Bizarro World
Foreign Policy”

Once the Senate confirms John Bolton to be our ambassador to the United Nations, he vows to “forge a stronger relationship between the United States and the United Nations, which depends critically on American leadership.” Like the leadership exhibited when Bush invaded Iraq in 2003 in defiance of the authority reserved to the UN Security … Continue reading “Bonkers at the UN”

A month ago at TomDispatch, I wrote an essay, "Which War Is This Again?," about the naming of the “war” our president declared in the wake of the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. The neocons fell in love with the idea of us being in a generational struggle like the Cold War (which they thought … Continue reading “Waiting for DE-Day”

Anti-pullout protesters blocked a major highway near Tel Aviv, disrupted an Israeli army graduation ceremony for new officers, and tried to march on a highly sensitive religious site in Jerusalem this week. The three protest actions were launched in just three days by opponents of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s plan to evacuate all 21 settlements … Continue reading “Is Israel Facing ‘Civil War’”

I‘ve known of Kassim Kafarneh for many years. His thick, wild beard is now neatly trimmed and his once unruly black hair is combed in an orderly fashion. His spirit, however, is as free as the day I saw him filming in our refugee camp one Friday afternoon, 17 years ago. I know for sure … Continue reading “Gaza: The Line of Memory and Despair”

It would pay us all to remember that the war in Iraq was both unjust and illegal. We launched a war of aggression against a country that was not attacking us, did not have the means to attack us, and had never expressed any intention of attacking us. Thus, America’s attack against Iraq is the … Continue reading “An Unjust War”

According to Ambassador Jackie Sanders, the United States proposes to "strengthen" the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons at the NPT Review Conference being held next month at United Nations headquarters in New York. If Sanders is not intentionally misleading us, either she has never read the Treaty or didn’t understand what she read. … Continue reading “Strengthening the NPT?”