Catering to Kazakhstan’s Kleptocracy

It has plenty of oil, mucho corruption, longtime connections to Washington deal-makers, and an ex-commie dictator with delusions of grandeur: in short, Kazakhstan has all the earmarks of a typical U.S. ally in Central Asia. Now that Uzbekistan is on the outs with an...

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If Pinochet Is Guilty, so Is Bush

General Augusto Pinochet, approaching his 90th year, has survived many years of legal harassments resulting from alleged human rights violations during the period of the Chilean military government's war on terrorism. On the basis of a U.S. Senate staff report,...

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Rights Group Calls Uzbek Deaths a ‘Massacre’

Last month's violence in Andijan, Uzbekistan, amounted to a "massacre" by government forces against mostly unarmed civilians, according to a new report released here Tuesday by Human Rights Watch (HRW). The report, which declined to estimate the total number of dead,...

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A Wife’s Plea

I am the wife of Staff Sgt. Ali Abukhdair. Under different circumstances, he would be the one addressing this letter to you, but because he is in the military he has lost his freedom of speech and was ordered not to talk to the media. My husband is currently an active...

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Who Cares About Iraqis?

Suicide bombers unleashed another day of hell across Iraq today, killing at least 18 and wounding over 67. Four of them struck Iraqi security forces, along with U.S. military convoys around Baghdad. Despite the huge, U.S.-backed Iraqi security operation throughout the...

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Desperate for Work, Blind to Dangers

AMMAN - Ahlam Najam just needed a job. At 25, she had a university degree in education but could not find work as teacher. When Kellogg Brown and Root (KBR), a subsidiary of the U.S. firm Halliburton, offered her a job as a security guard at a U.S. base in Iraq, she...

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Grandpa’s Battered Radio

"Ramzy, I must admit it, it's so hard being a Palestinian these days." That's how a friend of mine, a dedicated individual who is spending her days and years advocating justice for the Palestinian people, ended a distressing message to me a few months back. I...

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9/11 Commission for Prisoner Abuse?

On the heels of the dustup over the nomination of John Bolton to be the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, President George W. Bush's next congressional tsunami may well be a provision tucked away in a proposed anti-terrorist bill. That legislation would establish...

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