Releasing the latest edition of its annual human rights "Country Reports," the U.S. State Department Wednesday named Iran and China as among the world's "most systematic human rights violators" in 2005, along with North Korea, Burma, Zimbabwe,...
Backtalk, March 9, 2006
Is the IOB DOA? As the originator of the "Iran Oil Bourse" I hope you can spare me some space to comment in relation to Ms. Berg's recent articles. The original concept five or so years ago was not of an "Iran Oil Bourse" but of a "Middle East Energy Exchange"...
Democracy in Action
Promoting Terrorists, Again Milan Babic, onetime president of the breakaway Republic of Serb Krajina (in today's Croatia), was found dead in his temporary cell at the Hague Inquisition's Scheveningen prison on Monday, having reportedly committed suicide. Two years...
Shark and Awe
We already have "stealth" aircraft, but what about a little of the stealth that only nature can provide? Navy SEALs, move over – here come the Navy sharks. According to the latest New Scientist magazine, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA,...
Biddle’s Pivot
In Iraq, defeat stares us in the face. Efforts to "Iraq-ize" the campaign to crush the Sunni insurgency have the U.S. war effort sinking under the weight of its own implausibility, and American policymakers are flailing around in search of an alternative. As U.S....
What the Indian Giver Got
Standing beside Pervez Musharraf, an ally in the war on terror, President Bush explained how he told him Pakistan would not be getting the same aid in developing peaceful nuclear power that Bush had just promised to India: "I explained that Pakistan and India are...
Report: Relations with Russia Moving in ‘Wrong Direction’
WASHINGTON - Fifteen years after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, bilateral ties between Russia, its successor state, and the United States are "headed in the wrong direction," according to a new report [.pdf] released here this week by the influential...
Amid Iraq Carnage, Sunnis Press for Peace
With Arkan Hamed BAGHDAD - As violence continues throughout much of Iraq, many Sunni political and religious leaders continue to urge their followers to resist launching reprisal attacks. Scores of Iraqis, Sunni and Shia alike, are being killed daily. Recent incidents...
The US Role in Iraq’s Sectarian Violence
The sectarian violence that has swept across Iraq following last month's terrorist bombing of the Golden Mosque in Samara is yet another example of the tragic consequences of the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq. Until the 2003 U.S. invasion and occupation, Iraq...
ElBaradei’s Swan Song?
At the insistence of the Cheney cabal, the Board of Governors of the International Atomic Energy Agency had a "special" meeting a month ago and passed a resolution [.pdf] requesting that the IAEA director-general: "[C]ontinue with his efforts to...