The election of the hardline Tehran mayor, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, over former President Ayatollah Hashemi Rafsanjani as the new head of Iran is undeniably a setback for those hoping to advance greater social and political freedom in that country. It should not...
US Support for Repression in Uzbekistan Belies Pro-Democracy Rhetoric
Recent revelations that the United States successfully blocked a call by NATO for an international investigation of the May 13 massacre of hundreds of civilians by the government of the former Soviet Republic of Uzbekistan serves as yet another reminder of the...
US Government Versus Amnesty International: A Short History
In what appears to be a concerted effort to discredit independent human rights advocates, the Bush administration and its allies in the media have been engaging in a series of attacks against Amnesty International, the world's largest human rights organization and...
Blaming and Crediting Bush for Everything: Two Sides of the Same Coin
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...
All Set for War With Syria
The broader implications of the Feb. 14 assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, who was seen by many as the embodiment of the Lebanese people's efforts to rebuild their country in the aftermath of its 15-year civil war, are yet to unfold. A Sunni...
Humphrey-Nixon Redux
No wonder it feels so damn frustrating. It's like 1968 all over again. The United States is bogged down in a bloody counter-insurgency war on the other side of the globe, a war that the majority of the American people believe we should have never entered. Polls...
Republicrats Still Linking Iraq to 9/11
On the eve of the third anniversary of 9/11, the U.S. House of Representatives by an overwhelming, bipartisan majority of 406-16 passed a resolution linking Iraq to the al-Qaeda attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. This comes despite...
Fact-Checking Bush’s UN Address
Commentators in the mainstream media seem genuinely perplexed over the polite but notably unenthusiastic reception given to President George W. Bush's Sept. 21 address before the United Nations General Assembly. Why wasn't a speech that emphasized such high ideals as...
Democratic Party Platform Turns Toward the War Party
Against the backdrop of ongoing death and destruction in Iraq as a result of the U.S. invasion and subsequent occupation, the Democratic Party formally adopted their 2004 platform on July 28 at their convention in Boston. The platform focused more on foreign policy...
John Edwards, the Smiling Hawk
U.S. Senator John Kerry's decision to select a vice-presidential running mate who shares his militaristic foreign-policy agenda has once again demonstrated the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee's willingness to take the party's activist core, which...


