Perhaps Rep. Betty McCollum (D-Minn.) didn't quite realize what she was getting into when she voted against the Palestinian Anti-Terrorism Act of 2006, so-called, which would cut off all aid to the Palestinians, impose economic sanctions, and make it impossible for...
Public Hearings Sought in Phone Record Scandal
Anticipating that the U.S. federal government would invoke the so-called "state secrets" privilege to block any lawsuit calling for the disclosure of details about allegations that phone companies shared customer records with the government's biggest spy agency, a...
Steering Into a Third Intifada
When there is no solution, there is no problem, observed James Burnham, the former Trotskyite turned Cold War geostrategist. Burnham's insight came again to mind as President Bush ended his meeting with Ehud Olmert by announcing that the Israeli prime minister had...
Pressure Grows on Bush to Engage Iran Directly
The administration of U.S. President George W. Bush is under increasing pressure both here and abroad to engage Iran in direct talks despite the continued opposition of pro-Israel neoconservatives and Vice President Dick Cheney. In recent weeks, a...
US Shuts Eyes to Abuses of Key Ally Egypt
The George W. Bush administration has called on the U.S. Congress to keep annual aid to Egypt of nearly $2 billion intact for the next fiscal year, despite a massive crackdown on pro-democracy activists and suppression of political dissent in the country. On May 19...
Backtalk, May 25, 2006
The Administration That Won't Stop Lying Without a free press, the U.S. will continue to follow the neocon agenda for the world and the bombs will continue to ravage the earth. The Taliban in fact are the successors to the mujahideen, who were America's friends and...
Cycle of Violence
On late Sunday and early Monday, U.S. air strikes in the Kandahar province in Afghanistan killed 20-80 suspected Taliban militants (a coalition statement confirmed 20 Taliban killed, while other sources reported as many as 60 more unconfirmed killed). The targets were...
Eavesdropping, Gagging, and the Constitution
Is the National Security Agency being "turned against the people," as the Congressional committee led by Sen. Frank Church warned might happen? We the people cannot know; it's classified. Thursday's slick but evasive testimony by Gen. Mike Hayden, the president's...
Why Can’t the US Apply Its New North Korea Policy to Iran?
The conventional historical narrative of U.S. President George W. Bush's foreign policy has traced the ascendancy of the neoconservative ideologues in his administration to the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States and the ensuing war in Iraq. The common...
Basra Explodes
With Salam Talib The Iraqi Oil Ministry's inspector general reported this week that $1 billion of Iraq's oil is being illegally smuggled out of the country every month. Smuggling on a large scale, coupled with increasing violence and the lack of basic services like...


