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...

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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...

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Iran Proposal to US Offered Peace With Israel

Iran offered in 2003 to accept peace with Israel and cut off material assistance to Palestinian armed groups and to pressure them to halt terrorist attacks within Israel's 1967 borders, according to the secret Iranian proposal to the United States. The two-page...

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Right-Wing Israel Lobby Seizes on Olmert Visit

On his maiden visit to the United States as Israel's prime minister, Ehud Olmert received a firsthand look at the political muscle of the right-wing "Israel Lobby," part of which used the occasion to launch a campaign to deter him from following through on...

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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...

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Bush Democracy Doctrine, RIP

Less than 18 months after U.S. President George W. Bush declared in his 2005 Inaugural Address his unequivocal commitment to the "ultimate goal of ending tyranny in our world," tyrants, particularly in the Islamic world, are taking heart. From North Africa to Central...

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War Provoking Terror, Amnesty Says

LONDON - The war on terror is provoking more terror, Amnesty International Secretary-General Irene Khan told IPS in an interview Tuesday at the launch of the human rights group's 2006 annual report. "The war on terror and the way it has unfolded actually is...

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Fake but Accurate

The world was horrified to learn the other day, courtesy of Canada's National Post, that a law supposedly passed by the Iranian Parliament would require non-Muslims to wear special clothing identifying their religious affiliations: Zoroastrians were assigned blue,...

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Claiming the Black Mountain

Montenegro's Separatists Win After seven years of frustrated attempts, the separatist regime in Montenegro celebrated victory Sunday night, as it managed to drum up the 55.5 percent of the votes necessary to win the independence referendum. What would be a landslide...

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