Last week, Iran removed the UN seals from uranium enrichment equipment at its Natanz nuclear facility and threatened to block International Atomic Energy Agency inspections if referred to the UN Security Council over its nuclear program. Iran claims its program is for...
Rights Group Criticizes US, EU Hypocrisy
The Bush administration's "global war on terrorism" continued to set back the cause of human rights in 2005, according to a major U.S. rights group, which said that U.S. and European hypocrisy in carrying out that war led to a "global leadership...
A Challenge That Cannot Be Ignored
Former vice president Al Gore gave what I believe to be the most important political speech in my lifetime, and the New York Times, "the newspaper of record," did not report it. Not even excerpts. For the New York Times, it was a nonevent that a former vice president...
Pakistanis: US Missile Strikes Will Affect War on Terror
KARACHI - Missile strikes carried out by the United States on Damadola village near the Afghan border that killed 18 people may fuel religious fanaticism in this country and seriously complicate President George W. Bush's war on terror, say moderate political leaders...
Hebron for Beginners
Hebron is again in the headlines. More than almost any other place, this divided city represents the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in a nutshell. Occupied by Israel in 1967, the Palestinian town saw its very heart taken over by Israeli settlers, whose presence there is...
Another Undeclared War?
Is the United States about to launch a second preemptive war, against a nation that has not attacked us, to deprive it of weapons of mass destruction that it does not have? With U.S. troops tied down in Afghanistan and Iraq, and Pakistanis inflamed over a U.S....
Guess What? Democracies Are Not Always Peaceful
If you've been listening to the recent "democracy is the way to go" sermons by President George W. Bush and his advisers, you'll have to conclude that embracing "democracy" a concept that is open to different interpretations is the...
The Empty Shirts, Courtiers, and ‘Crazies’
Individually, the new "dots" supplied by revelations about the Iraq war in James Risen's State of War: The Secret History of the CIA and the Bush Administration are not very surprising. Collectively, though, they provide valuable insight into the peculiar way in which...
Does the President Really Know Best?
In every way they could imagine unnoticed in broad daylight and in the darkness of eternal secrecy the president and his top officials have been hardest at work not at governing the country but at bulking up presidential powers. This, it now seems, was...
Japan Wooing the US to Gain Security Council Seat
TOKYO - Brushing aside its failure to win a permanent seat in the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) last year, Tokyo is betting on backing the United States and its policies as a means of achieving a goal viewed as key to playing a more active role in global...


