Gagged, but Still Going StrongI have been following Sibel Edmonds’ story avidly since the first time I saw a piece on it on Antiwar.com (the only place I’ve been able to learn about it by the way). There’s not been another story that raises my blood pressure as much as hers does. The blatant abuse …
Continue reading “Backtalk, June2, 2005”
Winston Churchill once remarked that God protects drunks and the United States of America. Fortunately, the divine protection Churchill detected for the United States seems still in place – if we are wise enough to see and take advantage of it. In the past month, America has been blessed by two events that ought to …
Continue reading “God, Drunks, and America”
The Forgotten Balkans Flashpoint When French voters rejected the EU Constitution this past weekend, among the loudest defenders of the EU were leaders of the Balkan countries that aspire to eventual annexation by the bloc, assuring their subjects that the road to untold riches and unimaginable prosperity still led through Brussels: "In every Balkan capital …
Continue reading “Battle for Bosnia”
Among the many unhappy developments in American industry in recent decades has been the advent of "wreck it and run" management. A small coterie of senior managers takes over a company and makes a brilliant show of short-term profits while actually driving the business into the ground. They bail out just before it crashes, cashing …
Continue reading “Wreck It and Run”
The U.S. government gave the slave trade a boost by offering money for al-Qaeda and Taliban fighters. Afghan and Pakistani warlords simply rounded up people who looked Arab or foreign and sold them to the Americans as captured fighters. The "fighters" apparently included relief workers, refugees, and Arab businessmen. The tribunals looking into the classification …
Continue reading “Washington Is the Source of Terror”
The last few weeks have been base-heavy ones in the news. The Pentagon’s provisional Base Realignment and Closure (BRAC) list, the first in a decade, was published to domestic screams of pain. It represents, according to the Washington Post, “a sweeping plan to close or reduce forces at 62 major bases and nearly 800 minor …
Continue reading “Bases, Bases Everywhere”
The problem with Ukraine’s “orange revolution” was perhaps symbolized by the country’s entry into the Eurovision Song Contest, Greenjolly’s “Razom Nas Bahato” (Together We Are Many). Of course it’s just a coincidence that the song was the election campaign theme of Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko‘s party. It was entered at the last minute at the …
Continue reading “Follow That ‘Revolution’”
WASHINGTON – Stung by Amnesty International’s condemnation of U.S. detention facilities in Iraq and elsewhere overseas, the administration of President George W. Bush is reacting with indignation and even suggestions that terrorists are using the world’s largest human rights organization. The latest denunciation came from Bush himself during a White House press conference Tuesday. “I’m …
Continue reading “Bush, Cheney Attack Amnesty International”
http://www.independent.org/tii/antiwar/e050531.html
Even those who have celebrated the recent election in Iraq are concerned that it could give birth to a government dominated by Shi’ite fundamentalist parties that have little respect for the rights of women and minorities. But even those observers worried about the outcome in Iraq take some comfort in the prospect that the liberalization …
Continue reading “The ‘Christian Barometer’ and the Middle East” 
