Category: Uncategorized

TORONTO – The growing use of international treaties to bypass the will of national parliaments, by bodies waging the so-called "war on terrorism," increasingly threatens civil liberties and freedom of the media, warn privacy advocates. When U.S. officials – reportedly the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), though the agency denied it Tuesday – last week … Continue reading “Global Agreements Threaten Media, Privacy”

It would have been a surprise if it happened, of course. But it is still somewhat disappointing that the presidential debate included no discussion of the possibility of a relatively extensive rethinking of American foreign policy. The policy we have in place – insofar as it is something other than a long-term commitment to world … Continue reading “A Missed Opportunity”

The year is 2030 and President Pierce Bush addresses the nation: “My fellow countrymen, in the past, enemies of America required massed armies, and great navies, powerful air forces to put our nation, our people, our friends and allies at risk. What has changed in the first four decades of the 21st century is that, … Continue reading “Sci-Fi Superwarriors”

A week after the FBI disrupted about twenty Web sites operated by local chapters of the Indymedia network, there is still no clear explanation as to why agents seized some of the radical news organizations’ servers. Yesterday, agents returned both of the confiscated computer hard drives used to house the affected sites to Rackspace, the … Continue reading “Indymedia Seizures Still in Question”

While the successful penetration by suicide bombers, who killed ten people, including four U.S. nationals, of the carefully guarded “Green Zone” in downtown Baghdad grabbed headlines here this week, another measure of the deteriorating security situation in Iraq came from a more surprising source. In an article published Thursday in the online edition of the … Continue reading “Plight of Iraqi Christians Provokes Calls for Special Protection”

TOKYO – The desperate plea by Iraq’s interim government for more funds from the international community to help stabilize the country, where bombings, kidnappings and ambushes have become a daily part of life, received a tentative nod of support from donors gathered at a conference here that ended Thursday. "This meeting has put a special … Continue reading “Iraq Funds Plea Gets Tentative Nod”

British Prime Minister Tony Blair and his wife, Cherie, have purchased a $6.4 million townhouse in Connaught Square and plan on spending another $900,000 fixing it up. The Blairs already own a $800,000 six-bedroom home in his Sedgefield constituency on which taxpayers have spent $3.6 million to turn it into a terrorist-proof fortress. According to … Continue reading “Blair Sells Britain, Buys a House”

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 consistently show it is the number one issue … Continue reading “Humphrey-Nixon Redux”

As one key provision of the USA PATRIOT Act – a central plank of the Bush administration’s "war on terror" – was being ruled unconstitutional, some federal politicians were using reform of the country’s intelligence community as a vehicle for enacting parts of "PATRIOT Act II." Intelligence reform was a principal recommendation of the so-called … Continue reading “Court Cuts, Politicians Push Police Powers”

Larry Franklin’s October SurpriseJustin: First, you cannot use the words fundamentalists and evangelicals interchangeably; they are not. Evangelicals are spirit-filled Christians who know, because of their daily walk with God, that the most important thing in all history was Jesus’s death on Calvary. You have to keep that in mind when you are talking about … Continue reading “Backtalk, October 14, 2004”