Behind the "Srebrenica" Atrocity Video Several minutes of video footage made public late last week pushed the issue of Kosovo out of the Balkans limelight and focused it firmly on Bosnia. A film showing the execution of six men in civilian clothing by a...
Desperate for Work, Blind to Dangers
AMMAN - Ahlam Najam just needed a job. At 25, she had a university degree in education but could not find work as teacher. When Kellogg Brown and Root (KBR), a subsidiary of the U.S. firm Halliburton, offered her a job as a security guard at a U.S. base in Iraq, she...
Who Cares About Iraqis?
Suicide bombers unleashed another day of hell across Iraq today, killing at least 18 and wounding over 67. Four of them struck Iraqi security forces, along with U.S. military convoys around Baghdad. Despite the huge, U.S.-backed Iraqi security operation throughout the...
A Wife’s Plea
I am the wife of Staff Sgt. Ali Abukhdair. Under different circumstances, he would be the one addressing this letter to you, but because he is in the military he has lost his freedom of speech and was ordered not to talk to the media. My husband is currently an active...
Rights Group Calls Uzbek Deaths a ‘Massacre’
Last month's violence in Andijan, Uzbekistan, amounted to a "massacre" by government forces against mostly unarmed civilians, according to a new report released here Tuesday by Human Rights Watch (HRW). The report, which declined to estimate the total number of dead,...
If Pinochet Is Guilty, so Is Bush
General Augusto Pinochet, approaching his 90th year, has survived many years of legal harassments resulting from alleged human rights violations during the period of the Chilean military government's war on terrorism. On the basis of a U.S. Senate staff report,...
Catering to Kazakhstan’s Kleptocracy
It has plenty of oil, mucho corruption, longtime connections to Washington deal-makers, and an ex-commie dictator with delusions of grandeur: in short, Kazakhstan has all the earmarks of a typical U.S. ally in Central Asia. Now that Uzbekistan is on the outs with an...
Grandpa’s Battered Radio
"Ramzy, I must admit it, it's so hard being a Palestinian these days." That's how a friend of mine, a dedicated individual who is spending her days and years advocating justice for the Palestinian people, ended a distressing message to me a few months back. I...
Backtalk June 7, 2005
Vast (but Empty) Hide-Out of Iraqi Rebels Found Thanks to Antiwar.com for the parenthetical "empty" inserted into the N.Y. Times' hyped headline regarding the "vast" (well, ok, a quarter of a skyscraper's worth, anyway) underground insurgent hideaway. Such a facility...
The Forgotten Spirit of the Magna Carta
In 1215, disgruntled English barons unwittingly won a great victory for Western liberty. After King John waged several unsuccessful, senseless wars, the barons, sick of financing wars in which they had no interest, temporarily ended John's despotism by forcing him to...


