Americans are still learning the details of some of the abuses that were committed against those rounded up as suspected terrorists after 9/11. The Justice Department inspector general issued superb reports in June and December 2003 detailing violation of rights,...
NAIROBI (IPS) – Sudan has "accepted" a UN resolution to rein in pro-government militias, known as Janjaweed, in the western region of Darfur, within 30 days, a surprising move that seems to reflect a split in the Islamic regime. Until late Friday,...
Well, now we know that no matter who wins in November, we’re going to stay in Iraq as long as it takes and do whatever it takes to achieve final victory – whatever "victory" means. The election will, however, decide which country is next to have its...
Books keep pouring off the presses on the subject of why George W. Bush should not be reelected. I got four in my mailbox recently. Bush might be the biggest boon to book publishing since Harry Potter. The most serious of the four books is The Bubble of American...
Every May, Sirbuz Khan, 26, makes his way north along the Karakorum Highway from Islamabad and spends the next six to seven months moving around China's Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region buying silk for his family's cloth business. Business is good – for every...
ATHENS - The guns are not pointing at visitors, they do not need to. The men carrying them have visitors to the new Olympics stadium in their sight all the way. The men are carefully positioned to see there is not a moment anyone could be out of sight. A visitor...
"Under democracy, one party always devotes its chief energies to trying to prove that the other party is unfit to rule – and both commonly succeed, and are right." - H.L. Mencken A few weeks ago, I received a phone call from my sister, a thoughtful and...
In reading the Abu Ghraib articles Seymour Hersh wrote for the New Yorker in May (here, here, and here), what struck me about the revelations of abuse and torture was the similarity in detail to what I experienced in Vietnam 35 years ago. The one major difference has...
NEW YORK - Despite scandals over human rights abuses and war profiteering, private military contractors are expanding their presence overseas, and may even be involved in helping to draft the next U.S. defense budget. Currently more than 20,000 privately contracted...
BAGHDAD - The grass has all but disappeared off what used to be the football field of the Palestinian Haifa sports club on the edge of Baghdad. After more than a year as an improvised refugee camp that at one point housed some 2,000 people, it looks sun-bleached and...
