Welcome to the Matrix

In what civil liberties advocates call the most massive database surveillance program in U.S. history, the Multistate Anti-Terrorism Information Exchange, or Matrix, continues to compile billions of records on law-abiding citizens and receive federal funding, despite...

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Iraq’s Economic Woes Fuel Resentment

Iraq is suffering an acute economic crisis marked by widespread poverty, catastrophic levels of unemployment and deteriorating work conditions for those fortunate enough to have jobs. Yet according to reports by international labor and human rights groups, a series of...

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Jihad Brewing in Yemen

SANA'A - More than 200 people have been killed in clashes between Islamic rebels and government forces using warplanes and tanks; this is not Iraq, but the picture of new developments in Yemen. Thousands of families are at risk as the clashes continue in the Marran...

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Blair’s Troubles Multiply

LONDON - Saddam Hussein looks set to hand over to the British the one thing they love most – a palace coup. Read for that Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown taking over from Prime Minister Tony Blair. Not immediately, not even very soon perhaps. But there...

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Neocon Coup at CIA?

All this folderol about how the neoconservative moment is over, and the War Party totally discredited, is just so much wishful thinking, as the prospect of John F. Lehman's nomination as CIA chief makes all too clear. Rumor has it that Porter Goss is out – too...

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Backtalk July 7, 2004

Republicans Can't Handle the Truth Thank you for calling on conservatives to be true to the ideals their party was founded upon. It is very sad to see the GOP devolve into blind, mindless nationalism that represents a road for them, and the nation as a whole, that is...

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Israel in Iraq: Evidence Mounts

Further evidence of the presence of Israeli operatives in Iraq arose this weekend when the general formerly in charge of the U.S.-run Iraqi prison system, herself considered partly responsible for torture at Abu Ghraib and other prisons under her command, told the BBC...

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Our Broken System

On Tuesday, July 6, 2004, Judge Reggie Walton made a decision and ruled on my case. Under his ruling, I, an American citizen, am not entitled to pursue my 1st and 5th Amendment rights guaranteed under the Constitution of the United States. The vague reasoning cited,...

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The October Surprise?

Shortly before I left Washington for the summer (in the good old days whose passing I regret, few stayed in Washington in summertime), my informal intelligence network gave me an interesting report: Iran was beginning to mass troops on the Iran-Iraq border. Did this...

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Inoculated for a While?

Friends are always accusing me of being overly Pollyannaish, of relentlessly seeing the bright side when the dark side is much more likely to prevail. So take these observations with whatever rations of salt seem appropriate. Nonetheless, I do think it is possible...

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