Efforts at achieving normal relations and peace between South Asian rivals India and Pakistan have collapsed or run into a dead-end so many times in the past. Thus, it is only rational to ask if their latest attempt at a breakthrough is for real and likely to succeed....
Chinese Beats
There is an air of expectation drowning out the thumping disco music in the private room rented out to celebrate old friends meeting again. Three or four bottles of Chivas are scattered amongst the dice and glasses and plates of fruit and one of the girls is pouring...
Power Plays Over Constitution Threaten Afghan Elections
Political power plays at the just-concluded assembly to write a new constitution for Afghanistan raise serious question about whether the country can hold free and fair elections as scheduled later this year, say rights groups and other experts. While praising the...
Move On, Already: Bush as Hitler Falls Flat
Dave Lindorff, writing in CounterPunch, accuses the Republican National Committee of "play[ing] the Hitler card" with its recent denunciation of two amateur commercials, posted briefly on the MoveOn.Org website, that compared the sitting President to Adolf Hitler....
Everything You’ve Always Wanted to Know About Neocons
They're coming out of the closet, so to speak, faster than David Brooks can deny their very existence: I'm talking about neocons, of course, that dreaded sub-species of right-wing ideologues whose fabulous history has become the stuff of legend. Brooks says that to...
Outsourced Tyranny:The Use of Private Companies to do Governments’ Dirty Work
"In the latest incident, three American crewmen on contract to the CIA and a Peruvian officer were flying surveillance when they spotted the missionaries' Cessna as it headed over the Amazon jungle." (emphasis added) This quote, from one of the news...
Nothing Radical
On the last Sunday in 2003, Serbian voters sent a message of protest and rage to both their domestic tyrants and their foreign backers, giving the largest number of votes (but not a majority) to the Radical Party. The result was predictable, and indeed predicted by...
US States Scramble to Hold On to Military Base Pork
Yesterday I found two news items, one from Georgia, one from South Carolina, about local governments trying to prevent their local military bases from facing Rumsfeld's budget ax. There have also been a few others in recent weeks that I can recall. After a quick...
With Friends Like These, U.S. Enemies Dont Seem As Bad
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Leave Revolution in Saudi Arabia to the Saudis
In November 2003, George W. Bush described what he termed the third pillar of America's security: "global democratic revolution." If Iraq and Afghanistan were the first "beneficiaries" of this revolution, then it seems almost certain that Saudi Arabia...


