U.S. President George W. Bush hopes his maiden tour of India and Pakistan this week will draw both South Asian giants more firmly into Washington’s orbit, as well as help restore his battered foreign policy image back home. Bush will spend three days in India, which U.S. policymakers increasingly depict as a long-term strategic counterweight …
Continue reading “Bush Seeks to Draw India, Pakistan Closer to US”
If you’re waiting for the Iranian oil bourse (IOB) – the proposed euro-based petroleum futures exchange in Tehran – to overthrow the global dollar-based economy, don’t hold your breath. Establishing a futures-trading mechanism to compete with the powerhouses of the New York Mercantile Exchange (NYMEX) and the Intercontinental Exchange (ICE) for the oil trade is …
Continue reading “Is the IOB DOA?”
http://www.independent.org/tii/antiwar/e060228.html
The Bush-Cheney Pentagon is reportedly putting finishing touches on a plan to preemptively nuke Iran for insisting on its inalienable right – guaranteed by (a) the Treaty on Nonproliferation of Nuclear Weapons, (b) the Statute of the International Atomic Energy Agency, and (c) their Safeguards Agreement with the IAEA – to enjoy the peaceful uses …
Continue reading “A Way Out for Iran?”
It happens all the time. If the antiwar movement takes on the Democrats for their bitter shortcomings, a few liberals are bound to criticize us for not hounding Bush instead. It doesn’t even have to be an election year to get the progressives fired up. They just don’t seem to get it. "How can you …
Continue reading “Senator Feinstein’s War Profiteering”
In Yemen, every government institution – the military, enforcement agencies, courts, detention centers, etc. – is under the strict control of the dictatorship. The prison from which the 23 al-Qaeda members escaped is known as the detention center for military intelligence, directly answerable to President Ali Abdullah Saleh. This is no Mickey Mouse jail. It …
Continue reading “Yemen: Behind the al-Qaeda ‘Jailbreak’”
On a cloudless day, the sky a brilliant, late-afternoon blue, my car winds its way up the Berkeley hills. Plum and pear trees in glorious whites and pinks burst into sight at each turn in the road. Beds of yellow flowers, trees hung with lemons, and the odd palm are surrounded by the green of …
Continue reading “You Can Do Anything With a Bayonet Except Sit on It”
One has only to look at the headlines coming out of Iraq to see that the moment of truth has arrived: the Iraqi government is warning of an "endless civil war"; mosques across Iraq, including the "Golden Mosque" in Samarra, were targeted in a wave of sectarian attacks, and 60 were killed in just one …
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America’s Sunni Islamist opponents must be ever more strongly sensing that Allah truly is on their side. Currently, this perception is due not only to the recent victory of the Islamist party Hamas in Palestine’s parliamentary elections, but more especially because of the U.S. reaction to that success. That reaction probably has polished off any …
Continue reading “Embracing a Lethal Tar Baby”
A few days ago, I was at lunch with a colleague, an ex-military man, and the talk got to politics. I mentioned that the government was never going to voluntarily shrink in size; it would only collapse in on itself through bankruptcy. He said that he had a lot of respect for Paul Martin, Canada’s …
Continue reading “The Fantasy of State Protection” 
