(with Arkan Hamed) SINIYAH, Iraq - The People of Siniyah town 200 km north of Baghdad are angry over a six-mile long sand wall constructed by the U.S. military to check attacks by rebels. "Our city has become a battlefield," 35 year-old engineer Fuad...
Exalting Sharon: A Dire Case of Collective Amnesia
The mainstream medias lionizing and exalting of the fatally ill Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon could only be compared to that of great men and women of past years. The hundreds of endearing commentaries, venerating news reports and glorifying television...
Currency War
A funny thing happened to the Europeans on their way to get the International Atomic Energy Agency Board of Governors to refer Iranian nuclear fuel-cycle programs all Safeguarded and certified by the IAEA to be for peaceful purposes to the UN Security...
Iraq Tops Nations With Minorities at Grave Risk
Iraq tops a list of countries whose minorities find themselves most at risk of persecution and even mass killing at the start of 2006, according to a new threat index released Thursday by the London-based Minority Rights Group International (MRG). The index, the...
Bin Laden Returns
They said he was dead, or so debilitated and "on the run" that we would never hear from him again: they said he was cowering in a cave somewhere, without operational control of al-Qaeda and with no hope of ever affecting the world in the way he did on 9/11 and its...
Backtalk, January 20, 2006
Bush Has Crossed the Rubicon Paul Craig Roberts' piece pretty much sums up the state of the state in the good ol' USA. I have been writing to you for the past couple of years and trying to tell you that you are wasting your time anticipating prosecutions and...
Double-Edged Peace Pipes
Chastising Russia over its gas dispute with the Ukraine, Condoleezza Rice recently stated that Russia must "play by the rules." Certainly not economic rules these would have justified Russia abolishing its hefty subsidy altogether on Ukrainian gas...
Dealing With Iran
With the announcement that Iran plans to resume its nuclear programs, that country has moved at least into the sights of the United States and European countries as a potential threat that should be dealt with. Unfortunately, the United States, like most...
Rethinking Nuclear Nonproliferation
Last week, Iran removed the UN seals from uranium enrichment equipment at its Natanz nuclear facility and threatened to block International Atomic Energy Agency inspections if referred to the UN Security Council over its nuclear program. Iran claims its program is for...
A Challenge That Cannot Be Ignored
Former vice president Al Gore gave what I believe to be the most important political speech in my lifetime, and the New York Times, "the newspaper of record," did not report it. Not even excerpts. For the New York Times, it was a nonevent that a former vice president...


