In his recent tour of African capitals, President Bush did his best to avoid any mention of the Pentagon’s new Africa Command (AfriCom), focusing instead on development projects and his new initiative against AIDS. But on Feb. 20 in Ghana,… Read moreAfrican leaders, civil society reject Pentagon’s Africa Command
The Taliban, it seems, are a bunch of posers. If they were for real in their rejection of modernity, they would want cellular telephones banned on principle, and not merely to prevent the whereabouts of their apparently cellphone-addicted militants being… Read moreTaliban threaten cell phone companies
Reading between the lines in the Kosova coverage can sure be depressing, especially for those of us who have been following the conflict there over the past 20 years. While 20 years ago, Albanian protesters were throwing rocks at Serbian… Read moreAlbanian authorities have power to brutalize Serbs —but not control Kosova’s borders
Four more Shi’ite pilgrims headed for Karbala for Arbaeen celebrations were killed by a roadside bomb in Baghdad Feb. 25—one day after a suicide bomber killed 48 pilgrims, detonating a vest filled with explosives at a rest stop in Iskandiriyah…. Read moreIraq: bloody Arbaeen —again
From Newsday, Feb. 23: New MTBE spills found to threaten drinking water A study of Long Island groundwater pollution caused by the fuel additive MTBE uncovered 32 petroleum spills that had not been previously detected, including one in Ronkonkoma that… Read moreWHY WE FIGHT
Oops, he did it again. While it has gone largely unnoticed in US media coverage, press outlets on the subcontinent are noting (with trepidation or glee) alarmingly bellicose comments by Barack Obama at the Austin Democratic presidential debate Feb. 21… Read moreObama rattles saber at Pakistan —again
Shops and stores in downtown Gaza City closed their doors Feb. 23 as part of a general strike to protest Israel’s siege of the Gaza Strip. Shop owners carried banners reading “closed because of the siege” in Arabic and English…. Read moreGeneral strike against Israeli siege in Gaza —and against PA in West Bank
Personally, we aren’t too comforted by the fact that this thing was blown up in the sky instead of falling to earth—releasing all that toxic hydrazine into the atmosphere. But we are glad this Feb. 21 account from the UK… Read moreChina protests double standard on satellite strike
The New York Times reports in a front-page story Feb. 23 that the Justice Department has opened an internal ethics investigation into the notorious August 2002 Bybee Memo that gave the imprimatur of legality to the Administration’s use of “waterboarding”… Read moreSupreme Court Justice Scalia defends torture
Everglades Earth First! blockades construction site of the West County Energy Center natural gas plant, Palm Beach, Florida, Feb. 18. Photo: Everglades Earth First!
The anti-immigration blog VDare (who get creds for being bilingual) approvingly note from a persual of Monterrey’s daily El Porvenir that the Monterrey suburb of San Nicolas is planning to build a security fence on its border with the neighboring… Read moreSecurity fences go up —within Mexico
The high-tech Project 28 “virtual fence” on a 28-mile stretch of the US-Mexico border near Nogales, AZ, is ready for operation, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff announced Feb. 22. The $20 million project of sensor towers and advanced mobile communications,… Read moreHomeland Security approves “virtual” border fence
