A US delegation is headed for Kabul to persuade President Hamid Karzai to approve a program of glyphosate spraying over the opium-producing lands of southeast Afghanistan. The private contractor Dyncorp is to carry out the spraying in cooperation with a… Read moreAfghanistan: Karzai resists glyphosate
Jakob Kellenberger, head of the International Committee of the Red Cross, said May 24 he was not optimistic about a breakthrough in talks with Iraqi officials to gain access to up to 20,000 held in the country’s prisons. “We are… Read moreICRC still seeks access to Iraq’s prisons
Exiled Somali leaders in Eritrea issued a call to boycott a Mogadishu peace conference scheduled for next month, warning of further violence if it goes ahead. Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed, leader of the Islamic Courts Union (ICU), and Sheikh Sharif… Read moreSomali Islamist leaders voice defiance from Eritrean exile
Interesting. A Pew survey finds that 87% of Muslim Americans polled (just some 1,000 out of the total 2 million-plus) condemn the practice of suicide bombings. But for those under 30, the 13% finding them sometimes justified doubles to 26%…. Read moreMuslim-American views: poll results in eye of beholder
“Agriculture likes immigration bill,” reads the May 21 headline in the Columbus Dispatch and other McClatchy newspapers. The new bill would expand and streamline the guest worker program which has been in place since the 1986 Immigration Reform and Control… Read moreDeadly repression greases “guest worker” program
Veteran journalist Jim Lobe reports on his LobeLog blog that the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD), a neo-conservative group created two days after 9-11, is holding what it calls “a policy workshop” during Congress’ Memorial Day recess, at a… Read moreNeocon think-tank hosts Iran destabilization confab
Every president since FDR has drawn up such plans. The most notorious were Nixon’s “Operation Garden Plot” and Reagan’s “REX 84 Alpha”—a legacy we recalled when the Homeland Security Act passed in 2002. This latest incarnation has gone unnoticed by… Read moreNSPD-51: Bush prepares martial law
The 9-11 death toll in New York City has just been officially raised from 2,749 to 2,750. From CBS, May 24: A woman who died of lung disease five months after Sept. 11 was added on Wednesday to the medical… Read moreNYC adds WTC dust victim to 9-11 death toll
Fighting has resumed at Lebanon’s Nahr al-Bared refugee camp, where authorities are demanding that Fatah al-Islam lay down arms and turn over its leaders. Lebanese Defense Minister Elias Murr said the group has two choices: “Surrender or the army will… Read moreLebanon crisis escalates
At least 27 people were killed and dozens wounded after a suicide car bomber drove into a crowd of mourners at a funeral in Falluja, in the Iraqi province of Anbar, May 24. The funeral was for Allawi al-Isawi, a… Read moreIraq: funeral attack kills dozens
From Newsday, May 22: 18 Hours, Three Fatals It was a treacherous 18-hour span in which three people died in separate crashes on Long Island’s highways — and one family survived an ordeal on the LIE. Long Island averages less… Read moreWHY WE FIGHT
Declaring fires set at a police station, an SUV dealer and a tree farm were acts of “terrorism,” US District Judge Ann Aiken May 23 sentenced former Earth Liberation Front militant Stanislas Meyerhoff to 13 years in prison. Judge Aiken… Read moreELF militants convicted of (dubious) “terrorism”
