More evidence that Pakistan, the USA’s closest ally in the region, is ironically serving as a staging ground for the destabilization of US-occupied Afghanistan. First this, from The Guardian, Sept. 19: A chain of suicide bombings killed 19 people, including… Read moreAfghanistan: “Mullah Dadullah” pledges more terror
We warned even before the US invasion that the northern city of Kirkuk—contested by Kurds, Arabs and Turkmen—was Iraq’s most likely flashpoint for civil war. Up until now, it has (comparatively speaking) been spared embroilment in the sectarian warfare tearing… Read moreIraq: ethnic struggle behind Kirkuk terror
As suicide bombings and other random carnage become a daily affair in Iraq, a Baghdad book-sellers’ enclave which had been something of an intellectual autonomous zone even under the Saddam dictatorship is effectively shut down. Freedom’s on the march. From… Read moreBaghdad intellectual enclave shut down by war
Anybody have any idea who the “Lions of Monotheism” are? From Newsday, Sept. 19: Palestine’s Christians face retalliation from Muslims over Pope’s words NABLUS — The charred churches of this West Bank town were shuttered yesterday and circled by armed… Read moreAnti-papal backlash spreads to West Bank
This hero of the left has again revealed himself as fundamentally reactionary. Those with any familiarity with the struggle in Western Sahara know that talk about opposing the “partition of Morocco” is akin to opposing Israeli withdrawal from “Judea and… Read moreGeorge Galloway betrays Western Sahara
Did Israel “let it happen on purpose”? From a Sept. 18 Haaretz account of Israeli intelligence “failures” in the recent Lebanon war: MI knew about Hezbollah kidnap plans Military Intelligence had clear information about an impending kidnap attempt by Hezbollah… Read moreLIHOP theory for Lebanon invasion?
You knew that it would. But an interesting glimmer of hope is that in Egypt, where Muslim-Coptic tensions have exploded into violence all too recently, both the Muslim Brotherhood and the Coptic hierarchy are urging people to chill out. In… Read moreAnti-papal backlash gets worse
Like his pal Ahmadinejad in Iran, Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez now loans credibility to 9-11 conspiracy theory, if this report is to be trusted. From England’s right-wing Daily Mail Sept. 13: Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez said the United States could have… Read moreChavez weighs in on 9-11 conspiracy theory
From APRO, Sept. 14, via Chiapas95 (our translation, link added): Tuxtla Gutierrez – Hundreds of campesinos from various social organizations, members of the National Front of Struggle for Socialism (FNLS), today held 13 intermittent blockades of roads in Chiapas, in… Read moreChiapas: roadblocks in solidarity with Oaxaca
On Sept. 11 US magistrate Norbert Garney in El Paso, Tex., ruled that US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) should release Cuban-born Venezuelan national Luis Posada Carriles under supervision. Garney’s decision is a recommendation, and he sent it to district… Read morePosada Carriles to be freed?
Now that’s the way to prove the Pope is wrong and Islam is a religion of peace! Way to go, guys! From Reuters, Sept. 17: Gunmen killed an Italian nun at a children’s hospital in Mogadishu on Sunday in an… Read morePapal link seen to Somalia violence
Yet more evidence that Central Asia, increasingly wary of US military designs in the region since 9-11, is radically tilting away from Washington. Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan all opened their territories to US forces after 9-11, and Tajikistan, with its… Read moreTajikistan holds military manoeuvres with China
