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
More grisly news from the amusingly eccentric despotism of Saparmurat “Turkmenbashi” Niyazov. It is good to see the outside world paying attention to what goes on in this hermetically-sealed dictatorship, but this case raises the usual dilemmas. Journalist Ogulsapar Muradova… Read moreTurkmenistan: UN scrutiny in journalist’s death
We can feel George Bush cringing. Why did Sacha Baron Cohen have to pick on Kazakhstan of all places, which the US sees as a strategic bulwark against both Russian and Islamist influence in Central Asia, and which Dick Cheney… Read moreKazakhstan: Borat puts Bush in tight spot
Perhaps this was an exercise in surrealist performance art. From RFE/RL, Sept. 13: International rights organizations are criticizing UNESCO’s decision to award Uzbek President Islam Karimov the Borobudur gold medal for “strengthening friendship and cooperation between the nations, development of… Read moreUzbekistan’s murderous dictator gets human rights award
The political trajectory of Oriana Fallaci speaks to one of the funamental political dilemmas on the planet at this strange juncture. The daughter of an Italian anti-fascist militant, a veteran Vietnam war correspondent, a survivor of the 1968 Tlatelolco massacre… Read moreOriana Fallaci, exponent of “left” Islamophobia, dies at 77
The website “Haiti Xchange” recalled in September 2001: Long before this year’s tragedy, September 11 was already a date associated with terror for Haitians: on that day in 1988 a group of armed men linked to the military dictatorship attacked… Read moreHaitians remember September 11… 1988
