From China’s The Standard, March 3: US President George W Bush and Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh Thursday sealed what they hailed as an “historic” nuclear deal, seen as the bedrock of a new strategic partnership. Capping eight months of… Read moreUS signs nuclear pact with India
Gee, that didn’t take long, did it? CBS, March 2: Police say at least one bomb near the U.S. consulate in Karachi, Pakistan, killed four people and injured 49 others early Thursday. Explosions ripped through the parking lot of the… Read morePakistan: terror blast at US consulate
Nope, no imminent civil war in Iraq, Bush says. If this was anywhere else in the world, we would recognize it as already a civil war… Armed expulsions of Shiites. Washington Post, March 1: BAGHDAD, Feb. 28 — Salim Rashid,… Read moreIraq: “sectarian cleansing”
India’s long and forgotten war with the Maoist Naxalite rebels in the impoverished east claims scores of lives in Chattisgarh state just as Bush arrives in the country. Note that the right-wing BJP is forming anti-guerilla paramilitary groups in the… Read moreIndia: Maoists attack as Bush arrives
From AFP, March 1, via Middle East Times. A glimmer of hope, we suppose—but even Khatami equivocates on the numbers. Iran’s former reformist president Mohammad Khatami has described the Holocaust as a “historical reality” – a stinging attack on his… Read moreIran: Khatami dissents from Holocaust revisionism
Amazing! Finally the light bulb goes on! Why, this man should be director of national intelligence! Oops, he already is! Of course we were warning before Bush went into Iraq that destabilization of the country could spark regional or even… Read moreNegroponte: Iraq could spark regional war
Hugo Chavez threatens to cut oil to the US at the same time that he makes it available at a subsidized rate to low-income US consumers. Capitol Hill Republicans go apoplectic that a developing country could stand up to Uncle… Read moreChavez threatens to cut off oil to US
A rather ironic way to note the 20th anniversary of the “People Power” revolution that ousted longtime dictator Ferdinand Marcos in the Philippines. Those who marched in Manila to commemorate the revolution over the weekend did so in defiance of… Read moreState of emergency in Philippines
From AP via the Glasgow Herald, Feb. 27: Tens of of thousands of demonstrators, including ministers and politicians of all stripes, united in a show of force against racism and anti-Semitism yesterday, marching through the capital after the torture and… Read moreFrance: torture-killing sparks anti-racist march
From DPA, Feb. 26: A bomb blast Sunday at a Shiite shrine in the southern city of Basra injured four people, a security source said. The incident at a shrine to Imam Ali in central Basra, 550 kilometres south of… Read moreIraq: another Shiite shrine bombed
Would be rather a Phyrric victory if, four years and counting after Operation Enduring Freedom, the US wound up losing control of both Pakistan and Afghanistan simultaneously. From VOA, Feb. 27: Hundreds of Afghan forces – backed by tanks and… Read moreStandoff at Afghan prison
Is Pakistan’s Islamist military government going to fall—to even more radical Islamists? Just what the world needs—a nuclear-armed Taliban. Of course the repression will only enflame things. Dictators always seem to learn that lesson too late. From Pakistan’s Dawn Feb…. Read morePakistan: tear gas in Lahore
