The Lebanese army has besieged military positions run by the People’s Front for Liberation of Palestine-General Command (PFLP-GC), including a network of tunnels dug in the mountains in Sultan Yaqoub (Jacob) area in the eastern Bekaa Valley. Lebanese authorities are… Read moreStand-off in Bekaa Valley
North Korea, Eritrea and Turkmenistan are named as the three countries in the world where there is virtually no freedom of expression in a newly-released annual study. They occupy the bottom three places on the Reporters Without Borders World Press… Read moreTwo US client states, one “Axis of Evil” member cited as “black holes” for press freedom
The number of US service members killed in Iraq reached 2,000 Oct. 25, making headlines around the world (e.g. CBS News). More than 90% of this death toll occurred after President Bush declared the end of “major combat operations” in… Read more2,000: the proverbial tip of the iceberg
U.S. District Court Judge John Koeltl in New York Oct. 25 upheld activist attorney Lynne Stewart’s conviction on terrorist conspiracy charges, finding that allegations by her lawyers were unfounded that a juror on the case feared for her life and… Read moreNo retrial for Lynne Stewart
The Epoch Times, an international publication run by Chinese exiles harshly opposed to the People’s Republic government, ran a synopsis Oct. 15 of its ongoing coverage of the rural conflict in Taishi, a village in Guangdong now occupied by police… Read moreChinese peasants defend lands, village democracy
The persistently irritating John Tierney has done it again. In a typically smarmy column in the Oct. 25 New York Times, “And Your Point Is?”, he dismisses the Plame affair as a bunch of empty hot air, asserting that “no… Read moreThe Plame affair: denial in the New York Times
Freedom’s on the march in Afghanistan—the freedom of fundamentalist fanatics to protect their faith from such blasphemous assaults as newspapers that condemn public stoning. From Reporters Without Borders, Oct. 24: Reporters Without Borders today called on President Hamid Karzai to… Read moreAfghanistan: newspaper editor gets prison for “blasphemy”
White House public relations chief Karen Hughes, already in hot water for numerous public-relations snafus on her recent tour of the Middle East, has done it again. Speaking before a group of students in Indonesia Oct. 21, just as Saddam… Read moreWhite House PR chief rewrites history of Kurdish genocide
Condoleeza Rice spilled the beans in Congressional testimony: there really is (as we always suspected) a White House plan to redesign the Middle East! Capitol Hill liberals like Barbara Boxer squawk about the administration’s “unbelievable rewriting of history” in changing… Read moreRepublican reps: It’s “another world war”
Well, Judith Miller is out of jail, has testified before the grand jury, and wrote up a story on her own testimony for the New York Times. She even expresses some contrition, admitting to error, if not wilful collaboration with… Read moreJudith Miller: “I got it totally wrong”
The US Army is probing claims that its troops in Afghanistan burned the bodies of two Taliban fighters they had killed and used the smoldering corpses to taunt insurgents. An Australian TV show broadcast images Oct. 19 of US soldiers… Read moreAfghanistan: dialectic of desecration
In what has become a yearly ritual, activists from the American Indian Movement (AIM) staged angry protests at the Columbus Day march in Denver, while the city’s Italian-Americans intransigently refused to “get it.” This from an AP account online at… Read moreColumbus Day culture wars …and the fascist connection
