Sarah Ferguson writes for the Village Voice, March 6: Cindy Sheehan took another bust for the anti-war cause Monday. She was cuffed and forcefully dragged away from the plaza in front of the U.S. Mission to the United Nations, where… Read moreCindy Sheehan supports Iraqi women
As a war of words breaks out between Hamid Karzai and Pervez Musharraf over accusations of Afghan insurgents using Pakistani territory as a staging ground, Islamabad broaches actually fencing off the border the way Pat Buchanan wants to fence off… Read morePakistan threatens to fence off Afghan border
This doesn’t sound very good, does it? From the BBC, March 1: An opposition leader in Uzbekistan has been jailed for 10 years for economic crimes, a Tashkent court has said. Nadira Khidoyatova of opposition group Sunshine Uzbekistan was found… Read moreUzbekistan: opposition leader imprisoned
They must be pretty bored out there in Ohio. From AP, March 3: Authorities shut down four buildings at Ohio University after a police officer noticed a sticker that said “this bike is a pipe bomb” before finding out the… Read moreVelophobia in Ohio
Several thousand Puerto Ricans marched down Roosevelt Avenue in San Juan on Feb. 26 to protest raids on the homes of independence activists by the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) on Feb. 10 and the shooting death of fugitive… Read morePuerto Rico: march against FBI terror
From Amnesty International, Feb. 28: The recent spate of killings of civilians is a serious and deliberate breach of international humanitarian law, Amnesty International said today in response to reports of killings of civilians attributed to the Revolutionary Armed Forces… Read moreColombia: Amnesty blasts FARC
The conventional wisdom is that Libya’s Mommar Qadaffi is defanged and domesticated. Recent events, however, indicate a strategic tilt back towards the bellicose on the part of the savvy despot. A cabinet shake-up favoring the hardliners comes on the heels… Read moreLibya tilts to hardliners, threatens Italy
From the London Times, March 5: THE war in Iraq is her father’s business but Elizabeth Cheney, the American vice-president’s daughter, has been given responsibility for bringing about a different type of regime change in Iran. Cheney, a 39-year-old mother… Read moreCheney daughter leads Iran “regime change” campaign
Freedom’s on the march. From BBC, March 6: Amnesty International has said that thousands of detainees held by the multinational forces in Iraq are still being denied their basic rights. The group said the lessons of the Abu Ghraib prison… Read moreIraq: Amnesty blasts continued torture and detention
From Bloomberg, March 5: U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman Peter Pace said Iraq isn’t on the brink of civil war and that there isn’t any deadline for withdrawing American and coalition troops from the country. While acknowledging that Iraq… Read moreGen. Pace: no civil war in Iraq —but US troops not going anywhere
On the subject of free speech. From The Telegraph, March 5: Shia musicians in Iraq are raising sectarian tensions by producing “gangsta-rap” songs in which they call for Shias to kill Sunnis. The hate-filled lyrics of singers such as Riyadh… Read moreIraq: Islamo-gangsta rap promotes sectarian cleansing
We recently noted that Iran’s Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has blamed the US and Israel for the Samarra mosque attack. Now, right on cue, the Iranian armed opposition group Mujadedeen Khalq issues a statement (in the name of its ostensibly civilian… Read morePropaganda and the Samarra blast
