We recently noted how Ethiopia and Eritrea, as they mutually demonize each other, are both engaging in a crackdown on their own media. Now the Committee to Protect Journalists, in their year-end report on imprisoned journalists worldwide, finds the two… Read moreReport: US sixth among nations jailing journalists
Alert Oliver Stone. But this piece by our frequent contributor Dr. Michael I. Niman (which originally appeared Nov. 10 in ArtVoice of Buffalo, NY, and is archived on Dr. Niman’s website) makes a disturbing case. Who Killed Pat Tillman? by… Read moreDid US government kill Pat Tillman?
The discovery of yet another clandestine torture center run by the Shi’ite-dominated Interior Ministry provides helpful propaganda to the Sunni jihadis. Around it goes. From Newsday, Dec. 13: BAGHDAD – Five Islamic extremist groups denounced Iraq’s parliamentary elections this week… Read moreIraq: dialectic of terror as elections begin
From the Committee to Protect Journalists: New York, December 12, 2005—The Committee to Protect Journalists condemns the assassination today in Beirut of Gebran Tueni, a journalist and member of parliament who was a fierce critic of Syria and its policies… Read moreAssassination of Lebanese journalist protested
Predictably, even as tensions rise between the two Horn of Africa rivals, Ethiopia and Eritrea are mirroring each other in a crackdown on the press. In a Dec. 12 press release, the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists protests the… Read morePress crackdown in Ethiopia, Eritrea
From the New York Times, Dec. 12 (and apparently little-reported elsewhere): BISHKEK, Kyrgyzstan, Dec. 11 – In the remote hamlet of Tamga, residents frustrated by corruption and the sorry legacy of a chemical spill did something that would have been… Read moreEcological struggle in Kyrgyzstan
Declaration of the Left Worker-Communist Party of Iraq-LWPI Regarding the “Elections” of December 15, 2005 Amidst the current grim situation in Iraq, the bourgeois media is escalating its propaganda for the so-called governmental elections to be held on December 15,… Read moreIraq: left opposition denounces elections
From Reuters Dec. 9: The founder of Argentina’s leading human rights group was laid to rest yesterday, 28 years after she was abducted during the country’s military dictatorship. Family and friends buried the ashes of Azucena Villaflor on a prominent… Read moreArgentina: rights crusader dead, “dirty war” legacy lives on
The Chinese news service Xinhua boasts Dec. 10 of the opening of a new luxury tourist train across Tibet under the auspices of the Qinghai-Tibet Railway Corporation. Meanwhile, observing International Human Rights Day, the Tibetan Center for Human Rights and… Read moreTibet commodified for tourism as repression escalates
Nir Rosen has a piece in the December Atlantic Monthly entitled “If America Left Iraq: The case for cutting and running.” Rosen poses the following questions and answers them all himself: Would the withdrawal of U.S. troops ignite a civil… Read moreIraq: “the case for cutting and running”
From Al-Jazeera TV in Doha, Qatar, Dec. 9: […] Meanwhile, appeals were made to release the four [members of the] Christian Peacemakers Team [CPT] held hostage by the Jama’at Saraya Suyuf al-Haq [Brigades of the Swords of Right Group]. [Shaykh… Read moreArabic media appeals for hostages’ release
On Dec. 4, a group of approximately 200 uniformed and armed men, identified as members of the Bloque Norte of the AUC paramilitary movement, under the command of “Jorge 40,” entered the hamlets (veredas) La Más Verde y Nuevo Horizonte,… Read moreColombia: new paramilitary massacre
