The Jirga of Hamid Karzai will not save Afghanistan
Afghanistan held its parliamentary elections last Saturday for only the second time since the Taliban were ousted from power. All 249 seats were at stake in the Wolesi Jirga or "House of the People," which is the lower house of Afghanistan's bicameral legislature. The Wolesi Jirga has the most power to override both the Meshrano Jirga...
Florida “Burn a Qur’an Day” suspended amid torrent of U.S., international condemnations
September 11th, 20100 After an outpouring of condemnations from a multitude of diverse groups both inside and outside of the United States, a Florida pastor suspended his plan to burn copies of the Qur'an at his Gainesville, Florida church on Thursday, September 9. Pastor Terry Jones of The Dove World Outreach Center in Gainesville, Florida says he will...Blair reveals Syria’s fears were well-founded
Tony Blair DAMASCUS — Syria always feared that the White House of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney would invade Damascus once it had dispatched with Baghdad in 2003 and, in his newly released memoirs, the former British prime minister Tony Blair confirmed those fears were well founded. Describing the former U.S. vice president as...Israeli soldiers charged in picture-taking flap
JERUSALEM — Four Israeli soldiers were indicted after taking pictures of themselves pointing their guns at a Palestinian prisoner. In the indictment filed Monday by the Military Advocate, the soldiers were charged with abuse and illegal use of weapons. The soldiers, from the Nahal Haredi brigade, also were accused of improper...Security Council extends UNIFIL mandate
NEW YORK — The United Nations voted to extend the mandate of its peacekeeping operation in southern Lebanon for another year. The U.N. Security Council voted unanimously Monday to keep the U.N. Interim Force in Lebanon on patrol in southern Lebanon on the border with Israel until Aug. 31, 2011. The Council based its decision on what...Ouster of contractors in Afghanistan throws U.S. strategy in doubt
NEW YORK – Charging that U.S. private security contractors are "mafia-like groups" being financed by U.S. taxpayers to carry out "terrorist activities" with the support of the U.S. government, Afghan President Hamid Karzai has ordered a four-month phaseout of all private security companies in his embattled country. Asserting his...Israeli generals and intel officials oppose attack on Iran
WASHINGTON — Pro-Israeli journalist Jeffrey Goldberg's article in "The Atlantic" magazine was evidently aimed at showing why the Barack Obama administration should worry that it risks an attack by the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Iran in the coming months unless it takes a much more menacing line toward Iran's...Khamenei: Talks with U.S. only if sanctions are dropped
TEHRAN — Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said on Wednesday that any talks with arch-foe the United States would take place only if Washington drops "sanctions and threats" against Tehran. In a speech on state television, the all-powerful Khamenei also blamed Washington for Iran's defiant move to enrich uranium to...Vanunu freed from Israel jail after serving eleven-week sentence
JERUSALEM — Israeli nuclear whistle-blower Mordechai Vanunu was freed from jail on Sunday after serving 11 weeks behind bars for breaking the terms of his release and meeting a foreigner, a prison official said. Mordechai Vanun, The former nuclear technician was arrested in December at a Jerusalem hotel while talking to a...Iran benefits from Arab disillusion with Obama
WASHINGTON – U.S. President Barack Obama has suffered a sharp drop in popularity in the Arab world over the past year, and Iran may be reaping the benefits, according to a major new survey of public opinion in five Arab countries released here Thursday. Only 20 percent of respondents in Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia and the...Trial of “child soldier” opens at Guantanamo
UNITED NATIONS (IPS) — Omar Khadr was only 15 when he was captured by U.S. forces in 2002 in Afghanistan. Now, eight years later, the 23-year-old is on trial in Guantanamo Bay, in the first military commission trial since the beginning of the Barack Obama administration. Omar Khadr was only 15 when he was captured by U.S. forces...Israel threatens to pull out of UN’s Gaza flotilla probe
JERUSALEM — Israel on Tuesday threatened to pull out of a UN probe into its deadly flotilla raid to keep the panel from grilling its troops, as the defense minister told another inquiry the fleet was a "planned provocation." Israel's army chief Lieutenant-General Gabi Ashkenazi (front) sits before testifying at a state-appointed...UN names panel to probe Israeli killings on Gaza-bound ship
UNITED NATIONS (IPS) — Despite initial misgivings, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon received the tacit approval of the Israeli government to establish an international panel to probe the widely-condemned killings of nine Turkish civilians onboard a flotilla of ships carrying humanitarian aid to Gaza last May. "This is an unprecedented...Caterpillar caught in web of Middle East politics
At first glance, the contention that a construction equipment company in Peoria, Ill., is implicated in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict seems strange. But earlier in July, the largest Presbyterian denomination in the United States adopted a resolution that strongly criticized Caterpillar Inc., the manufacturer whose tractors, bulldozers...Palestine is back at the heart of the antiwar movement
Israeli border police officers remove a Palestinian demonstrator who was trying to block an excavator during a protest against the construction of the controversial Israeli barrier in the West Bank village of al Wallaje, near Bethlehem August 4, 2010. REUTERS/Ammar AwadNew York — The United National Antiwar Conference (UNAC),......
WikiLeaks vindicates reports from Arab media
The recent release on the Internet of a trove of classified military documents draws widespread attention to the high number of civilian casualties in Afghanistan at the hands of U.S. soldiers, and a general disregard for the lives of Afghans. The secret documents, revealed Sunday by WikiLeaks, are not news to Arab media, which over the...Iran denies grenade attack on Ahmadinejad
TEHRAN — Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was unhurt on Wednesday after an explosive device, officially described as a firecracker, went off near his motorcade. Ahmadinejad was on his way to a sports arena to make a speech in Hamedan, south of the capital, when the explosion occurred. Conservative website Khabaronline, the first...Obama’s Afghanistan strategy increasingly under siege
WASHINGTON (IPS) — Monday's release by WikiLeaks of tens of thousands of classified documents detailing the travails of the U.S. military in Afghanistan and Pakistan's secret support for the Taliban from 2004 through 2009 comes amid a growing crisis of confidence here in the nearly nine-year-old war. Coming on top of the steady...Blix accuses Bush, Blair of ‘poor judgment’
LONDON — Ex-UN weapons inspector Hans Blix questioned Tuesday the judgment of Britain and the United States in invading Iraq on the basis of evidence of weapons of mass destruction that was clearly "poor." Giving evidence to an independent British inquiry into the March 2003 war in London, Blix said "I have never questioned the good......
British PM calls Gaza ‘prison camp’
ANKARA — British Prime Minister David Cameron Tuesday urged Israel to lift the blockade of the Gaza Strip, slamming the current state of the Palestinian enclave as a "prison camp." "Let me be clear that the situation in Gaza has to change... Gaza cannot and must not be allowed to remain a prison camp," he said in a speech to a...Ahmadinejad: U.S. to start new Mideast wars
TEHRAN — Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said the United States is planning to launch two wars in the Middle East in order to pressure Tehran, English-language Press TV reported on Tuesday. "We have precise information that the Americans have devised a plot... they plan to attack at least two countries in the region within the......
Fidel Castro returns to TV with dire warning of nuclear conflict
July 16th, 20100 HAVANA - The Middle East is on the verge of a nuclear war triggered by a U.S. attack on Iran in the name of preventing the country from developing its own weapons, according to ageing Cuban revolutionary Fidel Castro. Cuban leader Fidel Castro gestures during a visit to the Centre of World Economic Investigations (CIEM) in Havana...Israel paves the way for killing by remote control
NAZARETH — It is called Spot and Shoot. Operators sit in front of a TV monitor from which they can control the action with a PlayStation-style joystick. The aim: to kill. Played by: young women serving in the Israeli army. Spot and Shoot, as it is called by the Israeli military, may look like a video game but the figures on the......