In its bombing of Lebanon last summer, the Israeli military liberally sprinkled the notoriously deadly cluster bombs throughout populated areas. The funny thing is, the United States is now saying that “Israel violated American prohibitions” on the use of the weapons “against populated areas.” Why is the Bush administration showing such concern over Israel’s use of US-supplied weapons, even suggesting sanctions?:”Israel May Have Violated Arms Pact …

Afghanistan is in a horrible state, by any measure. From the increasing power of fundamentalist extremist groups, to rising poverty, rising opium exports, a rising number of suicide and other attacks on foreign troops or Afghan government infrastructure, the people of Afghanistan will not see relief any time soon. More and more international criticism is rightly blaming the foreign troops supposedly there to help build a safer, secure country.

Billions of dollars are being spent on more foreign troops …

Guess what? It’s okay for Danish Christians to print racist anti-Muslim cartoons, but cartoons critical of well-documented US torture are “a disgrace” and require an apology. Mike Luckovich’s 22 June political cartoon in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution (reprinted above) depicts an American torturer, giving lessons in “torture etiquette” to an Al Qaeda torturer. According to the newspaper’s public editor Angela Tuck, the cartoon resulted in a powerful “backlash,” …

At the risk of alienating over half of the planet, I’d like to state my distaste for the wave of football fervor that has overtaken the small part of the world with which I am familiar, and most likely much of the rest of humanity as well.

Imagine my surprise to find that people with otherwise reasonable political analyses extolling the political …

I really admire Stephen Colbert; he used his comic license to make a laughing-stock out of the Bush administration and the mostly compliant press, its stupidity, and its hypocrisy.^[1] Unfortunately, we don’t need a Colbert to get comedy out of the US government.

For example, take Vice President Dick Cheney’s recent visit to the former Soviet Union. At one point in his …

What is a “failed state”? I never liked the label, since it is usually used to ostracize poor defenseless countries and provide excuses to invade them. But a recent Fund for Peace/Foreign Policy study suggests that some people are beginning to apply the label a bit more universally.

According to the study,
a failing state is one in which the government does not have effective control …

It had to be seen to be believed. There were at least half a million people on the streets in downtown Los Angeles on Monday. It was the biggest demonstration I’ve ever been to. The United States is certainly not used to such a degree of mobilization these days.

The first thing …

I’ve been out of touch for over a month now, so I apologize to those who might have been interested in my thoughts on current events. My grandmother who I was very close to became very sick and then passed away on April 2. I was in Boston helping to take care of her and being with the family and helping with funeral arrangements for a little over two …

It’s International Women’s Day 2006 and men still get a free ride. Women still do most of the world’s work, and much of the most important, most difficult work is done by women, at great cost to themselves. So many men who could use their privelege to work in solidarity with women and push their societies towards more justice remain silent, speak diplomatically, or conform to expectations. At the same time I am amazed at how many …

About ten thousand ethnic Pashtuns were forced to leave their homes when Pakistani forces attacked the village of Miran Shah in North Waziristan, part of Pakistan’s semiautonomous tribal belt along the border with Afghanistan. Over 100 have been killed, labeled “militants” by the press, although opposition parliamentarian Imran Khan described the operation …