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’s the first time G. W. Bush actually made sense on the effects of US policy in Iraq. In a speech to the Philadelphia World Affairs Council, Bush likened Iraq’s US-imposed “democracy” to the founding of the United States. In effect, he said that violent upheaval, civil war, centuries of injustice and struggle, are all part and parcel of the establishment of normal democracies.

[In the US,] the eight years from the end of the Revolutionary …

Perhaps unaware of the significance of what he was saying, US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld told reporters in Australia that in terms of security, Iraq was “several years behind” Afghanistan.^[1] This was his way of justifying the US presence, but of course to anyone who can think straight it does the opposite. Without thinking, Rumsfeld is essentially admitting that the US turned Iraq into something akin to Afghanistan under the Taliban. …

Acrimonious debate, ethnic divisions, and, particularly, the boycott of the voting process on 1 January by more than 40 percent of the delegates had sparked fears that agreement would not be reached. On 3 January, the UN’s special envoy to Afghanistan, Lakhdar Brahimi, and the U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan, Zalmay Khalilzad, held closed-door negotiations with rival delegates in order to get the assembly back on track. A compromise agreement was reached, and the constitution was approved.
-Radio Free Europe, …

The “Downing Street Memo” confirming that the Bush administration was intent on invading Iraq as early as July 2002, 8 months before the actual invasion, is finally getting some coverage in the mainstream US media. The US self-censorship on the memo was so bad, according to the London Times, that “ombudsmen of The Washington Post, The New York Times and National Public Radio…have questioned the lack of attention the minutes have received from their organisations.” Most …

It was the best of times,…it was the age of wisdom,…it was the epoch of belief,…it was the season of Light,… it was the spring of hope…

“The jig is up. The puzzle pieces are beginning to fall into place, and the truth is beginning to be exposed.” For those of us concerned about the reputation of Wendy’s restaurant, we can stop worrying. The San Jose Finger Mystery has finally been solved! The woman who supposedly …

Published on ZNet on April 10th, 2005

Zalmay Khalilzad, currently George W. Bush’s special envoy and US ambassador to Afghanistan, will be transferred as ambassador to Iraq pending Senate confirmation. Contrary to popular belief on the left, the transfer has little to do with his being a past consultant for the oil company UNOCAL. A Village Voice blog by Jarrett Murphy (“Iraq Envoy’s Got Oil On His Resume”) makes the case that mainstream reportage on Khalilzad$(Bs (Bappointment ignored …

Published in Z Magazine in April 2003

January 29, 2003 was the date that the Space Infrared Telescope Facility (SIRTF) was expected to launch. Those of us working on the last “great observatory” of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) were getting ready to put decades of work to the test. If all went well, the spacecraft would be launched into orbit around the Sun to measure the infrared light from our own Milky Way and other galaxies.

In November 2002 …

Published by the California Tech on 26th October, 1999

It seems we have all forgotten about that far off country called Iraq. Our senses have been dulled by catch phrases such as “no-fly zones”, “weapons of mass destruction”, etc etc which are as nauseatingly overused in the press as terms like “ethnic cleansing” or “national security”. Today we barely see or hear anything in the newspapers about the regular air strikes by the United States and the United Kingdom or the …