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by Jim Lobe
Sectarian violence and attacks on U.S. forces have also become so intense over the past two months in Diyala province, northeast of Baghdad, that U.S. commanders felt compelled in March to divert hundreds of soldiers from elsewhere in the country
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by Dahr Jamail
Refugees from Baqouba city who have now found shelter in Damascus describe their hometown as a 'dead city' where armed men roam the streets and al-Qaeda reigns
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'Our community has been forgotten and has been threatened on a daily basis. We don't have anywhere to go and if things continue as they are, the only thing we can do is to wait for someone to kill us in the coming months'
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by Paul Rogat Loeb
The arguments emerge from the standard echo chamber of Hannity, Rush, and Fox News. But the spokespeople who articulate them in these venues -- and others more mainstream -- have been overwhelmingly sponsored by Exxon
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by Alexander Cockburn
There is still zero empirical evidence that anthropogenic production of carbon dioxide is making any measurable contribution to the world's present warming trend. The greenhouse fearmongers rely on unverified, crudely oversimplified models to finger mankind's sinful contribution -- and carbon trafficking, just like the old indulgences, is powered by guilt, credulity, cynicism and greed
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by Alexander Cockburn
Cho Seung-Hui was on a prescription drug for his psychological problems. What exactly it was has not yet been disclosed, though the likelihood of it being an anti-depressant is high, since doctors on campuses dispense prescriptions for them like confetti
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by Emad Mekay
Dozens of World Bank employees in a department entrusted with charting anti-corruption policies weighed in Thursday on the nepotism scandal surrounding Bank president Paul Wolfowitz, saying that their credibility was wearing away because of the escalating controversy
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by Alexander Cockburn
Americans like their First Family to have a dog. They think it means at least one honest creature is lodged at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Nixon used to put sesame seeds in the turn-ups of his trousers so his spaniel, King Timahoe, would nuzzle him in public. Giuliani has been saying that as president, he would regard Judi as co-president -- present at cabinet meetings, her hand next to his on the driving wheel. There are a lot of dog lovers who now see Judi's hand as one grasping an instrument of dog torture, unfit for any high calling
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by Peter Hirschberg
The vast majority of Israelis believe that Olmert badly mismanaged the war and that the military's inability to halt Hezbollah rocket fire damaged Israel's deterrent image not only in the eyes of the Arab states, but also in the eyes of its allies, especially the United States.
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by Jim Lobe
Just a week after Vice President Dick Cheney accused Congress' senior Democrat and Speaker of the House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi of bad behavior for visiting Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, his daughter and former senior State Department official, Elizabeth Cheney, called Thursday for a global diplomatic embargo against Damascus
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by Jim Lobe
Native American women are at least 2.5 times as likely to be sexually assaulted in their lifetime as other women in the United States, according to a major new report by Amnesty International
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by Ivan Eland
The U.S. media have focused to date almost exclusively on the rising Islamist movement in Somalia and U.S. 'covert' assistance to the Ethiopian invasion that supported Somalia's transitional government against the stronger Islamists. The media should be focusing on one of the major causes of the Somali mess: U.S. government meddling
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by Steve Young
The Washington Post's Howard Kurtz said that McCain 'didn't necessarily lose' by his performance on this week's 'Daily Show.' Maybe, if you call not being able to justify your own 'beliefs' not necessarily losing . But Kurtz not appreciating the importance of the job Stewart did and McCain's incapability to 'stand behind his beliefs,' was his own loss
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by Steve Young
Don Imus's replacement has yet to be named but my guess it will be someone with a no-risk, good-natured approach who has never offended anyone (on the left). And we need look no further that Radio's top talk show hosts; to those who have never ventured into the need-to-be-made-an-example-of territory because they know better than to joke about minorities.
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by Steve Young
Shock jocks are tasteless for the sake of tastelessness. Other than the 'shock' itself the material has no value at all. Picture Andrew Dice Clay on the radio. In effect, other than their rancor and boorishness, there is no there, there. That doesn't mean there can't be political shock jocks ala the SJ template: Michael Savage. Glen Beck is trying hard but shock jockeying calls for a bit more pithy calculation and Beck doesn't seem smart enough to jump through that hoop.
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by Steve Young
Like a pair of aggrieved bears, O'Reilly and Geraldo roared at each other over a recent drunk-driving fatal crash in Virginia. Bill had already turned the tragedy into a political hammer to nail illegal aliens. Geraldo took eye-popping-out umbrage that Bill would take advantage of someone else's misery to make political hay. Perhaps Geraldo had never watched Bill's show before or actually listened to the words coming out of Bill's mouth when he was a guest
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by Michael Winship
Over the next days and weeks and months, there will be much wringing of hands and gnashing of teeth and rending of garments but what will be done? If the past is any guide, the majority who favor stricter control will in all likelihood be shouted down by the vitriol, and the electoral and lobbying money power, of the well-armed few. Oh well, we all too probably will say. Until the next time. And the time after that. Unless we make a noise. Now
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by Emad Mekay
An unidentified U.S. Defense Department official directed subordinates to hire four specific outside contractors for Iraq-related work, including Shaha Riza, the girlfriend of then-Deputy Secretary of Defense and current World Bank president Paul Wolfowitz
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by Emad Mekay
'Don't try to make Africa his saving grace,' said Njoki Njoroge Njehu, executive director of Nairobi-based Daughters of Mumbi Global Resource Center. 'African politicians do African peoples no favors by making excuses for corruption and for the corrupt; Wolfowitz must resign'
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There is also a shortage of ambulances and ambulance drivers to transfer patients to hospitals during attacks. The emergency services often depend on civilians, who typically lack any medical knowledge, to transport the injured to nearby hospitals. Sometimes, by the time they reach hospitals the injured are dead simply because they were put in a car incorrectly, doctors say
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by Kester Kenn Klomegah
Almost 100,000 people die annually in Russia directly from drug overdoses and abuse, the Federal Drug Control Service (FDCS) has said, with some 90,000 people annually die of poisoning with psychoactive substances
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by Sameer Dossani
Over the years, the World Bank's hypocrisy has been so extreme as to be taken for granted. The ironies of talking about ending global poverty, interest rates and export policies while staying at five-star hotels and attending lavishly catered meetings do get a bit tiresome for Bank-watchers like me to keep pointing out. But the latest developments involving World Bank president Paul Wolfowitz and his former partner, Shaha Riza, take this everyday hypocrisy to new heights
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by Emad Mekay
There is a crisis atmosphere at World Bank headquarters here in Washington, with dozens of emergency staff meetings, more calls for the embattled president Paul Wolfowitz to step down, and clearer displays of rebellion inside the Bank
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by Jim Lobe
Despite the emergence of 24-hour cable television news and fast-growing use of internet news sources, the U.S. public's knowledge of national and international personalities and issues is little changed from nearly 20 years ago
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by Julio Godoy
Former Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev summed it best when he spoke of Yeltsin as 'a tragic destiny.' Yeltsin had 'major deeds for the good as well as serious mistakes behind him,' Gorbachev said
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by Diego Cevallos
The decriminalization of abortion in the city enjoys a high level of support despite the fact that an overwhelming majority of Mexicans profess Roman Catholicism, whose leaders excommunicate those who practice abortion
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Abu Ahmed, who claims to be a spokesman for insurgent group the Islamic Army, said that the construction of concrete barriers would not stop them fighting U.S. troops and those who support them. 'They want to divide the country by sects and also they have this idea that by isolating districts it will make it easier to catch Muslim fighters. The government is deeply wrong because it will just make us stronger'
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Arctic sea ice is melting much more quickly than projected by even the most advanced computer models, a new government funded study has found. Comparing actual ice observations with climate models, the scientists conclude that the Arctic could be seasonally free of sea ice as early as 2020
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by Abdul Samad Rohani and S. Mudassir Ali Shah
On April 30, thousands of furious people took to the streets to denounce a 'cold blooded massacre' of dozens of civilians by coalition troops in western Herat provinces, which has been relatively calm
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by Megan McKenna
The recent string of raids to net and jail the undocumented is part of a new strategy that targets immigrant families, including asylum-seekers, in the name of national security. The separation of parents from their children that has resulted in many cases has led to a nationwide outcry and a recognition that we need to re-examine how we treat immigrants in detention, particularly families
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by Amir Soltani Sheikholeslami
Single-handedly, President Bush has converted Muqtada al-Sadr into a giant. A political neophyte dismissed by Iraqis as a zatut (an ignoramous), lacking religious standing or academic credentials, condemned for issuing fatwas sanctifying looting in Baghdad and suspected of the murder of Ayatollah Khoei's son, Muqtada al-Sadr would not have a tongue or a leg to stand on were it not for his ability to conceal his own crimes under a vast pool of blood. After every military confrontation -- even those where the Mahdi's army incurred heavy losses in Najaf and Karbala in 2004 -- he has been able to capitalize on the corpse of the dead to boost his power, popularity and prestige
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by Jim Lobe
An increasing number of senior retired officers, some of whom had previously expressed optimism that the active-duty force of some 500,000 soldiers could handle U.S. commitments in the 'global war on terror,' now say the current situation today reminds them of 1980, when the service's top officer, Gen. Edward Meyer, publicly declared that the country had a 'hollow Army'
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by Ali al-Fadhily
U.S. leaders and Iraqi government officials again accused terrorists and the Saddamists of the bombing. But many people around Baghdad are blaming the occupation forces and the U.S.-backed Iraqi government. 'We do not know who is killing us, but we do know who is responsible for our safety,' Kaka Kadir, who lost a 15-year-old son in the attack
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by Mark Weisenmiller
No one person, organization or government department seems to know for certain how much natural gas and undiscovered oil lies beneath the Gulf of Mexico -- the location of the drilling area for the proposed Craig-Dorgan bill -- but a 'best guess' estimate is that the outer-rim continental section of the body of water has an estimated 86 billion barrels
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by Khody Akhavi
'The writing is alarmist and overreaching without adequate context and specific information to justify the tone and degree of generalization,' wrote Crossroads series producer Leo Eaton to Gaffney in an evaluation of the documentary's final cut. 'There are awkwardly phrased assertions, convoluted reasoning, and implications of connections between subjects without evidence'
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by Dahr Jamail
Hussein, who left three months back, described Baghdad as a city of ghosts where black banners of death announcements can be seen hanging on most streets. The city, he said, lives on an hour of electricity a day, and there are no jobs to be had
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by Sanjay Suri
For DUP leader Ian Paisley and Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams to come together at a table to talk power sharing in a new government is necessarily historic. And if they can, so can others in conflict situations that have seemed impossible to resolve
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by Joe Conason
Harassing minority voters with bogus claims of fraud is a venerable GOP tradition, as anyone familiar with the career of the late Supreme Court Chief Justice William Rehnquist must know. Back in the early '60s, when Rehnquist was just another ambitious lawyer in Arizona, he ran a partisan campaign to confront black and Hispanic voters over their 'qualifications.' Along with many of today's generation of Republican leaders, he was a stalwart of the 1964 Goldwater campaign, which garnered its handful of Southern electoral votes by opposing the Voting Rights Act
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by Earl Ofari Hutchinson
Jesse Jackson's recent endorsement of Barack Obama for president matters less among black voters than strategies for dealing with key issues in the African-American community such as unemployment, health care and prison reform
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by Michael Winship
The bubble even afflicts powerful folks not in government, like Don Imus. Had he emerged from bubbledom and listened to his better angels, rather than his egregious producer Bernard McGuirk or the publicity-eager media mavens and politicos who worshipped at his airwave altar, he might yet be spouting invective, touting candidates and best sellers and raking in cash for CBS and NBC
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by Earl Ofari Hutchinson
Within hours of Imus ladling out his bile against the Rutgers women, my mailbox filled up with these postings demanding his scalp. Yet, I have not received one angry email since Snoop made his 'B' and 'H' dig against Imus. I haven't heard any outraged calls for Geffen to pull the album, or threats of a boycott if they don't. I've heard no denunciations from Sharpton, Jackson or the National Association of Black Journalists, and not a peep from women's groups about him
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by Earl Ofari Hutchinson
Even if Imus had made a sincere, bare-the-chest, heartfelt apology it wouldn't amount to much. That's the standard ploy that shock jocks, GOP bigwigs, and assorted public personalities employ when they get caught with their racial pants down. On a few occasions, the offenders have been reprimanded, suspended, and even dumped. However, that's rare. Imus has been syndicated on dozens of stations for more than a decade by MSNBC. Though the network gently distanced itself from Imus, it won't likely show him the broadcast door
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by Eli Clifton
The Bush administration and proponents of the U.S. troop surge in Iraq have claimed that the increased military presence in Baghdad and al-Anbar province has reduced sectarian violence between Sunni and Shiite Muslims and lowered civilian casualties. But not all of the numbers are being included. It has emerged that the Bush administration does not count car bombing victims among Iraq's civilian casualties and the Iraqi government is withholding from the United Nations its statistics on Iraqi casualties
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by Earl Ofari Hutchinson
The 23 murders or non-negligent manslaughters that have taken place on American campuses was only the tip of iceberg of campus violence. Only 25 percent of the violent crimes were actually reported. A significant number of faculty and students flatly told the researchers that they actually feared for their safety. One of their biggest fears was gun violence
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by Aruna Lee
While the tragedy at Virginia Tech has stunned the nation, for the Korean-American community the news that the shooter was one of their own has caused both shock and humiliation. Many say they fear a backlash against Koreans in retaliation for the murders
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by Gareth Porter
The language on a timetable for U.S. withdrawal from Iraq voted out of the House-Senate conference committee this week contains large loopholes that would apparently allow U.S. troops to continue carrying out military operations in Iraq's Sunni heartland indefinitely
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by Emad Mekay
Off balance for weeks, Wolfowitz announced his latest move in a message he sent to his staff early Tuesday, asking for their 'continued patience'
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by Stephen Leahy
Environmentalists are criticizing a Canadian proposal to reduce greenhouse houses by 20 percent by 2020, saying the proposal is even weaker than last year's 'green plan,' which was widely rejected
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by Thalif Deen
A new initiative on the existing agreement, this time by Saudi Arabia, once again calls on Israel to return all lands captured in the 1967 war; the creation of a Palestinian state with its capital in East Jerusalem; and the right of Palestinians to return to their homes in what is now Israel. In return, the Israelis will be guaranteed permanent peace and diplomatic recognition of their nation state
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by William Fisher
The human rights community has responded angrily to the Supreme Court's decision not to hear the cases of detainees at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba until they have exhausted all other legal avenues. The effect of the high court's decision Monday is to deny civil judicial review to the 300-plus prisoners still held at the controversial U.S. military base until their cases have gone through the process set up by the 2005 Detainee Treatment Act (DTA), which allows limited civil court appeals of decisions reached by military review panels
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by Ali al-Fadhily
Oil-rich Basra in the south of Iraq is getting caught up in an increasingly more fierce battle between warring Shia groups. A group led by anti-occupation Shia cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, who recently ordered his politicians to quit the Iraqi government in a defiance of the U.S.-led occupation, has said his group will no more accept Basra Governor Mohammad al-Wai'ili because he is a member of the Shia al-Fadhila Party
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by Ali al-Fadhily
Demonstrations against the occupation and the United States by hundreds of thousands of angry Shias in Najaf, Kut and other cities across the south Apr. 9 mark a sharp break from a policy of cooperation. Protesters demanded an end to the U.S.-led occupation, burnt U.S. flags and chanted Death to America
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Not only has our federal government thus far failed to take action to prevent the worst consequences of unchecked global warming pollution, but it has failed fundamentally to take reasonable precautions against global warming-induced storms and drought, and the high costs that will be borne by families, businesses and ultimately, taxpayers
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by Joe Conason
Giuliani's fundamental argument is that 9/11 endowed him with special qualifications for the job he is seeking. During the months and years leading up to 9/11 he made decisions as mayor that would later prove disastrous
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by Joe Conason
According to McCain, there is always an opportunity to succeed, provided that we are willing to sacrifice thousands more young Americans and hundreds of billions more dollars.
But then again, he thinks we didn't expend enough lives and dollars in Vietnam, either
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'There isn't much blood in the rubbish [so it's safe]. We find some good metal things which we can sell in the market. Some people buy syringes with needles from us. I don't think the needles can harm us because they must have been sterilized already,' Raghed Sarmad told IRIN while rummaging through medical waste left near the main gate of Baghdad's Yarmouk Hospital
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by Robert Scheer
Blame it on the military, but make it look like you're supporting the troops. That's been the convenient gambit of failed emperors throughout history as they witnessed their empires decline. Not surprisingly, then, it's become the standard rhetorical trick employed by President Bush in shirking responsibility for the Iraq debacle of his making
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by Robert Scheer
The long-rumored disarray in Wolfowitz's personal life seems to have surfaced only recently, with the news of an exorbitant bonus for his lover, precisely because there is so much dissatisfaction at the bank. The call for Wolfowitz's dismissal has been raised most forcefully by the bank's officially recognized staff association.
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by Robert Scheer
Meanwhile, back in liberated Iraq, the anniversary of Saddam Hussein's overthrow was marked by only one sign of public response: In the Shiite holy city of Najaf, hundreds of thousands gathered to burn American flags and otherwise denounce the United States
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by Robert Scheer
On April 2, the U.S. Supreme Court turned down the habeas corpus plea of a Canadian national, captured in Afghanistan when he was 15 years old, because the possible deprivation of his human rights was not conducted on "U.S. soil." The court, with three judges dissenting, cited a law passed by the Republican-controlled Congress last year that the fate of Guantanamo prisoners will be determined by secret military tribunals outside the purview of U.S. courts
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byDahr Jamail
Close to a million unexploded bombs are estimated to litter southern Lebanon, according to UN forces engaged in the hazardous task of removing them
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About 200,000 Israeli families -- 11 percent of the population -- rely on 200 NGOs for their daily meals, according to LATET and Israel's Ministry of Social Affairs. Some NGOs run soup kitchens in poor neighborhoods while others collect food from private and corporate donors and distribute it to the needy. But NGOs say their strong response is counter-productive because it encourages the Israeli government to do less to help its more vulnerable citizens
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by Michael Winship
In the case of Cheney, a curious double standard seems to be at play. Here's a fellow with powerful women in his life: his wife Lynn, a former chair of the National Endowment for the Humanities, his daughter Elizabeth a former deputy assistant secretary of state. His other daughter, Mary, was a high-ranking aide to her father during the 2004 re-election campaign. You might cringe at their politics but these are not women of small accomplishment (although doubtless helped along their career paths by the incumbent veep). Yet look at the way Vice President Cheney reacted to Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi's meeting with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad -- a trip that came amongst similar sorties to Damascus by various Republican congressmen -- visits that went unassailed by Cheney and the White House
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by Ivan Eland
Instead of publicly condemning Speaker Pelosi for carrying out the bipartisan Iraq Study Group's heretofore-languishing recommendation of actually talking to Syria to resolve bilateral issues, the president should be happy that someone in the U.S. government is willing to take risks
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Gore said he was surprised to see that the Conservative plan uses the concept of 'intensity reduction,' which he said is a 'poll-tested phrase' developed in Houston by the so-called think tanks financed by polluters
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by Khody Akhavi
It's the consequences of Britain's ostensible 'soft power' approach with Iran that enrage neo-conservative columnists like Charles Krauthammer the most. For him, the 'humiliation' suffered by the British is evidence that the international community and "its great institutions" are a sham, and that multilateralism is a dead end
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by Julio Godoy
The final version of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report released in Brussels warns that without drastic reduction of greenhouse gases, the resulting global warming would decimate flora and fauna, and imperil the lives of hundreds of millions of people. The risks are particularly severe in regions around the Equator, in Africa, the river deltas of South East Asia, the Amazons region in Latin America and in low islands and other territories located near the oceans
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by Jim Lobe
What the EPA does with Monday's ruling remains unclear, and some observers, noting that the federal rule-making process can often be dragged out for months or even years, suggested that the agency may well do nothing before the end of Bush's term, 21 months from now. The agency said it was 'reviewing' the decision Monday afternoon. Justice Stevens, the author of the majority opinion, wrote that the agency could still decide against regulating greenhouse emissions but only if it determined that they don't contribute to global warming or provided some other reasonable explanation
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by Jim Lobe
It was then-House Speaker Jim Wright who, with the quiet encouragement of Republican realists, notably Reagan's White House chief of staff, Howard Baker, Secretary of State George Shultz and his special Central America envoy, Philip Habib, sought to promote peace-making efforts as the Reagan administration was persisting in its efforts to isolate and overthrow the Sandinista government in Nicaragua
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by Joe Conason
Under the deal set up by her boyfriend, Riza would automatically receive 'outstanding'ratings, with a top position waiting for her on her return to the World Bank as soon as Wolfowitz's term expires. Neo-conservatives apparently believe fervently in merit and competition and hate affirmative action, unless their own careers (or the careers of their lovers) are at stake
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by Gareth Porter
In the past two weeks, the Bush administration has signaled its keen interest in talks with Iran by its failure to make an issue of the Iranian seizure of 15 British sailors and marines in what the British said was Iraqi territorial waters on Mar. 21. In contrast to its seemingly confrontational approach to Iran in January and February, the administration chose not to exploit the incident to increase tensions
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by Dwight E. Abbott
At 172,000 convicts, California has the largest prison population in our nation, filled with some of the most criminally sophisticated men and women in this country. Rather than limiting prisoners to smokeless tobacco products only, as most of the other states have done, state officials decided California would be one of only a few states to ban all tobacco products
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by Kalinga Seneviratne
The ritual in which penitents drag a wooden cross for almost a mile culminates in their being nailed to a wooden cross rigged up atop a makeshift Calvary. The only concession to the original are nails made of stainless steel and soaked in alcohol to ward off infections and cloth straps around limbs for additional support. Penitents are taken down only when they feel cleansed of their sins. Scores of other shirtless male penitents also converge on the hill, blood oozing from their backs from whipping
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by Stephen Zunes
The failures of Iraqi democratization as advocated by the Bush administration should not be blamed primarily on the Iraqis. Nor should they be used to reinforce racist notions that Arabs or Muslims are somehow incapable of building democratic institutions and living in a democratic society. Rather, democracy from the outset has been more of a self-serving rationalization for American strategic and economic interests in the region than a genuine concern for the right of the Iraq people to democratic self-governance
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by Adam Morrow and Khaled Moussa al-Omrani
Israeli Television's Channel One aired a documentary film Feb. 26 about the Arab-Israeli war of June 1967 titled Unit Shakid. The film made the claim that Israeli soldiers -- under the command of current Israeli infrastructure minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer -- massacred some 250 unarmed Egyptian POWs in the immediate wake of the conflict
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by Jim Lobe
At the Arab League summit in Riyadh, Saudi King Abdullah, on whom the administration in recent months has come increasingly to rely for rallying the region's 'moderates' against the Iran-led 'Quartet of Evil,' shocked official Washington when, in his opening remarks, he called the U.S. military presence in Iraq an 'illegitimate foreign occupation'
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by Eli Clifton
Nestle has consistently failed to obtain explicit consent from communities affected by bottling operations at nearby water sources that serve the communities' water needs, says The Sierra Club, which urges the company to allow communities to vote with regards to Nestle's activities and ensure that the company does not use its disproportionate power to influence the communities' decisions
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by Andrew Lam
'Every time there's an incident like this, every ethnic group is on pins and needles,' said Khalil Abdullah, an African-American colleague. An Anglo shooter may be an individual, a loner, but God forbid if a person of color goes on a shooting rampage. His whole tribe would be implicated. 'I still recall my aunts when President Kennedy was assassinated. They were praying that it wasn't a Negro.' Many ethnic communities do not feel that they belong to the core of the American fabric, Abdullah added. 'The action of an individual can cancel out the good image of an entire group'
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by Kimia Sanati
Reformists have been criticizing the government of Ahmadinejad throughout the twelve day standoff -- as much as strict media censorship would allow -- for mismanagement. While stressing Iran's right to be sensitive to its territorial rights and welcoming the release of the sailors, reformists generally maintain that the crisis escalated unnecessarily and could have been avoided or managed and ended more gracefully, efficiently and at less cost for Iran
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by Emad Mekay
As the World Bank handed out a communique that talked about transparency and equity, beleaguered Bank President Paul Wolfowitz deflected a barrage of questions from journalists seeking more information about allegations of nepotism involving a Bank employee who is personally involved with him
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Analysis by Emad Mekay
Right-wing publications that have previously backed Wolfowitz's crusade promoting the war on Iraq have also come to his aid, citing a new campaign he is leading. David Frum, a fellow neo-conservative and a former presidential speech writer for President Bush, wrote in the National Review Online, a neo-conservative outlet, asking for understanding
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by Emad Mekay and Jim Lobe
Persistent efforts by Wolfowitz to recruit a new country manager for Iraq despite concerns over staff security there -- as well as the Bank's attempts last month to suppress reports about an incident in which a Bank employee was injured in Baghdad, apparently to avoid derailing his recruitment efforts -- have lent credence to critics' charges that he has been more than eager to line up the institution and its resources behind U.S. policy there
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by Emad Mekay
The association said it feared that the Board may not act quickly enough, and called for the release of all relevant documents, including a memorandum from Wolfowitz to the human resources vice president instructing him to second Riza to the U.S. State Department on a generous package that brought her salary to $193,000 a year -- $7,000 more than that earned by U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice
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by Emad Mekay
Despite denials by World Bank President Paul Wolfowitz Thursday, newly disclosed internal documents indicate that the Bank may have in fact reversed a longstanding policy of promoting family planning on his watch
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by Emad Mekay
The nepotism controversy besetting World Bank President Paul Wolfowitz and his long-time partner and colleague Shaha Riza heightened Monday with new revelations that Riza may have had a history of flouting Bank rules while financially benefiting from jobs associated with Wolfowitz's former post at the Pentagon
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by Emad Mekay
A controversial raise for a World Bank employee who has been romantically involved with the Bank's President Paul Wolfowitz was not the work of the Bank's Ethics Committee, as originally alleged by Wolfowitz's office, according to the watchdog group that leaked the information
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by Jim Lobe
With the Apr 26 vote by the Senate to begin withdrawing U.S. troops from Iraq in October, the stage has been set for a prolonged confrontation between the Democratic-led Congress and Bush over the future of the war
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by Bill Berkowitz
Bush has dole out more than $2 billion in federal funding to religious organizations for services as extensive as alcohol- and drug-related treatment programs, 'abstinence-only' sex education projects, job training efforts, and 'healthy marriage' proposals. In addition, federal, state, and local governments have embarked on a broad campaign to recruit, train, and assist religious charities in writing grant applications, creating non-profit entities, training volunteers and building an infrastructure that would qualify for government grants
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In an interview, one member of the Mehdi Army, Ali Hassany, said that the militia will target Iraq's gays and lesbians. 'They deserve death. Those people are an embarrassment to our society. Killing such people is a job for their families, but if they cannot do so by their own hands, we will do it,' Hassany said
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by Lucy Komisar
Now that the U.S. Congress is investigating the truth of President George W. Bush's statements about the Iraq war, they might look into one of his most startling assertions: that there was a link between Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden. Critics dismissed that as an invention. They were wrong. There was a link, but not the one Bush was selling. The link between Hussein and Bin Laden was their banker, BCCI. But the link went beyond the dictator and the jihadist -- it passed through Saudi Arabia and stretched all the way to George W. Bush and his father
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Global climate change presents a serious national security threat that could affect Americans at home, impact U.S. military operations, and heighten global tensions, finds a study released April 16, by a blue-ribbon panel of 11 of the most senior retired U.S. admirals and generals
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For the first time, high risk chemical facilities will have to abide by federal security regulations to safeguard against terrorist attacks, according to a rule issued Monday by the Department of Homeland Security, as required by Congress. The rule meets with the approval of chemical companies, but critics worry that rail transport of hazardous chemicals is not covered
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'Our mission is to keep peace in our neighborhood. We keep in contact with the other vigilantes in the neighborhood to make sure there is no danger. Should something untoward happen, we start putting our defense mechanisms in motion,' Azawi said, a retired fireman and father of five
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by Thalif Deen
The UN Security Council, whose primary mandate is to prevent wars and preserve world peace, will once again break tradition next week when it debates the newest threat to international security: climate change
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by Thalif Deen
Testifying before a House Committee on Appropriations panel on foreign operations last week, Lawrence Smith Jr., president of the Population Institute, points out that intelligence and security experts -- including the CIA -- have repeatedly warned that countries at the bottom of the development ladder, with high fertility rates and very large youth populations, are ripe for terrorist recruitment
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Albion Monitor Issue 156 (http://www.albionmonitor.com)
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