U.S. commanders seeking to widen Pakistan attacks

American commanders in Afghanistan have in recent months urged a widening of the war that could include American attacks on indigenous Pakistani militants in the tribal areas inside Pakistan, according to United States officials.

Behind TV analysts, Pentagon’s hidden hand

To the public, these men are members of a familiar fraternity, presented tens of thousands of times on television and radio as “military analysts” whose long service has equipped them to give authoritative and unfettered judgments about the most pressing issues of the post-Sept. 11 world.

Hidden behind that appearance of objectivity, though, is a Pentagon information apparatus that has used those analysts in a campaign to generate favorable news coverage of the administration’s wartime performance, an examination by The New York Times has found.

Battle to retake Basra was 'complete disaster'

The British-trained Iraqi Army's attempt to retake Basra from militiamen was an "unmitigated disaster at every level", British commanders have disclosed.

Senior sources have said that the mission was undermined by incompetent officers and untrained troops who were sent into battle with inadequate supplies of food, water and ammunition.

They said the failure had delayed the British withdrawal by "many months".

Pope worries that big powers control decision-making

Pope Benedict XVI warned diplomats at the United Nations on Friday that international cooperation needed to solve urgent problems is "in crisis" because decisions rest in the hands of a few powerful nations.

In a major speech on his U.S. trip, Benedict also said that respect for human rights, not violence, was the key to solving many of the world's problems.

Authorities lose patience with collapsing dollar

Jean-Claude Juncker, the EU's 'Mr Euro', has given the clearest warning to date that the world authorities may take action to halt the collapse of the dollar and undercut commodity speculation by hedge funds.

Carter meets with Hamas chief in exile, defying Israel and US

Former president Jimmy Carter followed through on a planned meeting with the exiled leader of Hamas on Friday, despite U.S. and Israeli protests that the session would give legitimacy to a group they consider a terrorist organization.

Khaled Meshal, who is accused of masterminding kidnappings and suicide bombings, met with Carter, a Nobel Peace laureate, in Damascus, Syria, where Meshal has lived for nearly a decade. The meeting was one of the most notable exchanges to date between Hamas, which won Palestinian elections in 2006, and a prominent Western political figure.

Redskins cheerleaders shake up cricket in modest India

Iran's UN mission denies US charge of supporting Iraqi insurgency

America's allies in Iraq under pressure as civil war breaks out among Sunni

A series of suicide bombings have shown over the past week that al-Qa'ida in Iraq, though battered by defections over the past year, is striking back remorselessly at Sunni Arab leaders who ally themselves to the US. . . .

A vicious civil war is now being fought within Iraq's Sunni Arab community between al-Qa'ida in Iraq and al-Sahwa while other groups continue to attack American forces.

Our reign of terror, by the Israeli army

In shocking testimonies that reveal abductions, beatings and torture, Israeli soldiers confess the horror they have visited on Hebron.

Top Bush aides pushed for Guantanamo torture

America's most senior general was "hoodwinked" by top Bush administration officials determined to push through aggressive interrogation techniques of terror suspects held at Guantánamo Bay, leading to the US military abandoning its age-old ban on the cruel and inhumane treatment of prisoners, the Guardian reveals today.

General Richard Myers, chairman of the US joint chiefs of staff from 2001 to 2005, . . . was duped by senior officials in Washington, who believed the Geneva conventions and other traditional safeguards were out of date, is disclosed in a devastating account of their role, extracts of which appear in today's Guardian.

Iran says oil price too low at 115 dollars a barrel

Even at 115 dollars a barrel, oil is priced too low, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said in comments published on Saturday adding that the commodity "should find its real value". . . .

Ahmadinejad suggested that the sharp fall in the value of the US dollar was a driving force behind the rise in oil prices.

"The dollar is no longer money, they just print a bunch of paper which is circulated in the world without any commodity backing," he said.

Late last year, Iran announced that it had stopped carrying out its oil transactions in dollars.

Muslim scholar honoured by Austria

Whose privilege?

In the name of fighting terrorism — and with a clear goal of avoiding accountability — the Bush administration has imposed a level of secrecy on its operations that has no place in a democracy.

One of its most disturbing tactics has been seeking early dismissal of lawsuits alleging serious government misconduct, claiming they would reveal national security secrets.

Hillary joins the vast, rightwing financial conspiracy

Hillary Clinton proposed that Congress show its bipartisan spirit by appointing an "emergency working group on foreclosures," to be led by none other than Alan Greenspan and earlier Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker, and Clinton Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin. Her idea was for them to come up with a plan to alleviate the subprime and financial crisis. This seems like calling in arsonists to help put out the fire that they and their own constituency had set in the first place.

'Just as the Wall is called a fence, so are the mercenaries called contractors'

Robert Fisk has a well-earned reputation as one of the most honest and hard hitting foreign correspondents in the British media. He has worked in Northern Ireland, where he exposed the presence of the SAS in the mid-1970s, as well as Bosnia, Palestine, Iraq, and Lebanon. It was here, as a witness to the immediate aftermath of the Israeli-organised Sabra and Shatila massacre of 2000 Palestinian refugees, that his journalism took on its current form: angry, passionate, and as he puts it "partial on the side of the victims"—a style of journalism which, unfortunately, is not shared by many of his colleagues in the profession. In the midst of a torrent of lies and propaganda emanating from our media about British and US policy on the Middle East, Fisk's writings are a breath of fresh air—although the hellish reality he depicts does not always make for pleasant reading.

Afghanistan moves to center stage

Iranian President Mahmud Ahmadinejad said during a visit to the holy city of Qom that the United States invaded Afghanistan and Iraq "under the pretext of the September 11 terror attack".

A day earlier, Turkish Foreign Minister Ali Babacan, who was on a visit to London, publicly expressed skepticism over the conduct of the Afghan war by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). He warned that NATO is "courting disaster". On Monday, addressing a student gathering in Beijing's Tsinghua University, Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf urged Chinese and Russian help in stabilizing Afghanistan.

How to rob an African nation

The residents of a tiny African island nation have been dreaming of great wealth since oil was discovered in their territorial waters. Companies, foreign powers and corrupt politicians are scrambling for drilling licenses in hopes of striking it rich.

New York Times Company posts loss

The New York Times Company, the parent of The New York Times, posted a $335,000 loss in the first quarter—one of the worst periods the company and the newspaper industry have seen—falling far short of both analysts’ expectations and its $23.9 million profit in the quarter a year earlier.

Across globe, empty bellies bring rising anger

Since 2001, a dramatic increase in suicide bombings

Suicide bombers conducted 658 attacks around the world last year, including 542 in U.S.-occupied Afghanistan and Iraq, according to data compiled by U.S. government experts.

The large number of attacks—more than double the number in any of the past 25 years—reflects a trend that has surprised and worried U.S. intelligence and military analysts.

India pulls off a peaceful Olympic torch relay, by banning the public

Mugabe: 'Britain is trying to steal Zimbabwe'

France warns climate change driving war, hunger

French President Nicolas Sarkozy on Friday told the world's biggest carbon polluters that global warming was becoming a driver of hunger, unrest and conflict, with the war in Darfur a concrete example.

Democrat candidates on Israel's security

"An attack on Israel would trigger massive retaliation from the United States," said New York Sen. Hillary Clinton, who proposed that the US create a security umbrella for Israel and other allies in the region to protect them from a nuclear Iran. "So would an attack on those countries that are willing to go under the security umbrella and forswear their own nuclear ambitions."

Pentagon institute calls Iraq war 'a major debacle' with outcome 'in doubt'

The war in Iraq has become "a major debacle" and the outcome "is in doubt" despite improvements in security from the buildup in U.S. forces, according to a highly critical study published Thursday by the Pentagon's premier military educational institute.

300,000 US veterans have mental problem, 320,000 had brain injuries

Some 300,000 U.S. troops are suffering from major depression or post traumatic stress from serving in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and 320,000 received brain injuries, a new study estimates.

Only about half have sought treatment, said the study released Thursday by the RAND Corporation.

Boy named Islam barred from French show

Like father like son, the cover-up continues

When Admiral John S. McCain, Jr., Commander in Chief, United States Naval Forces, Europe, ordered the cover-up on the attack of the USS LIBERTY GTR-5 it was a sure act of treason perpetrated on the American people and the crew of the LIBERTY to hide the true facts surrounding the unprovoked attack by the Government of Israel on our ship, the USS LIBERTY.

Video: Final footage of Reuters journalist killed in Gaza

The editor-in-chief of Reuters demanded that Israel launches a "thorough and immediate investigation" into the killing of one of its cameramen in the Gaza Strip yesterday .

Footage of Fadel Shana, 23, being killed by a tank shell in the Gaza Strip has been released by the news agency, which said that the cameraman was hit despite clear markings that showed him to be a journalist.

After medical examinations of Shana's body, Reuters said that Israel had used a controversial type of tank shell which scatters metal darts, or flechettes, around the surrounding area after exploding, risking civilian casualties.

Why Shariah?

The outrage about according a degree of official status to Shariah in a Western country should come as no surprise. No legal system has ever had worse press. To many, the word “Shariah” conjures horrors of hands cut off, adulterers stoned and women oppressed. By contrast, who today remembers that the much-loved English common law called for execution as punishment for hundreds of crimes, including theft of any object worth five shillings or more? How many know that until the 18th century, the laws of most European countries authorized torture as an official component of the criminal-justice system? As for sexism, the common law long denied married women any property rights or indeed legal personality apart from their husbands. When the British applied their law to Muslims in place of Shariah, as they did in some colonies, the result was to strip married women of the property that Islamic law had always granted them — hardly progress toward equality of the sexes.

In fact, for most of its history, Islamic law offered the most liberal and humane legal principles available anywhere in the world.

Net neutrality: Our experience with Yahoo email blocking

The Federal Communications Commission has been examining net neutrality. The Wisdom Fund's experience with Yahoo sheds light on the state of net neutrality today.

For more than a year we've been trying to get Yahoo to stop blocking our email to Yahoo addresses. We follow recommended email practices, and have about 600 Yahoo email addresses on our mailing list.

Yet Yahoo often blocks our email, and we get the following automated response:
"Warning: message still undelivered after 4 hours
"Will keep trying until message is 3 days old", followed by:
"Message could not be delivered for 2 days
"Message will be deleted from queue".

We asked our Yahoo list members to add our address to their Address Book or safe list thinking that would help. It didn't.

Following complaints to Yahoo (finding where to complain took awhile—the one form we finally found seemed designed for computer systems experts), our problems would clear up but reappear, and this continued for several months.

On April 21, 2007 Yahoo encouraged us to "apply for prioritized sending", and we were assigned Case No 43699725. We weren't asking for any favors—we just wanted Yahoo to stop blocking our email.

After a lot of back and forth, on January 16, 2008, Yahoo wrote that they had "made appropriate changes to this IP address" in their database. "This should help with delivering mail" they said.

But the problems continued.

On March 17, 2008 we were sent a technical form to complete which most casual users would not be able to handle. We complied.

On April 7, 2008 Yahoo wrote "for Question #1, we will need you to provide the specific IP address/es assigned to your active mail servers."

We asked our ISP to provide us this information. Their response: "bq102.his.com is 216.194.192.16—that IP number is unlikely to change. Anything you send via mail.twf.org will look like it's originating at 216.194.231.6 but it then gets relayed through any of about a dozen other servers, and the IP #s of those servers change fairly frequently. They're in the 216.194.192.0/24, 216.194.225.0/24 and 12.161.201.0/25 subnets."

This information was forwarded to Yahoo on April 8, 2008. We're waiting for the results. We realize that spam is a problem on the Internet, but Yahoo's "solution" poses a major problem for small, volunteer run organizations like our's.

Founded in 1995, we are a tax-exempt corporation registered in the Commonwealth of Virginia. We're classified as a Section 501(c)(3) organization as described in the Internal Revenue Code—our employee identification number is 54-1755689.

Enver Masud
The Wisdom Fund

Murtha says McCain too old to be president

Iraq to open oil-field bidding

Iraq will open at least six major oil and natural-gas fields for exploration and production in the first bidding for licenses since the U.S.-led invasion in 2003.

Iraq, which pre-qualified international oil companies this week for the bidding, will open the southern fields of Rumaila North, Rumaila South, West Qurna and Zubair for exploration, Oil Minister Hussain al-Shahristani said in an interview in Brussels yesterday. In the north, international oil companies will be invited to develop the Kirkuk oil field and the Akkaz gas field.

Israel kills 17 in Gaza after troops die in clash

Israeli forces killed 17 Palestinians, most of them civilians, in the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip otoday, medical officials and witnesses said.

The attacks came after three Israeli troops died in a Hamas ambush near a border fuel pipeline.

He bet on the credit crisis—and took home $3.7bn last year

He is John Paulson, a previously obscure hedge fund manager from New York, who took home $3.7bn (£1.9bn) last year, after betting on a calamity in the mortgage market.

It is certainly the biggest single pay-day in the history of Wall Street, more than twice anything previously achieved even in the bloated hedge fund industry. It is worth spelling the total out with all the zeros: $3,700,000,000, the equivalent of a lottery jackpot every day for a year.

US offers Pakistan government $7bn in non-military aid to fight terrorism

The US has promised to curb air strikes by drones against suspected militants in Pakistan, as part of a joint counter-terrorism strategy agreed with the new civilian government in Islamabad, the Guardian has learned. That strategy will be supported by an aid package potentially worth more than $7bn (£3.55bn), which is due to go before Congress for approval in the next few months.

What Islam did for Europe

Until very recently, suggestions that western civilisation owed much to Islam were rejected out of hand. "Europe", according to the orthodox model, was born out of a marriage of classical and Judaeo-Christian cultures. The missing element in this formula—the Islamic component—was ignored. During the first half of the 20th century a number of Arabists challenged this view, but their opinions made little popular headway. Today, however, thanks largely to the current friction between Islam and the west, new efforts are being made to understand and interpret the influence oriental culture has had, mostly via Spain, on its occidental cousin.

Basra: Echoes of Vietnam

Now that some of the dust has settled over the recent battle of Basra that pitted Muqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi army against the armies of the United States and Iraq, it is time to examine what that clash meant, and what are some analogies that might help bring it into focus. There were certainly echoes of Vietnam in last month's fighting, and some of those parallels, particularly to the 1968 Tet offensive, are worth a closer look.

Pakistan opposes US nuke oversight

A PLAN by the US to seek direct "oversight" of Pakistan's powerful nuclear arsenal and the command structure that controls it was heading for rejection last night after it was denounced in Islamabad as "outright interference" in the country's affairs.

The secret plan, disclosed in the Pakistan media, would for the first time see US officials deployed in Islamabad with "direct access" to the National Command Authority that manages Pakistan's nuclear assets.

It is the first time since the country became a nuclear power in 1998 that Washington has sought direct access to the nuclear arsenal.

Last weekend, US President George W. Bush was quoted as saying that if the US suffered another 9/11-type attack, it would most likely have its antecedents in Pakistan rather than Afghanistan.

Afghan opposition says it's been talking to Taliban

An opposition group says its leaders, including a former president, have been meeting with the Taliban and other anti-government groups in hopes of negotiating an end to rising violence in Afghanistan.

. . . among those at the meetings were former President Burhanuddin Rabbani, now a member of parliament, and Mohammad Qasim Fahim, who is President Hamid Karzai's security adviser and a powerful northern strongman.

Second terror mistrial hurts bush administration, critics say

Critics accused the Bush administration of"see[ing] terrorism under every rock," and of essentially fabricating a major terror case against seven men using a paid informant.

Netanyahu says 9/11 terror attacks good for Israel

The Israeli newspaper Ma'ariv on Wednesday reported that Likud leader Benjamin Netanyahu told an audience at Bar Ilan university that the September 11, 2001 terror attacks had been beneficial for Israel.

"We are benefiting from one thing, and that is the attack on the Twin Towers and Pentagon, and the American struggle in Iraq," Ma'ariv quoted the former prime minister as saying. He reportedly added that these events "swung American public opinion in our favor."

Deadlocked jury forces 2nd mistrial in Miami terrorism case

A federal judge has declared another mistrial against six men accused of plotting to spark an anti-government war by toppling Chicago's Sears Tower and bombing FBI offices.

As world watches Tibet, China's Muslim Uighurs face growing repression

Almost unnoticed amid the wide-scale protests by Tibetans over the past month is the social unrest among the 8 million or so Muslim Uighurs in China's resource-rich far western territory.

Recently, hundreds of Muslim women in black veils gathered outside the market in this oasis city in an impromptu protest. Some carried signs demanding an independent state.

Ahmadinejad casts doubts on Sept. 11 attack

Iran's hard-line President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad cast doubt Wednesday over the U.S. version of the Sept. 11 attacks, calling it a pretext used to invade Afghanistan and Iraq.

Although Iran has condemned the 2001 al-Qaida attacks on New York and Washington in the past, this was the third time in a week that Ahmadinejad questioned the death toll, who was behind the attacks and how it happened.

Brigitte Bardot on trial for Muslim slur

French former film star Brigitte Bardot went on trial on Tuesday for insulting Muslims, the fifth time she has faced the charge of "inciting racial hatred" over her controversial remarks about Islam and its followers.

Iraqi unit flees post, despite American’s plea

A company of Iraqi soldiers abandoned their positions on Tuesday night in Sadr City, defying American soldiers who implored them to hold the line against Shiite militias.

Opposition figures sentenced to prison in Egypt

An Egyptian military court on Tuesday convicted 25 key members of Egypt's largest opposition group and sentenced them to up to 10 years in prison, a security official said.

The charges against the Muslim Brotherhood members included money laundering and terrorism, and 15 defendants were acquitted, the official said. Some of those convicted were tried in absentia.

Fishing returns to Saddam's palaces—with a different cast

The Baghdad Angler's Club and School of Flyfishing hold their regular meetings on the various former homes of Saddam in the Iraqi capital every Sunday, although these are sometimes interrupted by mortar and rocket fire.

The members are US and British military and officials, and occasionally the few foreign journalists that are still left in Iraq.

New lobby seeks to redefine 'pro-Israel'

A new group of prominent U.S. Jews who believe that the so-called "Israel Lobby" has been dominated for too long by neoconservatives and other Likud-oriented hawks has launched a new organization to help fund political candidates who favor a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and a stronger U.S. role in achieving it.

Palestinians versus Tibetans—a double standard

Western coalition unravelling under pressure from resistance in Afghanistan

General James Jones, who served as NATO supreme commander until 2006, has admitted that the alliance is not winning in Afghanistan. "Make no mistake, NATO is not winning in Afghanistan," a report by the Atlantic Council of the United States, chaired by the retired general, said last month. This was preceded in late February by a grim assessment by Mike McConnell, the US National Intelligence Director, to a Congressional hearing that President Hamid Karzai's government controls a mere 30 percent of the country.

New government confirmed in Pakistan, as US interests remain dominant

If the deposed judges are restored, as the parliamentarians have vowed to do within 30 days of convening of parliament, then Musharraf’s chances of remaining in power will diminish even further. He has a C-130 plane ready at the military airbase at Chaklala (Islamabad) to take him and his family into exile in Turkey, where he has built a huge mansion for himself.

Democrats blast Mukasey for 9/11 call remarks

The big African oil grab

Equatorial Guinea sits at the heart of a deepwater corner of the Atlantic Ocean that is of growing interest to governments from Washington to Beijing. For the US, the Gulf of Guinea is the linchpin of growing sub-Saharan African oil production. Not only is it a bulwark against the troubles in the Middle East, it is also forecast to provide a quarter of US crude oil imports by 2010. China and other emerging economic powers also see an opportunity to muscle in, attracted by promises of big infrastructure projects and a relationship that is free of the colonial baggage carried by westerners in Africa.

Rise in food prices cause backlash against biofuels

Biofuels are fast becoming a new flash point in global diplomacy, putting pressure on Western politicians to reconsider their policies, even as they argue that biofuels are only one factor in the seemingly inexorable rise in food prices.

In some countries, the higher prices are leading to riots, political instability and growing worries about feeding the poorest people.

The Iraq wars

Iraq is embroiled in three separate civil wars, only one of which has involved US troops in a significant way. These three conflicts have generated most of the country's violence.

US, Iraq far apart on security pacts

Iraqi officials familiar with the discussions said significant differences exist on the major issues of immunity for U.S. personnel and contractors, authority to order raids and attacks and detention of people believed a threat to security.

Putin agrees to head Russia's biggest party

Views on money for Iraq war, and what else could be done with it

With long-term estimates of the cost of the Iraq war ranging from $1 trillion to $3 trillion or more, the question naturally arises of what else the country could have done with the money.

Financial collapse will end the war

The US Military has won every battle it has fought in Iraq, but it has lost the war. Wars are won politically, not militarily. Bush doesn't understand this. He still clings to the belief that a political settlement can be imposed through force.

Rod Parsley on Islam

William Franklin Graham famously called Islam a wicked and evil religion, but I don't think he called for its extinction through violence, as in war. Colorado congressman Tom Tancredo, a wild politician, did call for the bombing of Mecca to shatter the Muslim center. Now, Parsley—as in Rod Parsley—is the flavor of the month among the controversial clergy being spotlighted in the camps of the three presidential campaigners. Parsley, pastor of Ohio's mega-est megachurch, twelve-thousand-member World Harvest Church in Columbus, calls for "destroying" Islam.

Arab world sees U.S. in poor light, poll shows

Eight out of 10 Arabs have an unfavorable view of the United States and only six percent believe the U.S. troop build-up in Iraq in the last year has worked, said a poll of six Arab countries released on Monday.

The poll by the University of Maryland and Zogby International, also found most Arabs did not see U.S. foe Iran as a threat and they sympathized more with Hamas in the Palestinian Territories than U.S.-backed Fatah.

India learns its oil lessons

India's quest for energy security received a boost last week with its oil diplomacy paying off to varying degrees on more than one continent. In South America, India signed a deal allowing it to participate in a joint venture to drill oil and gas in Venezuela, while in Central Asia, the door was pried open for Indian companies to invest in projects in Turkmenistan. In the same period, New Delhi's wooing of Africa's oil-rich nations moved into top gear as it played host to the first India-Africa summit.

Military personnel account for 20% of US suicides

US and Iran holding 'secret' talks on nuclear programme

Iran and the United States have been engaged in secret "back channel" discussions for the past five years on Iran's nuclear programme and the broader relationship between the two sworn enemies, The Independent can reveal.

Hizbullah: Has Israel met its match?

Warlord: The rise of Muqtada al-Sadr

Historic China-Taiwan talks held

China's President Hu Jintao has held a historic meeting with Taiwan's Vice-President-elect, Vincent Siew.

It was the highest-level contact between the two governments since their post-civil war split in 1949.

Why China is the REAL master of the universe

Napoleon III compared China to a sleeping giant and warned: "When China awakes, she will shake the world."

After a long hibernation, China, and her 1.3 billion people—twice the population of the U.S. and EU combined—is awaking almost overnight.

And not just China. The world's second most populous country, India, is industrialising at a historically unprecedented pace.

Their economies are growing on a long-term basis about four times the speed of the UK's and that of the United States.

What is happening is so extraordinary that economists have had to invent a new word for it—this is not an economic cycle, but a supercycle, a shift in the world economy of historic proportions.

Kenya rival to lead power-sharing cabinet

Kenya's President Mwai Kibaki named political rival Raila Odinga as head of a power-sharing cabinet on Sunday, ending weeks of impasse that threatened to undermine economic recovery after a deadly post-election crisis.

Audit finds 100,000 UN books destroyed

For more than two decades, 250 historians and specialists labored to produce the first six volumes of the General History of Latin America, an exhaustive work financed by UNESCO, the United Nations organization created to preserve global culture and heritage.

Then, over the course of two years, UNESCO paid to destroy many of those books and nearly 100,000 others by turning them to pulp, according to an external audit.

Deadly blast strikes Iran mosque

At least 12 people have been killed and 160 wounded in an explosion at a mosque in southern Iran, local media reported.

Zion raid: The ranch has not yet revealed all its secrets

It began with a panicked phone call from a 16-year-old girl, speaking from deep inside one of America's weirdest and most secretive religious compounds. She was, she said, a 16-year-old who had been forced into marriage a year ago with a 49-year-old man – a member of a fundamentalist Mormon sect practising an extreme form of plural marriage – who beat her, held her against her will and had now impregnated her with her second child.

Surprise lead for Maoists spells end of the line for Nepal's King

Darfur crisis draws Chad and Sudan toward deeper conflict

This borderline, drawn by Europeans in the 19th century, has so little relevance that the fighters camped out here, some of them just boys, cannot say for sure whether they are in Sudan or Chad. And yet they sit on a deadly tinderbox, foot soldiers in a proxy war involving two of Africa's most divided and unstable nations. Caught between them are more than two million of the world's most vulnerable people.

World Bank to meet as rising food prices spark unrest

Handbook promoting Jews on campus

Iraqis pay? The arrogance of the U.S.

The war ended with the toppling of Saddam's statue, the Iraqis want them out, and now the occupiers, having destroyed much of Iraq, have the arrogance to ask Iraqis to pay for the occupation and reconstruction.

The Iraq war began with lies—weapons of mass destruction, mushroom cloud, Al Qaeda, and it ended with more lies.

The very annoying Washington Post

One of the many annoyances about living in George W. Bush’s Washington is to read the commentaries about the Iraq War on the editorial pages of the Washington Post. Possibly never in modern times has a major newspaper been more wrong, more consistently with more arrogance than has the Post on this vital issue.

Lessons for America from China

The Tibetan riots have been a golden opportunity for China's sclerotic Communist Party leadership, which has been feeling growing pressure to open up the political system, but which can now ride a wave of unthinking nationalism and push those democratic pressures aside, at least for a time (much as 9-11 allowed Bush and Cheney to do the same to democratic traditions and the rule of law in the US).

The 2008 Olympics set for Beijing, which many Chinese democrats had hoped would force China to open up space for them, thanks to the wave of western tourists and journalists and all the global media attention that they would bring to the country, will now be held under tight police guard on the largely trumped-up excuse of threats of Tibetan terrorism.

There is a lesson here for America, though I doubt that the policymakers in Washington are of a mind to take it. That lesson applies to Iran.

Report: Iran says Gulf encounter with US not confrontational

US edges closer to engaging Iran

Washington confirms that Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is heading for the Middle East to attend an international conference regarding the Iraq situation, in Kuwait on April 22. This will be no ordinary run-of-the-mill international conference. It's about Iraq.

Dalai Lama does not support Olympics boycott

It's occupation, not war

The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan ended some years ago. In Iraq, the war ended with the fall of Saddam Hussein's government; in Afghanistan, with the fall of the Taliban government. What's been happening since is occupation and resistance to occupation.

. . . You can end an occupation without either winning or losing. You just withdraw your troops.

Muslim depicts 'violent' Christianity

A Saudi man has created a riposte to films criticising Islam in a video which portrays Christianity as a religion of violence.

The film, entitled Schism, was made by Raed al-Saeed. It splices together Bible verses and Iraq war images - including British soldiers beating civilians.

Other images show Christian extremists in America apparently encouraging children to fight a "war" for Jesus.

Olympics: 'Asia must rally behind China'

US lawmakers 'have financial interests' in America's wars

Members of Congress invested nearly $196 million of their own money in companies that receive hundreds of millions of dollars a day from Pentagon contracts to provide goods and services to US armed forces, say nonpartisan watchdog groups.

Khalil regrets toppling statue of Saddam

Ibrahim Khalil, who five years ago took part in the iconic toppling of a giant statue of Saddam Hussein in central Baghdad, said on Wednesday he now regrets taking part in the hugely symbolic event.

"If history can take me back, I will kiss the statue of Saddam Hussein which I helped pull down," Khalil told reporters on the fifth anniversary of the statue's toppling.

Cash, contracts and crown princes

Evidence of an allegedly corrupt relationship between BAE and the Saudi royal family began to emerge four years ago. Using documents obtained from whistleblowers and files in the National Archives, the Guardian began to build a picture of an arms company willing to provide anything from fleets of Rolls-Royces to mountains of offshore cash in order to promote lucrative deals with the Saudi regime.

Former president Carter to meet with Hamas chief

Former president Jimmy Carter plans to meet next week in Damascus with Khaled Meshal, the head of the Palestinian militant group Hamas, in a direct rebuke of the Bush administration's campaign to isolate it.

Telecom whistleblower discovers circuit that allows access to all systems on wireless carrier—phone calls, text messages, emails

Babak Pasdar is a computer security expert who was hired in 2003 to help restructure the tech infrastructure at a major wireless telecommunications company. What he found shocked him. The company had set up a system that gave a third party, presumably a governmental entity, access to every communication coming through that company’s infrastructure. This means every email, internet use, document transmission, video, text message, as well as the ability to listen to and record any phone call.

Washington lobbying sets record in 2007

Corporations, unions and other interests spent a record-setting $2.79 billion in 2007 on lobbying Washington officials for favorable policies, said a study from a watchdog group released on Thursday.

The Center for Responsive Politics said spending in 2007 eclipsed the previous record in 2006 by $200 million, with health care interests, Wall Street, the real estate industry and insurers among the biggest spenders.

US edges closer to engaging Iran

Iran has condemned attacks on the Green Zone in Baghdad, distancing itself from provocative acts against the United States, while also downplaying Israel's massive military exercises. This comes as Tehran acknowledges the receipt of an official Washington suggestion for a next round of talks on Iraq. With the US position eroding fast in Iraq, there is a strong sense the George W Bush administration is taking the plunge for unconditional talks with Iran.

How German intelligence helped justify the US invasion of Iraq

Five years ago, the US government presented what it said was proof that Iraq harbored biological weapons. The information came from a source developed by German intelligence -- and it turned out to be disastrously wrong. But to this day, Germany denies any responsibility. . . .

The man's codename is "Curveball." And in an earlier life, he played a crucial role in the geo-politics at the beginning of this decade: He was the man who provided vital "evidence" that ultimately contributed to the invasion of Iraq by the United States and its allies. But that role has since turned into his greatest problem: Everything he claimed to know about Iraq's weapons program, all the proof he presented, was fabricated.

Petraeus points to war with Iran

Ever since President Nouri al-Maliki ordered the attacks in Basra on the Mahdi Army, Gen. David Petraeus has been laying the predicate for U.S. air strikes on Iran and a wider war in the Middle East.

Iran, Petraeus told the Senate Armed Services Committee, has "fueled the recent violence in a particularly damaging way through its lethal support of the special groups."

Ugandan rebel leader fails to sign peace deal

Efforts to end one of Africa's longest and most brutal wars today appeared in danger of collapse after a Ugandan rebel leader failed to attend the signing of a peace agreement.

Joseph Kony, the leader of the Lord's Resistance army (LRA), did not appear at an agreed spot near Ri-Kwanga, on the remote and thickly-wooded Sudan-Congo border, yesterday.

Iraq's local elections could reshape power structure

Iraq's provincial elections will be the battleground for a fierce power struggle among sectarian and ethnic parties that could redraw the country's political map. . . .

The results will provide early clues on how parties will fare in parliamentary elections scheduled for 2009 -- polls that will determine if Shi'ite Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki retains power or another leader takes his place.

Concern about Iran is mounting

The regime in Tehran has a choice to make," Bush said. It can enjoy close ties with its neighbor or continue "to arm and train and fund illegal militant groups, which are terrorizing the Iraqi people and turning them against Iran."

"If Iran makes the wrong choice, America will act to protect our interests and our troops and our Iraqi partners," he said.