The Karzai Brothers and Top Level Corruption in Afghanistan

“[Afghan President] Hamid Karzai is under a lot of pressure right now,” says Mahmoud Saiqal, a former deputy foreign minister who served as a diplomat for several years under President Karzai. President Karzai has faced a drumbeat of criticism from Western governments urging the Afghan government to crack down on corruption. One of the Afghan […]

UN fact-finding mission: Israelis executed American citizen

The report of the fact-finding mission of the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) on the Israeli attack on the Gaza flotilla shows conclusively that US citizen Furkan Dogan and five Turkish citizens were murdered execution-style by Israeli commandos. The report reveals that Dogan, a 19-year-old US citizen of Turkish descent, […]

Ahistorical Approach to Addressing the Israeli-Palestinian conflict

Like almost every President since John Kennedy, Barack Obama is trying his hand at cutting the Gordian Knot and drinking the sea dry. That is he is trying his hand at making peace between Israel and Palestine. Will he succeed where all others have failed? Not likely, since his approach is ahistorical and, at least […]

So am I now an activist for caring about my grandchildren’s future?

“How did you become an activist?” I was surprised by the question. I never considered myself an activist. I was about to protest the characterization. How had I been sucked into being an “activist?” What had become clear was that our planet is close to climate tipping points. Ice is melting in the Arctic, Greenland […]

Surge in contractor deaths in Iraq and Afghanistan

The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are the most privatized in American military history. Today, there are 150,000 troops in Afghanistan and Iraq. As of March 2010, there were more than 200,000 private contractors, though that number is believed to have declined since. In any case, more private contractors than soldiers were killed in Iraq […]

President Ahmadinejad’s UN speech touched on 9/11

Excerpts of an article by Gordon Duff, Vietnam veteran, and Senior Editor at Veterans Today: Iranian President Ahmadinejad announced, before the United Nations that most people in the world believe that the U.S. government was involved in the planning and execution of the 9/11 attacks. Representatives of 27 governments walked out on Ahmadinejad’s speech. What […]

UN report condemns Israel for Gaza flotilla killings

A UN report, compiled by three United Nations appointed human rights experts, determines that Israeli forces violated international law when they raided a Gaza-bound aid flotilla, killing nine activists, earlier this year. The UN Human Rights Council’s fact-finding mission concluded that Israel’s naval blockade of the Palestinian territory was unlawful because of the humanitarian crisis […]

Doing the math – 100 million Americans living in poverty

The shocking new poverty statistics from the Census Bureau indicate that a record 43.6 million Americans lived in poverty in 2009. However, there is reason to believe this Census figure drastically undercounts this demographic. The 2008 Census total stated that 39.8 million Americans lived in poverty. But the National Academy of Science did its own study and […]

Moody’s Dim Forecast for Housing and the Economy

The analysts at Moody’s Investors Service are downbeat in their outlook for both the U.S. economy and the housing market, warning that there’s a stronger chance the country will slide back into a recession, and they are forecasting a “longer and deeper housing correction.” Mark Zandi, chief economist for Moody’s Analytics, says the U.S. recovery has lost […]

Simon Wiesenthal Center to be built on Muslim cemetery

A coalition of four Jewish groups, backed by a wide array of peace and justice organizations, held a demonstration outside the Simon Wiesenthal Center’s Museum of Tolerance in New York, denouncing the organization’s opposition to the Islamic community center in lower Manhattan. Demonstrators walked in front of the museum in midtown Manhattan, chanting “Islamophobia isn’t pretty, it […]