The Sunday Times of London is reporting that the Pentagon has plans for three days of massive air strikes against 1,200 targets in Iran . Last week, Alexis Debat, director of terrorism and national security at the Nixon Center , told a meeting of...World
Blaming Islam for the lack of democratic and scientific developments in Muslim countries is not a new idea but an old enterprise, rooted in the nineteenth and twentieth century European Orientalism. The late Edward Said succeeded, in the 1980s, in unmasking Orientalist notions within Western academia and exposing its false pretense. In...
When Canada spent $100 million to rescue Lebanese-Canadians from the war between Israel and Hizbullah last year, some Canadians reacted by accusing these people of being fair weather—or, rather, ill weather—Canadians. As former Immigration Minister Montel Solberg put it, “Canadians want to know that citizenship means something, that we...World
The American government has approached Canada on several occasions with a request to admit 17 Ugyhurs being held in Guantanamo. Canada is reluctant to grant this strange request. Obviously, the U.S. has decided that they are not terrorists and not a danger. Yet, it refuses to admit them to the United States and continues to imprison the...
When the British University and College Union voted to promote a boycott of Israeli universities, critics hit back with a firm defense of academic freedom. Lee Bollinger, president of Columbia University, found the very idea of the boycott to be �utterly antithetical to fundamental values of the academy.� Such an action, he said,...World
BAGHDAD (IPS) — Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's increasing ties with Iran have triggered a splintering of his government.
Several groups, both Sunni and Shi'a, have followed the Sunni al-Tawafuq bloc (Iraqi Accord Front) in quitting the U.S.-backed government. But Maliki refuses to make the concessions necessary to bring his...
WASHINGTON (IPS) — The White House's decision to designate the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps as a terrorist organization could deal a double blow to efforts to utilize diplomacy with Iran to stabilize Iraq.
Not only does the designation risk undermining the important yet limited talks between the United States and Iran in Baghdad,...World
The logic that defends past nuclear atrocities is now used to support a strike against Iran
It is appalling, if unsurprising, to read the neoconservative cheerleader Oliver Kamm arguing in these pages that the atomic bombs that devastated Hiroshima and Nagasaki 62 years ago saved lives and ended suffering. The subtext is plain. The...
WASHINGTON (IPS) — As U.S. and Iranian diplomats met in Baghdad thisweek for a second round of talks on Iraq, the domestic U.S. political climate appears decidedly more supportive of an aggressive U.S. posture toward Iran than just a few months ago, reflecting the apparent triumph the George W. Bush administration's narrative on Iran's...World
BRUSSELS (IPS) — The European Union's foreign policy supremo Javier Solana this week declared himself "fully behind" the call for an international conference on the Middle East made recently by U.S. President George W. Bush. But is it time for the E.U. to cease being guided on the Israeli-Palestinian question by the United States, which...
Iran's President AhmadinejadsThe release of the 15 British naval personnel this week should not be seen solely within the context of the U.N. sanctions placed on Iran or the tough rhetoric from President George Bush and Prime Minister Tony Blair. Neither should it be attributed to Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's claim of doing...
April 4th, 20070TEHRAN (IPS) — Whether or not the 15 British Royal Marines in Iranian custody actually trespassed into the country's territorial waters, the incident has provided Tehran with an opportunity to build up an image of a peaceful, non-aggressive nation set upon by Western predators.
''Tensions between Iran and the West are running quite...
