Submissions, comments, compliments, questions, concerns, and criticisms regarding Scoop's comment section are welcomed, and can be directed to david[at]scoop.co.nz.

Gordon Campbell: Risk Free Tax! - On current indications the Buckle Tax review will provide the final draft of their recommendations to the government just before Christmas – to enable it to digest the content – and then release the document to the public during the... More >>

Binoy Kampmark: The Conviction of ‘Foxy Knoxy’ - It has been a sordid tale, enrapturing audiences in Italy and globally. The murder of 21-year-old British student Meredith Kercher, who was found with her throat slit in her Perugia apartment in November 2007 after being sexually assaulted, continues... More >>

Stateside With Rosalea: Stop! Water Thief! - When California’s Governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger, travels to Copenhagen this week to participate in Subnational Day at the UN Climate Change Conference, he and his support staff may be doing so at the expense of a wealthy business owner who contributes... More >>

Gordon Campbell: China’s Role In Our Problems With P - Media coverage of the battle against P has tended to focus on the role of Maori gangs in the P trade. Yet most of the intercepts of the pseudoephedrine precursor to P that were being touted by John Key at his press conference yesterday... More >>

ALSO:
• Scoop Audio - John Key on "P" and Unemployment

Copenhagen: Fourteen days to seal history's judgment on this generation - Today 56 newspapers in 45 countries take the unprecedented step of speaking with one voice through a common editorial. We do so because humanity faces a profound emergency. More >>

• Cartoon by Malcolm Evans

The Celebration Went Unnoticed: A Major Leftist Win in Uruguay
- Uruguay's left wing political coalition, the Broad Front party ( Frente Amplio ), retained control of the presidency in the November elections. This wasn't just any election. More >>

The "Ethical Interrogation": The Myth of Michael Gelles and the al-Qahtani Interrogation - Several public accounts of abusive interrogations at Guantanamo have praised psychologist Dr. Michael Gelles for his opposition to these abuses. Similarly, the American Psychological Association (APA) has repeatedly pointed to actions of Dr. Gelles to instantiate... More >>

Anyone for table-tennis? A double fault for the Cuban Five... - Tomorrow Fernando Gonzalez and Ramon Labanino will grace the Miami court with their presence once again - for yet another re-sentencing by a judge more renowned for her grotesquely inconsistent rulings than for the administration of justice. More >>

The Height of Kitsch: Germany’s love for Israel - IT WOULD have been the epitome of political kitsch. Binyamin Netanyahu and ten of his ministers were to hold a joint meeting with Angela Merkel and ten members of the German cabinet. What for? To demonstrate Germany’s love for Israel... More >>

"Imagining 2020": An invitation to write about what a low carbon future looks like for you - "Imagining 2020" is an online discussion where people are invited to write about how a low-carbon future will affect their individual circumstances. The idea is to provide a platform that considers the impacts of economic transformation on each sector in the NZ economy. Write to us telling us what you think a low-carbon future will look like for you personally, for the country and world. Your ideas will be compiled and then published. More on how to contribute.

Responses:

• #4 - Green Crude by Pete Fowler
• #3 - Dave McArthur: Imagineer
• #2 - Gareth Morgan and John McCrystal: Low Carbon Future? Bah! Humbug!
• #1 - Climate Defence Network: The Age Of Smart

Transgressing With Tiger: The Fall Of Mr. Perfect - It has been called the spoiling of a good walk and similar to watching flies fornicate, but golf has decided to provide a touch of entertainment for the rest of us. And it should come as little surprise that it has nothing to do with golf itself... More >>

Martha Rosenberg: Fish Killed, Waterways Poisoned by State Agency... for No Reason - It's been a year since the Illinois Department of Natural Resources poisoned all the fish in Lincoln Park's South Pond to ''restore'' the water body into a ''model Illinois freshwater habitat.'' Most of the world was watching the events a mile away in Grant... More >>

John Chuckman: A response to Hillary Clinton’s assertion that all nations should play a part in the Afghanistan mission - Hillary Clinton, in a just-published piece on the Afghanistan mission (see note at bottom), offers us nothing helpful or enlightening, only boiler-plate American slogans, the kind of stuff you’d hear from some provincial Congressman giving a Fourth of ... More >>

Transcripts:

• Message to People of Afghanistan
• Message to People of Pakistan
• Remarks At Press Conference at NATO Headquarters

Michael Collins: What Obama Said and Failed to Say About Afghanistan - It is easy to forget that when this war began, we were united — bound together by the fresh memory of a horrific attack, and by the determination to defend our homeland and the values we hold dear. I refuse to accept the notion that we cannot ... More >>

ALSO:
• Read the Speech
• Binoy Kampmark - The charge of the 30,000
• Jason Leopold - Obama Invokes 9/11 to Explain Afghanistan Troop Surge
• Martin LeFevre - Barack Loses His Base
• Connie Lawn - Obama’s War in Afghanistan and Pakistan

M. Shahid Alam: Native Orientalists at the Daily Times, Pakistan - A few days back, I received a ‘Dear friends’ email from Mr. Najam Sethi, ex editor-in-chief of Daily Times, Pakistan, announcing that he, together with several of his colleagues, had resigned from their positions in the newspaper... More >>

Binoy Kampmark: Banning Minarets In Switzerland - The Swiss are in a spot of bother, at least before the disapproving eyes of international opinion. 57 percent of those from a country described by Jonathan Raban as full of phobic hand washers in a Barclays Bank have voted in favour of banning minarets... More >>

Gordon Campbell: Rugby World Cup Public Funding - In any other industry, the taxpayer/ratepayer subsidies being offered to the professional rugby industry for its World Cup event in 2011 would be being slagged off as government handouts. Surely, no other business gets its premises built and budgeted losses covered ... More >>

Fiji’s Budget 2010: The Great Cover-Up - This 2010 Budget would have been outrageously scandalous had it been delivered by an elected Minister of Finance, assisted by a Permanent Secretary of Finance appointed normally by the Public Service Commission, and a lawfully appointed Attorney General... More >>

Julie Webb-Pullman: Honduran Elections - What's in a Majority - Itś official - Pepe Lobo of the National Party won 56% of the vote. The fact that this represents 56% of the lowest turnout ever, is a fact being glossed over by the majoprity of the international corporate media, in their indecent haste to present ... More >>

Copenhagen: Climate impact on Pacific’s island people to be asserted - While New Zealand’s prime minister John Key hesitated over whether he ought to attend the Copenhagen leaders’ summit meeting on climate change, finally deciding it is worthwhile today, other leaders from the region have been... More >>

Gordon Campbell: Margaret Bazley’s attacks on legal aid - The ‘gone by lunchtime’ response to legal aid that the Key government has chosen to adopt in the wake of Margaret Bazley report needs to be stopped - and not only because Bazley has been willing to make sweeping condemnations of the lawyers involved... More >>

Jim Miles: Imperial Inertia - The task of saving and reviving humanity oft times appears overwhelming when studied from a fully global perspective: occupations, wars, and terror abounds; starvation, disease, poverty, homelessness, accompany the wars and are also an integral part... More >>

Uri Avnery: "...And A Little Child Shall Lead Them" - THOMAS FRIEDMAN, the New York Times columnist, has an idea. That happens to him quite often. One might almost say - too often It goes like this: The US will turn its back on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The entire world will follow. Everybody is fed ... More >>

Valerie Morse: The Privatision Of Prisons Threatens Justice - The passage of the Corrections (Contract Management of Prisons) Amendment Bill this week is a disaster for anyone concerned about a safer, more humane and just society. It represents nothing less than a return to the age of human slavery. Private prisons... More >>

Sherwood Ross: Obama Never Considered Diplomacy In Afghanistan - After initially injecting 21,000 troops into Afghanistan allegedly to stave off imminent defeat, President Obama Tuesday will tell war-weary Americans why he seeks 35,000 more. If he gets them, the U.S. force there will exceed 100,000. Washington has been... More >>

Martin LeFevre: The Collapse Of Communism and Capitalism, Part 2 - Someone from a Baptist Church in Kansas sent me a nasty, Muslim-hating mass mailing in reaction to my last column. It goes to show that people can proclaim a belief in God and still be godless, which has nothing to do with belief (or deity for that ... More >>

ALSO:

• Martin LeFevre - The Collapse of Communism and Capitalism

"Take Your Medicine": Kids Brochures Embarrass British Health Service - ''Your medicine is called Olanzapine. Pronounced 'o-lan-za-peen,''' says the lime green kids' brochure for the antipsychotic Zyprexa, published by Britain's National Health Service (NHS). ''Many children, teenagers and young people need to take medicines ... More >>

Jeff Farias Show: Altenberg 16 - Evolution Exposé - Jeff Farias is a musician and host of Phoenix progressive talk radio's The Jeff Farias Show. Jeff's music is as rich and edgy as his conversation. His interview with author Suzan Mazur follows... More >>

Gordon Campbell: Using kids as guinea pigs for ideological reasons - Over the past 30 years, the public has regularly been treated as laboratory rats for this or that ideological hobby horse of government. Crash on through and pick up the pieces later is the Kiwi style of management, possibly because those in power... More >>

Stateside With Rosalea Barker: Florida - The DK State-by-State Atlas puts it this way: “In 1513, Juan Ponce de Leon sailed to the region during Spain’s spring holiday, Pascua Florida, the Feast of the Flowers. He came ashore and named the land La Florida in honor of the holiday.” Most people... More >>

The Evil That Remains: Apologising For The Past - Repentance hangs thickly in the air, at least when it comes to some institutions and government authorities. The late Jacques Derrida noted near the end of his life that the world was bearing witness to a ‘proliferation of scenes of repentance... More >>

Martin LeFevre: The Collapse Of Communism And Capitalism - It’s worth reflecting, now that all the hollow reminiscing and disgusting triumphalism is over, on the collapse of communism 20 years ago. America is finally waking up to the fact that we have collapsed as well. More >>

Scoop Audio: The 9/11 Story Challenged at Te Papa - American architect Richard Gage addressed a captivated audience of around at Te Papa's Soundings Theatre on Saturday. He presented evidence calling into question the official version of the events which led to the destruction of the World Trade Center buildings in New York eight years ago. More>>

ALSO:

• Wellington.Scoop - 9/11 conspiracy theorists at Te Papa
• Out-Link - Bat, Bean, Beam: Truth Comes to Aotearoa
• Out-Link - All Embracing But Underwhelming: Hello, Truthers!

Move over Michael Moore: Here comes ‘TEA PARTY - The Documentary’ - “It began as a ripple; an online whisper; a grassroots awakening to a new threat on freedom. … Lady Liberty faces her newest challenge and across this great nation a new generation of patriots stands ready for her defense. … They were ignored... More >>

Richard S. Ehrlich: Thai Military Wants U.S. Satellites to Hunt Islamist Rebels - BANGKOK, Thailand -- Thailand's military wants the U.S. to provide satellite equipment and imagery so it can hunt thousands of Islamist separatists who are killing Thai troops and civilians with hidden roadside bombs in the south. More >>

Binoy Kampmark: The Sporting Trial Of Thierry Henry

That much air time, and column space, is being given to this issue might be seen as worrying. But football matches have a habit of transfixing global audiences. No sport attracts more money or tribal interest. The largest sporting event on the planet... More >>

Electronic Voting: NY-23 E-Vote Failures Merit Full Hand-Count in Response - John Conklin, the Director of Public Information for New York State's Board of Elections has now issued a statement in response to the Gouverneur Times' article by Nathan Barker last week, alleging a ''VIRUS in the VOTING MACHINES'' [ caps in original headline ... More >>

ALSO:

• Brad Friedman - NY-23 and the E-Voting 'Virus'
• Voting News - NY-23 election questions

John Minto: Hone Harawira - Speaking Truth To Power - John Minto writes: None of this should need to be said but the reaction of so many to Harawira's angry email resembles the deeply embedded racism which Don Brash tapped into so successfully a few years back at Orewa. More >>

Damien Baker: Profits Mask Food Shortages in a Land of Plenty - The petroleum industry arrived in the Lake Kutubu area, around 20 years ago with Chevron and BP and soon the delicate ecological balance often in play in remote areas began to shift. More >>

The Israeli Exception: Gilo And East Jerusalem - In 1987, the conservative author Midge Decter described her association with Israel and those willing to place it above conventional judgment. ‘We know ourselves to be bound by ties so deep, so essential, so unconditional, that they are beyond daylight... More >>

Gordon Campbell: The 9/11 Terrorists On Trial
For years, human rights advocates have argued that terrorism is essentially criminal behaviour, and terrorists should therefore be tried under the rules of due process that democratic states have developed over centuries for dealing fairly with crime... More >>

Also:

• Michael Winship - New York's Tough Enough for Terrorist Trials
• William Fisher - Military Tribunals - Justice Lite?

Paul Buchanan: The Strategic Utility of Terrorism (and why jihadism is losing) - A Word From Afar: Paul Buchanan writes: One of the axioms of counter-terrorism is that the nastiness of the atrocity is inversely proportional to the terrorist’s chances of success. That is to say, the worse the act, then less likely that terrorist... More >>

East Timor: The Role Of Journalists In The Freedom Struggle - The struggle for justice is not a contest between Indonesians and non-Indonesians. Rather, it is a contest between those around the world who want to justice to prevail and those who want to see impunity prevail... More >>

Globalization Unchecked: How Alien Media is Suffocating Real Culture - A Muslim family sits across of me in café, in a largely Muslim Asia country. An older woman shyly hunches over and desperately trying to avoid eye contact with the giant plasma screen TV, blazing loud music on the popular music video channel, MTV. ... More >>

Martin LeFevre: Falling Leaves, and Squirrels - One is so accustomed to seeing the gray squirrels in the parkland leap from branch to branch with perfect dexterity that it came as quite a shock to see one miss his mark and fall into the creek. More >>

Harvey Wasserman: For Obama it's one (term) if by war, two if by peace - As the world awaits Barack Obama's decision on Afghanistan, a lethal myth has spread. It says that standing up to the military will doom him to be a single-term president. More >>

Aung San Suu Kyi, Omar Khadr, and Barack Obama: A dreadful tale of what America has become - During his trip to Asia, President Obama called for the government of Burma to release Aung San Suu Kyi, a noted dissident who has spent years under house arrest. It made headlines, a fact which tells us more about the role of media as an outlet for government ... More >>

Connie Lawn: US President Barack Obama Talks New Zealand Defence & Trade With Scoop
- President Obama has provided positive answers to a number of questions about New Zealand. Scoop's White House reporter, Connie Lawn, posed the questions a few weeks ago. She had been hoping to get an interview with the President, before... More >>

Gordon Campbell: The Selective Targeting Of Beenie Man - Reportedly, Big Day Out organizers have backed down from their original intention to include the Jamaican dancehall musician Beenie Man in the next BDO festival line-up in January. The reason has been the public pressure from gay activists who have been ... More >>

Dave Cohen: The Oil Situation Is Really Bad - On the eve of the International Energy Agency’s release of its annual World Energy Outlook (WEO), a whistleblower at the IEA claims the agency “has been deliberately underplaying a looming [oil] shortage for fear of triggering panic buying” in the... More >>

Franklin Lamb: Lebanese Students Advise President Obama How To Get It Right - If those in Lebanon watching the news on 11/12/09 blinked they might have missed an interesting news item. It appeared at approximately 4:20 pm on Narharnet.com , the pro-US/Saudi news website. More >>

How We Got To Zero: General Eikenberry's Hail Mary - WASHINGTON -- The United States ambassador to Afghanistan, who once served as the top American military commander there, has expressed in writing his reservations about deploying additional troops to the country, three senior American officials ... More >>

Uri Avnery: Scoundrel With Permission - This means that no war has broken out, no suicide bomb has exploded, no Qassam rocket has been launched at Sderot. Ahmadinejad has not test-fired a new missile that can reach Tel Aviv. Just another murder. Not that Israel is the world’s murder capital. ... More >>

The Sensuous Revolt: An Education - Sixteen-year old Jenny (Carey Mulligan) is predictably impressionable. Intelligence and the odd cutting remark might equip her for the classroom joust and parents in suburban Twickenham. But she has much growing up to do, something which is given ... More >>

Stateside: Veterans Day, 2009 - On the bus on the way home from the movie I went to this afternoon, I asked the person sitting next to me if there was an LP by Boston among all the records I could see in his shopping bag, and which he had been trying to unsuccessfully sell to a second-hand ... More >>

Lyndon Hood: ETS Amendment Submission - The most notable change brought about by this bill would be giving polluters, to 2050, one hundred billion dollars. I am right behind that idea, but the proposed system for delivering the money is unnecessarily complicated. More >>

Hide and Seek: The Truth About Rodney and Roger - There's a wonderful column by Rosemary McLeod in the Dom-Post this morning (12 November). She skewers the grotesqueries of Rodney Hide's apparently bizarre behaviour beautifully. But even Rosemary has missed something important about this whole affair. More >>

Related:

• Adrian Maidment - Cartoon: Rodney Hide at the Airport

Gordon Campbell: Obama’s Latest Surrender To Israel - President Barack Obama’s single most important foreign policy decision during 2009 has been his recent backdown over requiring Israel to abandon the building of settlements in the occupied territories. Beforehand, this was to be a precondition for peace... More >>

Tearing Down Walls: Berlin Twenty Years After - Twenty years have passed since a vision collapsed. For it was not just the Berlin Wall that fell in November 1989, but a social and political project that began with Vladimir Lenin at the Finland Station. The novelist Günter Grass’ version of two ... More >>

Creating The Global Nonprofit Corporation: The Ultimate Cooperative - At the end of my last article about the future of humankind as either being a Utopia or an Idiocracy, I stated that if we do not in parallel of those who are in power build our own institutions for humankind, we will never even get a glimpse of what ... More >>

Nothing In A Name: The Fort Hood Killings - Virginia-born Major Nidal Malik Hasan, in a ten-minute orgy of killing at the Texas military base of Fort Hood last week, is now in custody recovering from his wounds. Thirteen people (twelve soldiers and a civilian) were killed, and thirty injured... More >>

Ramzy Baroud: How Israel Won The Settlement Battle Again - When British Foreign Secretary David Miliband uttered a few words regarding the illegality of the Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank, many wanted to believe that London was taking a sharp stance against Israel’s continued violations of international ... More >>

Martin LeFevre: Catholic Or Universal? - I had an aunt that was a nun in the Catholic Church. Even as a kid, I never saw her as religious person however. She was a career woman in a black habit, at a time when there were two choices for Catholic women: marry a man and have kids; or marry Jesus ... More >>

Gordon Campbell: Powers Of Search And Surveillance - Does the Search and Surveillance Bill, as the NZ Herald has recently maintained, really give a web of state agencies ‘sweeping powers to spy, bug conversations and hack into private computers’ ? Or is this all based on a ‘remarkable misunderstanding'... More >>

Seymour Hersh reports: US Pressing To Shore Up Security For Pakistan's Nuclear Weapons - Washington has been negotiating secret and “highly sensitive understandings” to “provide added security for the Pakistani arsenal in case of a crisis,” investigative journalist Seymour Hersh reports. “The secrecy surrounding the understandings was important because... More >>

Richard S. Ehrlich: America Won't Lift Sanctions Unless Suu Kyi is Freed for Election - BANGKOK, Thailand -- Burma must free Aung San Suu Kyi from house arrest and allow her to participate in a nationwide election, otherwise the vote will not be credible and U.S. economic sanctions will not be lifted, a U.S. State Department official ... More >>

Uri Avnery: A Line In The Sand - MAHMOUD ABBAS is fed up. The day before yesterday he withdrew his candidacy for the coming presidential election in the Palestinian Authority. I understand him. He feels betrayed. And the traitor is Barack Obama. More >>

Stateside With Rosalea Barker: Michigan - Is there any word that more trippingly trips off the lips than “Kalamazoo”? I think not. This city in SW Michigan began life as Bronson, named after the settler who first claimed the land and built a hut there in 1829, Titus Bronson . He wasn’t ... More >>

Jason Leopold: US House of Representatives Passes Sweeping Health Care Reform Legislation - Saturday began with a morning pep talk from President Obama during a private meeting with Democratic lawmakers on Capitol Hill and a public appeal from the presidential podium in the Rose Garden shortly thereafter. More >>

ALSO:
• Michael Collins - The Forgotten Question in the Health Care Debate
• Pres. Obama - Remarks on House Passing Health Care

Michael Collins: Foreign Contributions and the Supreme Court's Overdue Decision on Campaign Funding - The Supreme Court of the United States will soon announce a major decision on our lightly controlled system of campaign funding. Will it retain some limitations on corporate influence or will the court blow the lid off and cause a perpetual flood ... More >>

Scoop Media: Noam Chomsky "Very Glad To See" Evolution Exposé - We are greatly honored to be able to share the comments of MIT professor and beloved activist Noam Chomsky on the cover of Suzan Mazur’s book: The Altenberg 16 : An Exposé of the Evolution Industry More>>

From the Hood: Looking beyond the veil into news beyond our own - From time to time, Scoop gets email from alternate universes. I don’t mean the press releases written by individuals who, while inhabiting this physical world, are mentally on another planet entirely. If we were to reject PR from these people we would, frankly, have nothing to publish. More >>

ALSO:

• Werewolf Issue 5

Martin LeFevre: Evolution And Spirituality - A local Lutheran church, which is considered one of the more progressive faiths in this town and country, has an astounding declaration on its home page. “We believe that Genesis chapters one and two are factual accounts of creation and we therefore reject the false teaching of evolution... More >>

Jim Miles: Reflections On Michael Moore’s Capitalism - The thrift in me allowed me to wait until Michael Moore’s “Capitalism - A Love Story” came out on second run theatres - it was well worth the wait. The powerful effect that Moore has on his audience derives from the personal stories he relates ... More >>

Chomsky: President Obama Continues Bush Policy To Control Middle East Oil - Political activist Noam Chomsky says that although President Obama views the Iraq invasion merely as “a mistake” or “strategic blunder,” it is, in fact, a “major crime” designed to enable America to control the Middle East oil reserves. More >>

Martha Rosenberg: Agribusiness Attacks "Omnivore" Michael Pollan - Even if agribusiness could shut Michael Pollan up, the outspoken author of Omnivore's Dilemma and a journalism professor at University of California, Berkeley, it still has the Los Angeles Times to contend with. Last month, the Times blasted California ... More >>

Failure By Design: The "Public" Option - Do you know what the ''public option'' does or who it covers? If you've had trouble finding out, it's not your fault. Reading the corporate media coverage provides little or no clue. It's hardly ever defined. There's a very good reason for the lack of... More >>

Richard S. Erlich: Thailand & Cambodia Argue About Thaksin & The Coup - BANGKOK, Thailand -- Thailand and Cambodia have descended into a loud political feud about Bangkok's 2006 coup, and Thailand's current threat to demand the extradition of its fugitive former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra. The rift between the two ... More >>

Gather to the Chapel: Destiny Churchism in Theory and Practice
Amidst the terror and debauchery of the Old Testament are some passages of striking intrigue and beauty. Among these is Psalm 79 - a passage I was drawn to ponder during a recent visit to a ‘Miracle Faith Healing’ service held by one of our country’s... More >>

The Serbian Iron Lady Returns: Biljana Plavsic And Modern Justice - The only woman convicted by the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia has returned to Serbia. Biljana Plavsic, former Bosnian Serb President (1996-8), had spent two-thirds of her 11-year sentence in a Swedish prison after being convicted... More >>

Globalization and terror: Dollar militarism, ALBA humanism - Many themes of global importance inter-relate when discussing events in Central America. An apparently simple discussion of local developments in the Nicaraguan economy ends up covering global issues. One has to look at the role of the dollar, the price of ... More >>

Martin LeFevre: Free The United Nations! - Fittingly, when you click on the official button for United Nations Day (October 24) it takes an inordinate amount of time for Ban Ki Moon’s brief message to load up. Most people give up; a few look elsewhere. More >>

Disoyal Opposition In The US: Fox News vs The White House - Paul Buchanan writes whether or not the so-called “war” between the White House & Fox TV is a carefully crafted plan by Obama’s advisors to expose divisions within the Republican Party, it still highlights a case of disloyal opposition in a democracy. More >>

UN Agencies: US Blockade of Cuba Undermines Their Work - In a report recently posted on the United Nations website [i] , numerous United Nations agencies condemned the United States blockade of Cuba, saying it impacts on their – and the Cuban Government’s - ability to provide prompt and affordable humanitarian... More >>

Product Launches: "News To Make You Feel Good" - In times like this, with bird flu, SARS, killer dogs and ‘Internet Hackers’, New Zealanders need a pleasurable laugh or two. The The Weekly Coitus can now deliver that pleasure. More>>

Franklin P Lamb: A Rare Victory For Lebanon’s Palestinians - Known simply as “ the General” Michel Naim Aoun was born in a peaceful mixed Christian-Shia area of Haret Hreik, now a core Hezbollah area. He rose from poverty to become the head of Lebanon’s newly created Eighth army following the September ... More >>

Sherwood Ross: Chomsky Receives Highest Pentagon Honor - The Pentagon has paid anti-war activist Noam Chomsky the highest honor any totalitarian entity can bestow upon an author: they’ve banned his book “Interventions” at Guantanamo Bay prison. They won’t say precisely why they “honored” Chomsky... More >>

Heading for the Tiber: Benedict XVI and the Anglican Church - Pope Benedict XVI is nothing if not wily. The Catholic Church issued a call last week stating that it would enable Anglicans to convert to Roman Catholicism, thereby undermining an already conflicted Church amounting to 77 million followers. Disaffected ... More >>

Nanette Woonton in Majuro: Pacific people talk strategy on how to adapt to climate change - Twenty years ago, the Marshall Islands was home to one of the first Pacific islands regional climate change conferences held. Now, two decades later, the Marshall Islands is host yet again to another Pacific climate change conference... More >>