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Aljazeera English reports on Afghan fears that foreign aid won’t reach them: Pervasive corruption is also deeply angering the AFghan public. Meanwhile, the Pakistan chief of staff, Ashfaq Kiyani, has abolished the political wing of the Inter-Services Intelligence, which had been accused of shaping Pakistni politics by rigging elections or destabilizing government it did not […]

Three bombings in Baghdad on Monday left some 20 persons dead and many others injured. One bomb targeted a mini-bus with female Iraqi government employees on it. A woman suicide bomber detonated her payload in a crowd just outside the Green Zone. Although the Western press tried to tie these bombings to the vote on […]

President-Elect Barack Obama talked to Afghan President Hamid Karzai by telephone on Saturday. Late that day, Karzai’s office issued a statement about the conversation: ‘ “Obama said America will increase its commitment to bring security and stability to the government and people of Afghanistan . . . “Obama also emphasized that combatting terrorism and bringing […]

Anne-Ruth Wertheim writes in a guest op-ed for IC: After I wrote my article “There is Racism and There is Racism’’, I received quite a few often very emotional reactions. At the Trouw website, in personal emails and at any number of blogs. Some of the readers who responded are just as concerned as I […]

Piracy by Somali pirates in the Red Sea region threatens to reduce world trade through the Suez Canal by about a third, and could raise petroleum prices again if the smaller oil tankers have to go around the Cape of Good Hope to Europe. Wouldn’t it be in part the duty of President Bush and […]

The Iraqi parliament has postponed its vote on the proposed US-Iraq security pact from Monday to Wednesday. MPs had complained that there were not given enough time to study its provisions. It is still not clear how the Sunni Arab MPs will vote; without their support, the agreement would likely be seen as a joint […]

A new kind of racism is gradually emerging in the Netherlands. Not the classical contempt for others, but a cultural racism of distrust and fear. In an ad in de Volkskrant, a leading Dutch daily paper, on 17 March 2008 tv-producer Harry de Winter compared how people talk about Muslims in the Netherlands with anti-Semitism […]

Dani Sevilla writes in a guest op-ed for IC: Within the United States there are over one and a half million service members that have served in military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. Over thirty thousand have been physically wounded, but many more have experienced less visible, psychological wounds. Traumatic Brain Injury and Post Traumatic […]

McClatchy reports that tens of thousands of protesters came out against the US-Iraqi security agreement on Friday, mainly Shiites of the Sadr Movement. Parliamentarians who favor the pact, such as Hadi al-Amiri of the pro-Iranian Badr Corps paramilitary, vowed that the demonstrations would make no difference to the vote. AP emphasizes that the crowds burned […]