Archive for May, 2002
Taliban and Qaeda Believed Plotting Within Pakistan
Have the chiefs of staff at the pentagon been reading the Guardian UK?
“Virtually the entire senior leadership of Al Qaeda and the Taliban have been driven out of eastern Afghanistan and are now operating with as many as 1,000 non-Afghan fighters in the anarchic tribal areas of western Pakistan, the commander of American-led forces in […]
Afghan Warlord Dostum Elected to Key Tribal Council
“One of Afghanistan’s most powerful warlords, Abdul Rashid Dostum, has been elected to a tribal council that will pick the devastated country’s next government, an official said Sunday, even though militia leaders are meant to be excluded.”
(Afgha.com )
Camp David and After: An Exchange (2. A Reply to Ehud Barak)
“The Palestinians did insist that Israel recognize that it bore responsibility for creating the problem of the refugees. But it is ironic that Barak would choose to convey his categorical rejection of any such Israeli historical responsibility to Benny Morris, an Israeli historian called "revisionist" in large part for his account of the origins of […]
Camp David and After: An Exchange (1. An Interview with Ehud Barak)
“Barak today portrays Arafat’s behavior at Camp David as a "performance" geared to exacting from the Israelis as many concessions as possible without ever seriously intending to reach a peace settlement or sign an "end to the conflict." "He did not negotiate in good faith, indeed, he did not negotiate at all. He just kept […]
A Raid Enrages Afghan Villagers
“But local officials said the raid on Bandi Temur, a poor collection of houses on the edge of the scalding, stony desert, less than 60 miles from Kandahar, may have served little purpose other than to increase distrust of foreign troops, and even to turn Afghans against the American-backed government of Hamid Karzai.”
(NY Times)
UN condemns DR Congo ‘plunder’
“The latest United Nations report on the Democratic Republic of Congo says rebels and foreign governments are still plundering the country’s resources, everything from diamonds to animal skins.”
(BBC)
Afghanistan Battling Another Invader
“Baghlan province, a rich agricultural region in northern Afghanistan, has been among the areas hardest hit this spring by a plague of locusts, described by U.N. experts as the worst to strike Afghanistan in 30 years. So far, it has spread across eight provinces, damaging thousands of acres of wheat, corn and other cash crops.
But […]
The Naked Untruth
I thought this article was of interest simply because it exposes how wildly inaccurate the press can be about simple figures, such as the income derived from the pornography buisness, which this reporter states is often estimated at being much more than it could possibly be.
“Since there is precious little reliable public data about the […]
Florida Counties Seek to Avoid Suit Over Election
“Elections officials in Miami-Dade, Osceola and Orange Counties say they are in talks with the department over complaints that they failed to provide language assistance to voters with limited proficiency in English. In Orange and Osceola Counties the charges involve Spanish-speaking voters. The case in Miami-Dade County focuses on Creole-speaking Haitian voters.”
(NY Times)
Microsoft lobbies Military not to use opensource
“Microsoft Corp. is aggressively lobbying the Pentagon to squelch its growing use of freely distributed computer software and switch to proprietary systems such as those sold by the software giant, according to officials familiar with the campaign.”
(Washtech.com)
An anthropologist and documentary filmmaker, 
