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Following the protracted siege in Najaf, news of Iraq has largely been pushed to one side in the international media. The end to the Najaf standoff has, however, resolved nothing. US troops and Iraqi security forces come under intense daily attack throughout the country and respond with repressive measures that only fuel broader hostility and hatred to the occupation. Many towns have become no-go areas that lie outside the control of US-installed interim government in Baghdad....

Since the long-forgotten days when the State Department's Middle East policy was run by a group of so-called Arabists, U.S. policy on Israel and the Arab world has increasingly become the purview of officials well known for tilting toward Israel. From the 1920s roughly to 1990, Arabists, who had a personal history and an educational background in the Arab world and were accused by supporters of Israel of being totally biased toward Arab interests, held sway at the State Department and, despit...

The meetings came in the wake of a World Bank report on the repercussions of Mr Sharon's plan to unilaterally withdraw settlers from the Gaza strip and four West Bank colonies while reinforcing Israel's control over other parts of the occupied territories. The World Bank called for Israel to allow much greater freedom of movement by Palestinians to help revive the Palestinian economy....

Using the threat of an external enemy to rally people behind you is a tired old horse, which politicians have ridden into power for centuries. But could it be that ordinary people are fed up of that poor old horse and are looking for something different? There's an old Hindi film song that goes yeh public hai, yeh sab jaanti hai (the public, she knows it all). Wouldn't it be lovely if the song were right and the politicians wrong?...

The Terror Experts existed before the Iraqi resistance and they will exist after it. Wherever the oppressed rise and effectively resist imperial rule there will be academic chairs, foundations grants and Centers for International Studies for the ambitious upwardly mobile Terror Expert. The Imperial state will demand their services, the prestigious Councils of Foreign Relations will offer membership and universities will reward them with distinguished professorships. They will be celebrities a...

Some skeptics, noting the neo-cons' past academic and professional associations, writings and public utterances, have suggested that their underlying agenda is the alignment of U.S. foreign and security policies with those of Ariel Sharon and the Israeli right wing. The administration's new hard line on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict certainly suggests that, as perhaps does the destruction, with U.S. soldiers and funds, of the military capacity of Iraq, and the current belligerent neo-con c...

UN, US, Lebanese People and Church to Syria: LEAVE LEBANON!...

Since August 15, more than 3,500 Palestinian prisoners have joined the strike protesting conditions that are contrary to both international as well as Israel's own military law. Another 4,000 prisoners are expected to join the strike in the upcoming days, including women, children and prisoners....

Labor's collective wealth, as represented by the medals won at the Olympic Games in 2004, made possible 162 medals, with 45 of them gold, for the former Soviet Union putting it in first place, and 103 medals, wth 35 of them gold, to the US, putting it in second place, out of 301 medal events....

At least 17 Iraqis have been killed and 96 wounded in fierce clashes between US soldiers and fighters loyal to Shia leader Muqtada al-Sadr, an Iraqi Health Ministry official said on Monday....