In April, the Democratic-controlled Congress froze $55.2 million in military assistance earmarked for Colombia. At issue were linkages between the Andean nation’s military and a paramilitary group on the State Department’s terrorist list. The administration response has largely been to marshal the troops and espouse the benefits of Plan Colombia, the vehicle that delivers U.S. assistance to Colombia.
Banner of hands for Darfur, from September 9, 2006 rally in Washington, DC. Courtesy of Genocide Intervention Network.
There are few areas in the world more entangled in historical deceit and betrayal than northern Iraq, where the British, the Ottomans, and the Americans have played a deadly game of political chess at the expense of the local Kurds. And now, because of a volatile brew of internal Iraqi and Turkish politics, coupled with the Bush administration’s clandestine war to destabilize and overthrow the Iranian government, the region threatens to explode into a full-scale regional war.
James Moran (D-VA) has been in the House of Representatives since 1991. In 2002, he was one of 133 House members to vote against authorizing the invasion of Iraq. Most recently, he has proposed holding hearings in July on closing the detention facilities at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, that currently holds several hundred detainees. FPIF contributor Michael Shank interviews him on the implications of his position on Guantanamo.
ISN’T IT ENOUGH?
Farideh Hassanzadeh (Mostafavi) is an Iranian poet, translator, and freelance journalist. Her first book of poetry was published when she was 22 years old. Her poems appear in the anthologies Contemporary Women Poets of Iran and Anthology of Best Women Poets. She writes regularly for Golestaneh, Iran News, and many other literary magazines and newspapers. Her poems translated into English appear in Kritya, Jehat, interpoetry, museindia, earthfamilyalpha, and Thanalonline. Her anthology of contemporary American poetry will appear in 2007. You can read her poem Isn’t It Enough? here.
In a flagrant attack on the longstanding international legal principle that it is illegitimate for any country to expand its territory by military means, the U.S. House of Representatives, by an overwhelming bipartisan majority, passed House Concurrent Resolution 152 congratulating Israel for its forcible “reunification of Jerusalem” and its victory in the June 1967 war.
In Iraq, after more than four years, President George W. Bush may be about to get what he has been hoping for: a clear reading on the Iraq situation that is free of U.S. politics.
Before Robert Zoellick is confirmed as president of the World Bank Group, his bosses on the World Bank’s board should ask him a simple question: Are you, like your predecessor Paul Wolfowitz, aiming to get rich off of eliminating poverty?