Category: Politics

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Secret Land Swaps That Taxpayers Help Finance II

Across the West, a handful of environmental groups are persuading Congress to bestow wilderness protection on their favorite stretch of country by trading away public land. Such deals are the only way to protect the last unspoiled territory from development in the face of increasing

Secret Land Swaps Taxpayers Help Finance I

Fred Ruskin wants thousand of acres of national forest land in Northern Arizona to build a shopping center, subdivisions and other developments that assure his family’s financial fortunes. Most of it is desert scrub where cattle graze and people horseback ride, target practice, and hike

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How Long Will It Last?

The timing hardly seemed fortuitous. On May 1st, only 24 hours after a controversial referendum in Pakistan, which allowed General Pervez Musharraf to extend his Presidency for an additional five years — and, in the process, stripped away the country’s last façade of constitutional rule

Of Birds and Bombs

I never thought I would ever want to return to Dalbandin, a little desert town of some five thousand people in the Pakistani province of Balochistan. It is one of the least memorable places I have ever been, situated uncomfortably in the middle of nowhere.

General on a Tightrope

With his country’s domestic and foreign policies largely buried in the wreckage of the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, General Pervez Musharraf, the military ruler of Pakistan, faced a stark choice: to align his country solidly behind the United States’ war against terrorism —

Haitians in New York

Brooklyn, NY — It was one of those New York City summer days when the heat bounced back and forth between buildings and the asphalt seemed to sweat. The temperature alone was cause for irritation. The police department’s timing could not have been worse. Convinced

A Land of Madrassahs

The Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on America has focused world attention on Peshawar, from where U.S. military strikes could still come. Peshawar — only thirteen miles southeast of the Khyber Pass, with Afghanistan beyond — is a rugged, lawless place, riven by religious fervor

Haitian-American Politics in Chicago

CHICAGO – A lazy, humid afternoon in the Windy City. Unity Radio is on the air. The topic? Politics. The opinions? Endless. Today’s subject is the controversial presidential elections of last fall. The amateur commentators trade political views like sports announcers rattling off the minutia

Aerial view of Jewish Museum Berlin
Photo courtesy of Jewish Museum Berlin

The Jewish Museum in Berlin – “Not a Guilt Trip”

BERLIN – Like a streak of lightning or an unraveling Star of David, the Jewish Museum Berlin zigzags through this city’s Kreuzberg section, just steps away from graffiti-covered storefronts and boxy, high-rise public housing. Clad in zinc, its façade broken by irregular slashes of glass,

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Bram Fischer’s Journey

As Nelson Mandela and his comrades were convicted of sabotage and sentenced to life imprisonment in June 1964, the underground freedom movement in South Africa was unraveling. Many black activists were imprisoned, while many of their white comrades fled the country. One of the few

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Benazir and the Bomb

Way back in 1984, when Benazir Bhutto had just been released from years of detention by a military dictator, she traveled to Washington for benedictions and support. The brave young Pakistani politician told admiring American audiences what they wanted to hear: That she was not

Lionel “Rusty” Bernstein, as shown in a police mug shot taken in the evening of his arrest during the Rovinia raid. Photo courtesy of the South Africa History Archives, University of Witwatersrand, Johannesburg.

Messages from Underground

We had just finished our first cup of tea, when Hilda Bernstein rose and left the kitchen. Several minutes passed. Hilda was eighty-one years old and had acquired an artificial hip not long ago, and she negotiated the staircase of the small townhouse outside Oxford,

A Dutch member of the International Police Task Force in Bosnia talks to Muslim villagers at a NATO barricade erected to keep villagers out of the zone-of-separation and from the Serb territory, where their prewar homes are located.

The City of Brcko: The Key to Bosnia’s Future

The billboard signs along the roadways of northeastern Bosnia say it all. Superimposed on a map of the country is the outline of a key with “Brcko” on it. The old river city, historically a crossroads between Europe and the East, holds the key to

If there is no more army, who needs the military boots? They are for sale on the streets of Port-au-Prince.

Does Haitian Justice Have to be an Oxymoron?

It was in a US military helicopter going from Port-au-Prince to Hinche that I first met a representative of the Haitian justice after the return of the exiled president Jean-Bertrand Aristide was made possible by the soft-entry invasion of US troops in Haiti in September

An aerial view of part of Peru's Upper Huallaga Valley shows ravaged patches of jungle which have been cleared by peasants for the illegal cultivation of coca bushes. Use of the pesticide Spike over the area, which is at the experimental stage, could further damage the ecosystem, according to environmental advocates. Photo by AP/Wide World Photos.

The Lure of a Criminal Cash Crop

TINGO MARIA, Peru. – On her farm in a hollow in Peru’s high jungle, one woman’s pride are her tropical fruit trees. But she acknowledges that fruit doesn’t bring in money in. Nor does the coffee and cacao she and her husband grow. These days,

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Hear No Evil, See No Evil: Early U.S. Policy in Yugoslavia

Note: This article contained pictures that were copyrighted and could not be published on this Web page. The small group of American diplomats were gathered in the secure room of the U.S. Embassy in Belgrade, debating what was holding Yugoslavia together and what threatened to

The office of fugitive Mayan Indians called Community of Population in Resistance (CPR) has mixed influences: the filing system is Western-style, but the names and categories seem copied from a Politburo manual.

The Mayan Apparatchiks

When the Guatemalan president-elect Alvaro Arzú promised on January 7 that his government “will be one of total and absolute respect for human rights,” the announcement had a novel ring to it that on second thought was rather chilling. Mr. Arzú led his rival, Adolfo