International Features

In unconventional warfare, manipulated beliefs are used to displace inconvenient facts. When waging war by way of deception, false beliefs are an oft-deployed weapon. Recall Iraqi weapons of mass destruction? Iraqi ties to Al Qaeda? Iraqi mobile biological weapons laboratories? Iraqi meetings in Prague with Al Qaeda? Iraqi purchases of yellowcake uranium from Niger? All these claims were reported as …

BETHLEHEM – A Christian professor teaches about Jesus Christ, the Church, and the Holy Trinity at a Catholic university. It may seem normal to do so, except that 75 percent of the students are Muslim. This is a required course at Bethlehem University, and the course titled “religious cultural studies” is co-taught by a Christian professor and a Muslim one. …

US President Barack Obama was in China this week. He came, he saw, but his charm failed to conquer the Chinese leaders, as it did with the Arabs during his West Asia visit in June. Obama held lengthy talks with Chinese leaders to get their support for US policies and to urge them to be considerate towards US economic concerns, …

November 16, 2009 “Information Clearing House” — When General Suharto, the west’s man, seized power in Indonesia in the mid-1960s, he offered “a gleam of light in Asia”, rejoiced Time magazine. That he had killed up to a million “communists” was of no account in the acquisition of what Richard Nixon called “the richest hoard of natural resources, the greatest …

UNITED NATIONS, Nov 5 (IPS) – A 575-page blistering report by Justice Richard Goldstone detailing war crimes in Gaza last December is refusing to die despite an aggressive Israeli smear campaign to kill it. The report, which was favourably voted by the 47-member Human Rights Council in Geneva last month, received overwhelming support Thursday in the 192-member General Assembly. The …

The 20th anniversary of the demolition of the 96 mile long  Berlin Wall which marked the collapse of the Soviet Union, Germany’s unification and the end of Cold War was observed throughout the Europe especially in Germany with great festivity. There were fire works and music festivals to mark the occasion. Celebrations attended by thousands of people in pouring rain …