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EVER WONDER what it's like to be a pariah? Publish something sharply critical of Israeli government policies and you'll find out. .. This, at least, is what happened to Ken Roth. Roth — whose father fled Nazi Germany — is executive director of Human Rights Watch, America's largest and most respected human rights organization. ...In July, after the Israeli offensive in Lebanon began, Human Rights Watch did the same thing it has done in Iraq, Afghanistan, Chechnya, Bosnia, East Timor, Sierra Leone, Congo, Uganda and countless other conflict zones around the globe: It sent researchers to monitor the conflict and...

Unapologetically conservative and unfailingly provocative, Pat Buchanan has been firing from the right for most of the past four decades. In his new book, State of Emergency--out this week--the politician and omnipresent pundit confronts what he calls the immigrant "invasion and conquest of America." Buchanan, 67, talked with TIME's Jeff Chu about American identity, why conservatives will lose the culture wars and the rewards of being a cat lover. The U.S. is in a state of emergency? If we do not get control of our borders and stop this greatest invasion in history, I see the dissolution of the U.S....

“President [George W.] Bush has presided over the largest overall increase in federal spending since Lyndon B. Johnson. Even after excluding spending on defense and homeland security, Bush is still the biggest-spending president in 30 years.” ---Stephen Slivinski, “The Grand Old Spending Party: How Republicans Became Big Spenders,” Cato Institute Policy Analysis, No. 543 (May 3, 2005), p. 1. -------------------------Liberal politicians — Howard Dean and John Kerry come immediately to mind — profess disdain for President Bush and his cohorts. * But is this ideologically based contempt justified? Have the actions of the president and his party gone against the...

RISING oil prices sent the gold price to a two-week high yesterday, with spot gold quoted at about $654/oz as investors increasingly sought the metal as a hedge against rising inflation. ...Another attack on Iraq’s crude export pipeline to Turkey on Monday, continued fighting between Israel and Hezbollah, and Iran’s nuclear stand-off with the west all supported prices.

SOME of the most senior American and British officials responsible for policy in Iraq yesterday gave warning that the country was sliding into civil war, an admission Washington and London have been at pains to avoid for months. In what could be a turning point in the intervention in Iraq, two of the most senior Pentagon officers and the outgoing British Ambassador to Baghdad painted a bleak picture of a country falling into sectarian strife between rival Shia and Sunni Muslim militias. The most frank disclosure was contained in a valedictory letter written by William Patey, the British envoy to...

Within 48 hours, it was apparent Israel was exploiting Hezbollah's attack to execute a preconceived military plan to destroy Lebanon – i.e, the collective punishment of a people and nation for the crimes of a renegade militia they could not control. It was the moral equivalent of a municipal police going berserk, shooting, killing and ravaging an African-American community because Black Panthers had ambushed and killed cops. If Israel is not in violation of the principle of proportionality, by which Christians are to judge the conduct of a just war, what can that term mean? There are 600 civilian dead...

Addressing foreign ambassadors, including U.S. Ambassador Jeffrey Feltman, Prime Minister Fuad Saniora gave the first official death toll in the conflict, saying also that 1,000 have been wounded and a half-million displaced. The World Health Organization told NBC News that hundreds of thousands of people are reportedly internally displaced, with more than 30,000 finding refuge in schools and public gardens in and outside Beirut. Saniora made an urgent appeal for an end to the fighting, saying Lebanon “has been torn to shreds.” In a swipe particularly at the United States, Saniora asked: “Is this what the international community calls self-defense?...

Conservative intellectuals and commentators who once lauded Bush for what they saw as a willingness to aggressively confront threats and advance U.S. interests said in interviews that they perceive timidity and confusion about long-standing problems including Iran and North Korea, as well as urgent new ones such as the latest crisis between Israel and Hezbollah. "It is Topic A of every single conversation," said Danielle Pletka, vice president for foreign and defense policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute, a think tank that has had strong influence in staffing the administration and shaping its ideas. "I don't have a friend...

Iraq will ask the United Nations to end immunity from local law for U.S. troops, the human rights minister said on Monday, as the military named five soldiers charged in a rape-murder case that has outraged Iraqis. In an interview a week after Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki demanded a review of foreign troops' immunity, Wigdan Michael said work on it was now under way and a request could be ready by next month to go to the U.N. Security Council, under whose mandate U.S.-led forces are in control of Iraq. "We're very serious about this," she said, blaming a lack...

World oil prices could double or triple over the current painful $70-per-barrel level if diplomacy failed and military conflict broke out over Iran's nuclear ambitions, Saudi Ambassador Prince Turki al-Faisal warned this morning. "We don't know" what will happen if the United States chooses a military option in Iran, al-Faisal said, but "if there is military conflict, if bombs are dropped, ships are blown up, oil facilities on our side of the gulf are targeted . . . just the idea of somebody firing a missile at an installation somewhere would shoot up the price of oil astronomically." In such...

The Pope has told the prime minister to pursue diplomatic solutions to problems in the Middle East, including Iran. Tony Blair had a private audience with pontiff Benedict XVI at the Vatican on Saturday at the end of a week-long trip to Italy. The two leaders discussed how "moderate voices" from the world's main religions need to work together to tackle extremism and reduce the risk of terrorism, according to Number 10. As well as the Middle East, Iran and Iraq, they also covered the fight against poverty in Africa in their first meeting since the Pope succeeded John Paul...

...Physical separation is therefore the only way to limit the carnage. That process has begun, to some extent, because the violence is driving out the members of one sect or the other from the many mixed villages, towns and city districts. This is a painful and very costly way of interrupting the cycle of attacks and reprisals, but that is how civil war achieves its purpose of eventually bringing peace. ......the U.S. and its allies ...should disengage their troops from populated areas as much as possible, give up the intrusive checkpoints and patrols that are failing to contain the violence...

Critics of Britain's involvement in Iraq urged Prime Minister Tony Blair to step down Saturday after a helicopter crash killed four British soldiers, bringing jubilant Iraqis to the area to celebrate. The ugly confrontation that followed between British troops and Shiite gunmen left five Iraqi civilians dead and was the latest bad news for Blair, whose government has lurched from crisis to crisis in recent weeks. On Thursday, Blair's Labour Party won 26 percent of the vote to the Tories' 40 percent in local council elections. ...[snip] In the latest poll on the war for the Daily Telegraph newspaper, 57...

Is the national ID card the next step toward the imposition of the biblical "mark of the beast" Christians believe will be required to buy and sell during the Last Days? That's the contention of a growing group of believers who are working to turn back the approval of the Real ID Act by Congress last year. Public Law 109-13 requires the national ID portion of the plan go into effect by May 2008. "There is a prophecy in the Bible that foretells a time when every person will be required to have a mark or a number, without which...

[Caspar] Weinberger [said] that the United States would make no more half-hearted interventions, such as in Vietnam, or the U.S. peacekeeping mission in Lebanon, which occurred on Weinberger's own watch. ...[snip] [But] today we have Americans watching over civil war in Iraq, not Lebanon. ... Weinberger preached that a war plan had to be "wholehearted": Preparation often precludes the need to fight. So in Iraq, where was the overwhelming force needed to subdue a country of 25 million? Where was the training for counterinsurgency? The adequate armor? The effective anti-improvised explosive device technology? In fact, there was a disgraceful lack...

In just two weeks, six retired U.S. Marine and Army generals have denounced the Pentagon planning for the war in Iraq and called for the resignation or firing of Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. Washington Post columnist David Ignatius, who travels often to Iraq and supports the war, says that the generals mirror the views of 75 percent of the officers in the field, and probably more. This is not a Cindy Sheehan moment. This is a vote of no confidence in the leadership of the U.S. armed forces by senior officers once responsible for carrying out the orders of...

Oil prices in international markets closely approached level of $68 per barrel. As RSN informs, price of oil to be supplied in May rose by $0.26 and totaled $67.65 per barrel at internet auction in New York. The price growth was caused by bidders' fears concerning Middle-Eastern oil supply after American media had reported George Bush should organize military action against Iran in connection with Tehran's refusal to stop nuclear fuel enrichment.

One thing is certain about the Iraq war: It has cost a lot more than advertised. In fact, the tab grows by at least $200 million each and every day. ...In any event, most estimates put forward by White House officials in 2002 and 2003 were relatively low compared with the nation's gross domestic product, the size of the federal budget or the cost of past wars. ....Even if the U.S. exits Iraq within another three years, total direct and indirect costs to U.S. taxpayers will likely by more than $400 billion, and one estimate puts the total economic impact...

Francis Fukuyama's America at the Crossroads argues that the United States made the mistake of going into Iraq without preparing for a hostile occupation because of the flawed foreign-policy thinking of a small group of people called neoconservatives. ...[snip] While he remains sympathetic to the democracy-spreading mission, Fukuyama castigates the unilateral and militaristic turns that gave us such concepts as "preventive war," "benevolent hegemony," and "regime change." Neoconservatives, he contends, have abandoned their fundamental political insight, namely that ambitious schemes to remake societies are doomed to disappointment, failure, and unintended consequences. "Opposition to utopian social engineering," Fukuyama writes "… is...

Some big bills are about to come due for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and rebuilding along the Gulf Coast. A Senate G-O-P aide says President Bush is set to request 70 (B) billion dollars in special funding for the two wars. And the official says Bush will seek another 18 (B) billion dollars for rebuilding in the aftermath of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. That number's in addition to the 85 (B) billion already committed to the Gulf Coast reconstruction.