My new column at Truthdig.com is just out: “Obama’s 2010 Successes and Failures in the Middle East”. Excerpt: ‘ As 2010 dawned, President Barack Obama had four big issues on his plate regarding the Middle East. These were Iraq, Israel-Palestine, Iran, and Afghanistan. The year has been as unkind to him on those issues as […]
Archives for December 2010
Hating Muslims in America
Rep. Peter King (R-NY), the incoming chair of the House committee on Homeland Security has announced that he will hold hearings into the ‘radicalization’ of American Muslims. This, despite the fact that the Muslim Americans are pillars of the US community–disproportionately well-educated and well integrated into the country, and even though a third of tips […]
Iraq’s al-Maliki Rebuffed on Incomplete Cabinet
Al-Hayat writes in Arabic that prospective Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki faced severe opposition on Monday to his insistence on announcing the formation of a government without naming all the cabinet members. Among the parties opposed to this step was the Iraqiya, the Kurdistan Alliance, and the Sadr Movement. Nevertheless, the Supreme Court issued a ruling […]
HRW on Israeli Racial Discrimination in West Bank
Human Rights Watch has issued a new report on racial discrimination against Palestinians in the Israeli-occupied West Bank. HRW writes: ‘Israel operates a two-tier system for the two populations of the West Bank in the large areas where it exercises exclusive control. The report is based on case studies comparing Israel’s starkly different treatment of […]
Taliban Strike Qunduz, Kabul, Kill 16
Taliban or other radicals showed Sunday that they could strike far from their strongholds in the south and east of Afghanistan. They hit the capital, Kabul, as well as the northern province of Qunduz. The radicals derive from the Pashtun ethnic group, which is a minority in both places. On Sunday morning in Afghanistan, two […]
Senate Repeal of DADT in Global Context
Conservative religious fanatics lost on ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ and anti-gay discrimination. The scary thing is, that since it is clear that fear-mongering on gays will no longer win elections in the next generation, the turn to hate-mongering against Muslims may accelerate. So the Senate has repealed ‘don’t ask, don’t tell,’ the compromise policy on […]
Lawsuit over Drones in Pakistan forces CIA Station Chief to Flee
The Guardian reports that a lawsuit brought by a Pakistani journalist over wrongful deaths in drone strikes has forced the CIA station chief in Islamabad to flee the country. The official’s identity was discovered by the journalist, Karim Khan of North Waziristan from other journalists or possibly from disgruntled elements in the Pakistani military. It […]
Iraq Arrests Dozens in Terror Sweep, Offers Help to Iran
Iraqi authorities are going for the trifecta. They are finally forming a new government, nine months after the March parliamentary elections, to be headed by incumbent Nuri al-Maliki at the head of a Shiite-Kurdish coalition. They have finally gotten UN sanctions on Iraq, implemented after the 1990 occupation of Kuwait, lifted. And they are increasingly […]
Stewart: Aljazeera Pays More Attention to First Responders than Senate Republicans, US Networks
The Republican Party has since September 11, 2001, been absolutely insufferable in invoking those attacks at every possible moment for every possible reason, and in trying to portray themselves as better than other people precisely because they demagogue this issue so much. So what a surprise that the Republicans in the Senate, who after all […]
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