An environmental mystery: The blogosphere is abuzz about the mystery of thousands of birds falling out of the sky in Arkansas. Such things happen sometimes because of atmospheric events, lightning storms, etc. But Arkansas weather officials suspect this event may derive from a big fireworks spectacle in a rural area where the birds were concentrated […]
Glaspie Memo Vindicates Her, Shows Saddam’s Thinking
Wikileaks has released the July 25, 1990 cable by US Ambassador to Iraq April Glaspie in which she reported her meeting with Saddam Hussein over the Kuwait crisis. Saddam had summoned her. The cable’s text supports Glaspie’s accounts of the meeting and exonerates her from the charges by her political enemies in the US Congress […]
Christian Crowds Protest Violently in Egypt
Crowds of Christian youth protested in the hundreds in Alexandria and Cairo on Sunday. The protesters in Alexandria were prevented by riot police from reaching the Saints Cathedral that had been bombed early Saturday morning, killing 21 and wounding almost 100. In Cairo in the Abbasiya neighborhood, the crowd gathered around St. Mark’s Cathedral, where […]
Wikileaks: Israel Plans Total War on Lebanon, Gaza
The Norwegian newspaper Aftenposten has summarized an Israeli military briefing by Israeli Chief of Staff Gen. Gabi Ashkenazi of a US congressional delegation a little over a year ago and concludes that ‘ The memo on the talks between Ashkenazi and [Congressman Ike] Skelton, as well as numerous other documents from the same period of […]
Mubarak: We will Cut off the Head of the Snake; Al-Azhar: This was an Attack on all Egyptians
The semi-official Egyptian newspaper, al-Ahram, reports that Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak asserted in a speech to the nation on Saturday that a foreign hand was behind the car-bombing of a Coptic Christian church in the Mediterranean port city of Alexandria shortly after midnight on Saturday morning, which killed 21 and left nearly 100 persons wounded, […]
Top Ten Middle East Challenges for U.S. Policy, 2011
10. The new Republican majority in the House of Representatives will attempt to stampede Obama into keeping troops in Iraq, delaying any withdrawals from Afghanistan, and launching a military strike on Iran. Just last week, Rudy Giuliani, Fran Townsend, and other members of the Permanent War Party flew to Paris to lobby on behalf of […]
Map of United Arab Emirates
New Year in Dubai
New Year in Dubai
8 Baghdad Bombings Target Christians
Al-Safir reports that 2 were killed and 14 wounded in a series of bombings extending over a two-hour period in Baghdad in the late afternoon on Thursday, which targeted Christians. The bloodiest attack took place in the district of of al-Ghadir in the center of the capital, where guerrillas attacked two Christian homes with bombs, […]