Satire alert. Time magazine’s publicists inform me that there is a duke-out going on between Lady Gaga fans and those of Iranian Green Movement leader Mir Hosain Mousavi. So, below, I offer the top ten differences between the two. First the announcement: ‘Lady Gaga fans are protesting the results of TIME.com’s TIME 100 online poll, […]
Afghanistan Attacks Leave 13 Dead
Attacks in Afghanistan left 13 dead and many more wounded on Thursday. A suicide car bombing near an Afghanistan National Army base in Qandahar left 6 dead, three of them military and the other three civilians. Qandahar, a city of 1 million (i.e. slightly larger than Detroit), is a hotbed of Taliban radicalism. It is […]
Florida Times-Union on Engaging the Muslim World
The Florida Times-Union has an editorial today on the US and the Muslim world (and American Muslims) that draws on my most recent book, Engaging the Muslim World
Wright: Assassinations Strengthen Religious Terrorist Groups
Robert Wright argues that not only is assassination (including by drone) legally and ethically troubling, but there is reason to think that it is counterproductive when deployed against religious terrorist groups. He cites the study of Jenna Jordan [pdf], a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Chicago, in Security Studies. She did a large-scale study […]
Obama hints that Two-State Solution may be Impossible
President Barack Obama acknowledged Tuesday that despite the expenditure of substantial political capital by his administration it may be that no progress will be made on Israel-Palestine peace. AP says he replied to a question as to whether his recent successes in negotiating nuclear arms reduction with Russia and getting 48 nations to sign on […]
Englehardt On Bombing People from the Air
Tom Engelhardt on Americans fighting their wars ‘from on high.’ Alas, it isn’t American, it is just industrialized warfare. Pakistan is bombing its own people, and a recent airstrike on militants appears to have killed a lot of innocents. The only way not to commit atrocities and war crimes is not to fight wars.
US Attitudes, Discourse on Israel Shifting to Realism
A dispassionate examination of Israeli policy and its negative impact on the US at the Wilson Center by 5 former ambassadors is summarized at the Holy Land Peace Project blog. Josh argues that there is a significant change in what can be said publicly with regard to criticism of Israeli government actions. Some major points […]
Turkey, Brazil Come out against new Iran sanctions at Security Summit
Presidnt Obama’s nuclear security summit scored an early victory on Monday, since Obama was able to announce that Ukraine would give up its stock of high enriched uranium by 2012. Ukraine kept some of the high enriched uranium (HEU) from Russian warheads on its territory. The US has generally been successful in convincing former Soviet […]
Israelis Could Expel Thousands of Palestinians from Palestine
New Israeli regulations allow authorities potentially to imprison or expel from the West Bank tens of thousands of Palestinians. The Israeli right has long favored “transfer” (i.e. ethnic cleansing) as a means of dealing both with Palestinian-Israelis and with Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza. Given the extreme-right character of the government of Binyamin […]