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The Israelis already have the Gaza Strip under military siege, carefully controlling what and who goes in and out of it. They have now cut off most fuel, and the United Nations has been forced to stop distributing food aid. This Israeli government action is an unvarnished war crime. It is known as collective punishment. […]

Another US soldier was killed on Thursday. Guerrillas blew up an oil pipeline from a refinery south of Baghdad on Friday. Iraqi oil production has declined somewhat lately, according to this report. Adm. Michael Mullen, Chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, sharpened his rhetoric against Iran on Friday. Mullen appeared earlier to want to […]

The US and Israel accused Syria on Thursday of building a secret nuclear reactor with North Korean help. There was a lot of innuendo in the press that the reactor was intended for nuclear weapons production. But AFP notes: ‘ They said US intelligence had “high confidence” that the structure bombed by the Israelis was […]

Hillary Clinton’s win in Pennsylvania just was not big enough to allow her to hope to win the elected delegate count. She is increasingly using dark and exaggerated rhetoric and 2/3s of Democrats complain that she has gone too negative (less than half say that about Obama). Her exaggerations yesterday extended into the realm of […]

Zogby is reporting as follows, that there is a late surge for Clinton in Pennsylvania and that her margin is being given to her by white, ethnic, Catholic men. It also seems clear that as undecided voters (which fell recently from 8% to 6%) and those who wanted “someone else” (fell from 4% to 3%) […]

The Guardian, basing itself on a soon-to-be-published book by Philippe Sands (Torture Team) reveals that torture was implemented at Guantanamo Bay in the face of opposition from Chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Richard Myers by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Douglas Feith, by White House lawyers Alberto Gonzales, […]

Call me suspicious. Bound bodies found floating in a lake just don’t seem to me very likely to be the victims of suicide. Riad’s friend writes: ‘ A friend of mine, Austin middle-school teacher and pro-Palestinian activist Riad (also spelled Riadh) Hamad, was found gagged & bound in a lake. His death was declared by […]

Said Arjomand shared with IC this letter to the editor of the New York Times, which was not printed. It concerns Noah Feldman’s mid-March NYT piece, “Why Shariah?” In the spirit of open dialogue, IC is carrying the letter here. The Social Science Research Council also also put up a version of it, and there […]

The truce between the Mahdi Army and the US military has broken down, putting a question mark over the future of the ‘surge’. Al-Zaman reports in Arabic that members of the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq (ISCI, formerly SCIRI, led by Abdul Aziz al-Hakim); the Da’wa Party led by Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki; and the […]