September 2011

Sandy Tolan: The Occupation that time forgot

by TomDispatch 09.22.2011

Reprinted with permission of TomDispatch.com I’m reminded of how Chinese premier Zhou EnLai supposedly answered a question in 1972 about the significance of the French Revolution. “Too early to tell,” was his reputed reply; and though he may never have said it, how true it is that the major events of our world carom through [...]

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A secret license to kill

by News Sources 09.22.2011

David Cole writes: On Friday, a front-page New York Times story reported that a rift has emerged within the Obama Administration over whether it has authority to kill “rank-and-file” Islamist militants in foreign countries in which there is not an internationally recognized “armed conflict.” The implications of this debate are not trivial: Imagine that Russia [...]

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Saudi Arabia executes man convicted of ‘sorcery’

by News Sources 09.22.2011

Saudi Arabia’s government should establish an immediate moratorium on executions in the kingdom, Amnesty International said today after a Sudanese man convicted of “sorcery” was put to death. Abdul Hamid bin Hussain bin Moustafa al-Fakki was beheaded in Madina on Monday. Saudi Arabia has now executed 44 people this year. Eleven were foreign nationals. “Abdul [...]

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U.S. assembling secret drone bases in Africa, Arabian Peninsula, officials say

by News Sources 09.22.2011

The Washington Post reports: The Obama administration is assembling a constellation of secret drone bases for counterterrorism operations in the Horn of Africa and the Arabian Peninsula as part of a newly aggressive campaign to attack al-Qaeda affiliates in Somalia and Yemen, U.S. officials said. One of the installations is being established in Ethiopia, a [...]

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Wikileaks and the sudden departure of Al Jazeera’s Wadah Khanfar

by News Sources 09.22.2011

On Monday, Omar Chatriwala reported in Foreign Policy on revelations from cables newly released by Wikileaks on pressure applied to Al Jazeera by the Bush administration. On Tuesday, the Qatar government suddenly replaced Wadah Khanfar, the director-general of the al-Jazeera satellite TV network, with Sheikh Ahmed bin Jassim Al Thani, an executive at Qatargas and [...]

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Afghanistan is lurching towards a civil war

by News Sources 09.22.2011

Shashank Joshi writes: If Nato’s strategy in Afghanistan seems familiar, that may be because it increasingly seems borrowed from the Black Knight of Monty Python fame, who, after losing both arms, insists that “it’s just a flesh wound”. When Afghan insurgents laid waste to government buildings in Kabul last week, the US ambassador explained, perhaps [...]

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Sadr’s path could determine how Iraq turns

by News Sources 09.22.2011

The New York Times reports: In a classroom in Sadr City, the bustling neighborhood of the Shiite poor, dozens of men in white shirts and black pants received the most basic of Islamic religious instruction: how to wash before praying. “After you wash your left hand, you must be sure to avoid any water drops [...]

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Libyan rebels discover Gaddafi’s chemical weapons

by News Sources 09.22.2011

The Guardian reports: Libyan rebel forces claim to have discovered banned chemical weapons stockpiles in southern desert areas captured from Gaddafi loyalists in the last few days. Spokesmen for the National Transitional Council (NTC) said a depot had been found in the Jufra area, 435 miles (700km) south of Tripoli, during part of an offensive [...]

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Is Turkey the best model for Arab democracy?

by News Sources 09.22.2011

Mark LeVine writes: Judging by the hero’s welcome given to Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan in his just-completed tour of the Arab world, it’s not surprising that, once again, Turkey is being held up as “the best model for change” across the region. Those boosting Turkey’s standing include not merely Erdogan and the country’s [...]

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Most Israelis willing to accept UN recognition of Palestinian state

by News Sources 09.21.2011

The Jerusalem Post reports: Israel should accept the decision if the UN recognizes a Palestinian state, about 70 percent of Israelis answered in a recent Hebrew University poll. The poll, which was conducted jointly by the Harry S. Truman Research Institute for the Advancement of Peace at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and the Palestinian [...]

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Obama’s passivity could pave the way to a civil uprising against Israel

by News Sources 09.21.2011

Akiva Eldar writes: To realize the extent to which the lame-duck candidate has regressed from the positions of the new and promising President Obama, the speech to the United Nations in September 2011 should be compared to one he gave in Cairo in 2009. At that time he pledged to “personally pursue this outcome with [...]

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Obama to UN: yada yada yada — Israelis applaud

by Paul Woodward 09.21.2011

In case anyone is in any doubt that President Obama’s comments on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, delivered to the UN General Assembly this morning, were nothing more than a string of worthless peace-process platitudes, then listen to the rave review he got from Israeli foreign minister Avigdor Lieberman: “I congratulate President Obama, and I am ready [...]

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U.S. should recognize Palestinian state

by News Sources 09.21.2011

Zvi Bar’el writes: Memory is short and forgetfulness is often deliberate, but 23 years ago the UN General Assembly decided to move its session from New York to Switzerland so that Palestine Liberation Organization head Yasser Arafat could deliver a speech. The reason: U.S. Secretary of State George Schultz refused to issue Yasser Arafat an [...]

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New York Times discovers Netanyahu has friends in Congress

by Paul Woodward 09.21.2011

“House Republicans Discover a Growing Bond With Netanyahu” says the headline in the New York Times. Discover? This isn’t exactly news. What the headline should say (and I know I’m fantasizing about an imaginary New York Times whose headlines don’t pull any punches) is: “House GOP trusts Netanyahu more than Obama.” The report does acknowledge: [...]

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Living under Israeli occupation in the West Bank

by News Sources 09.21.2011

Younes Arar from the Center for Freedom and Justice in Beit Ommar talks to Robert Wright at Bloggingheads.tv. See also the Palestine Solidarity Project. Earlier this month, the International Middle East Media Center reported: As Israel decided to further arm the settlers by providing them with stun grenades and tear gas bombs, the settlers, supported [...]

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Iraq joins calls for Assad to step down in Syria

by News Sources 09.20.2011

The New York Times reports: After months of striking a far friendlier tone toward the government of President Bashar al-Assad of Syria, the Iraqi government has joined a chorus of other nations calling on him to step down. An adviser to the Iraqi prime minister, Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, said in an interview with The New [...]

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More than 5,000 killed in Syria, report says

by News Sources 09.20.2011

GlobalPost reports: Alarming new statistics from human rights researchers in Syria show that more than 5,300 people are now believed to have been killed since the uprising began six months ago, roughly double the current United Nations estimate and three times the Assad regime’s official tally. In a new report, Avaaz, the global campaign group [...]

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Arab League parliament urges Syria suspension

by News Sources 09.20.2011

Al Jazeera reports: An Arab parliamentary body has called for the suspension of the membership of Syria and Yemen in the Arab League in a bid to put pressure on the two countries to heed popular demands for reforms. The call was put out on Tuesday following a committee meeting of the Arab Parliament, a [...]

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OPEC rulers pay their subjects $1 trillion to keep quiet

by News Sources 09.20.2011

Bloomberg reports: Saudi Arabia will spend $43 billion on its poorer citizens and religious institutions. Kuwaitis are getting free food for a year. Civil servants in Algeria received a 34 percent pay rise. Desert cities in the United Arab Emirates may soon enjoy uninterrupted electricity. Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries members are poised to earn [...]

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The 2012 contest to show who loves Israel the most

by News Sources 09.20.2011

Daniel Levy writes: [I]t is in the realm of background noise, more than votes or dollars, that Israel really features as a campaign issue. John Heilemann, in an excellent New York Magazine piece, puts it like this: “the outsize attention they command and the ear-splitting volume of the collective megaphone they (Jews) wield.” Having to [...]

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Rick Perry, the Likudnik

by News Sources 09.20.2011

Haaretz reports: Except for the fact that the proceedings were held in English, an Israeli attending Texas Governor Rick Perry’s “press conference” at the W Hotel in midtown Manhattan Tuesday morning might be excused for imagining that he was in the middle of a pep rally for one of Israel’s right-wing politicians, and a hard-liner [...]

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In Palestinian eyes, U.S. president has become the bad guy

by News Sources 09.20.2011

Akiva Eldar writes: A short time after Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas landed in New York, MK Ahmed Tibi (United Arab List-Ta’al ) expressed a widespread feeling in the Palestinian delegation regarding U.S. President Barack Obama: “Were Martin Luther King to rise from the dead and see how a black president is waging an all-out [...]

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Obama’s perfect storm

by News Sources 09.20.2011

Mark LeVine writes: [Obama] might have dined with Palestinian professors back in Chicago, but there was no way he would have been allowed near the presidency if he actually internalised the historical narrative represented by Palestinian history and that of the Arab and larger developing worlds. Yes, he’s half African and grew up partly in [...]

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Obama’s Jewish problem

by News Sources 09.20.2011

John Heilemann writes: Again and again, when Israel has been embroiled in international dustups—over its attack last year on a flotilla filled with activists headed from Turkey to Gaza, to cite but one example—the White House has had Israel’s back. The security relationship between the countries, on everything from intelligence sharing to missile-defense development to [...]

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