Fresh Middle East talks hit a wall

March 9, 2010

Al Jazeera reports:
Israel’s move to expand illegal settlements in the occupied West Bank has threatened to sabotage newly agreed indirect talks with the Palestinian Authority before they can even begin.
George Mitchell, the US envoy to the Middle East, announced on Monday that the two sides had agreed a day earlier to begin indirect negotiations that [...]

Read the full article →

The reconstruction blame game

March 9, 2010

At Mother Jones, Daniel Schulman writes:
After years of a US presence in Iraq and Afghanistan, rebuilding and stabilization projects remain disjointed and chaotic, resulting in wasted taxpayer dollars and, potentially, the deaths of soldiers and civilians. Meanwhile, the nearly six-year-old State Department office that was supposed to coordinate these efforts isn’t even fully operational. And [...]

Read the full article →

U.S., Afghan officials hope insurgent feud signals split

March 9, 2010

McClatchy reports:
Simmering divisions between rival Islamist groups erupted into open warfare in northern Afghanistan this weekend as Taliban forces battled fighters from one of their main allies, Afghan officials said Sunday.
With their leader pursuing tentative peace talks with the Afghan government, more than 100 Hezb-i-Islami militants fighting the Taliban put down their weapons and surrendered [...]

Read the full article →

Strong showing for Moqtada al-Sadr

March 8, 2010

Reuters reports:
Supporters of a fiery anti-U.S. cleric may have staged a comeback in Iraq’s parliamentary election in Baghdad’s Sadr City slum, once a bastion of Shi’ite militants and now a bellwether of Shi’ite political sentiment.
Moqtada al-Sadr, who galvanized Iraqi Shi’ites against the U.S. military after the 2003 invasion but has faded from the political scene [...]

Read the full article →

Who would want credit for Iraq?

March 8, 2010

Daniel Larison writes:
Whenever possible, I refer to the Iraq war as a war of aggression, because that is what it is and has always been. One thing that has often puzzled me about the reflex to declare victory in Iraq, as a Newsweek cover story did recently, is that I don’t know what it could [...]

Read the full article →

Incompetent McCarthyism and shared beliefs

March 8, 2010

Scott Horton takes on the neocon campaign against a group of lawyers, now working for the Obama Administration, who “voluntarily represented terrorists.”
…the incompetent McCarthyites haven’t done their homework. On a list of lawyers in recent government service who have served alleged terrorists, the first name might be Michael Chertoff’s. Chertoff served as counsel to Magdy [...]

Read the full article →

The Iranian riddle

March 8, 2010

Trita Parsi writes:
Iran is the 21st century equivalent of 1930s Russia — a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma. The Iranians haven’t stumbled upon this mystifying state coincidentally, and the enigma isn’t the result of outsiders’ failure to try to understand them. Rather, the Iranian government has a deliberate policy aimed at confusing [...]

Read the full article →

Israel’s game of bluff

March 8, 2010

Didi Remez has translated parts of a column by Nahum Barnea that appeared in Hebrew in Yediot’s Friday political supplement. Barnea considers the assessments by Dr. Moshe Vered who published a study last year on possible scenarios that would result from an Israeli military strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities.
Barnea goes on to say:
The game is [...]

Read the full article →

How the war on drugs gave birth to a permanent American undercaste

March 8, 2010

At TomDispatch, Michelle Alexander writes:
Ever since Barack Obama lifted his right hand and took his oath of office, pledging to serve the United States as its 44th president, ordinary people and their leaders around the globe have been celebrating our nation’s “triumph over race.” Obama’s election has been touted as the final nail in [...]

Read the full article →

Does Obama have a vision?

March 8, 2010

At Time, Mark Halperin writes:
Who would have thought that one of Barack Obama’s biggest missteps as president would be repeating some of the bad habits of George W. Bush? No single factor was more instrumental in Obama’s 2008 victory than his pledge to completely reverse the nation’s course once in the White House. Instead, over [...]

Read the full article →

The theft of Africa

March 8, 2010

Rich countries, faced with the prospect of future food shortages, are buying up massive tracts of land in Ethiopia and elsewhere across the continent with little regard for the rights and needs of the indigenous populations.
The Observer reports:
The land rush, which is still accelerating, has been triggered by the worldwide food shortages which followed the [...]

Read the full article →

US preparing to send Special Ops forces into Somalia

March 8, 2010

The New York Times reports:
The Somali government is preparing a major offensive to take back this capital block by crumbling block, and it takes just a listen to the low growl of a small surveillance plane circling in the night sky overhead to know who is surreptitiously backing that effort.
“It’s the Americans,” said Gen. Mohamed [...]

Read the full article →

‘We have an American occupation and an Iranian administration’

March 7, 2010

Anthony Shadid reports from Falluja on the Iraqi elections:
In this town, nicknamed the City of Mosques, the scratchy loudspeakers of muezzins that once preached resistance to the American occupation implored Sunni Arabs to defy bombs and vote Sunday. They did, in a landmark election that demonstrated how far Iraq has come and perhaps how far [...]

Read the full article →

← Previous Entries

Next Entries →