More arrests of Syrian opposition activists, and it appears some of them are being roughed up. From Lebanon’s Daily Star, May 20: BEIRUT: A prominent Syrian human rights lawyer who was arrested this week is being subject to beatings, his… Read moreSyria: detained dissidents beaten?
Israel is continuing “targetted assassinations” in supposedly unoccupied Gaza. But internecine Palestinian violence, alas, now seems equally efficient in killing off the Palestinian leadership. An Israeli missile strike on a car in Gaza City May 20 killed a top Islamic… Read morePalestine headed for civil war?
A front-page story in today’s New York Times paints an even more desperate picture of the deteriorating situation in Darfur than usual. Lydia Polgreen reports from Tina, a village that was overrun April 19 and the residents forced to flee… Read moreDarfur: rebel alliance splits
From the London Times, May 20: THE largest prisoner uprising yet at the Guantanamo Bay detention centre was reported by the US military yesterday as the UN watchdog on torture called for the camp to be shut down. The revolt… Read moreUprising at Gitmo
From Long Island Newsday, May 18: Two teenage girls and a 25-year-old man were killed Wednesday morning when their car rear-ended a parked tractor-trailer on a busy two-lane road in Brentwood, Suffolk police said. The 6:18 a.m. accident on Suffolk… Read moreWHY WE FIGHT
A judicial ruling against a teacher who wore the hejab inspires an assassination of a judge—which in turn sparks a mass mobilization against the Islamists. Whatever one thinks of the Ataturk-era policy of mandatory secularism, the politics of this one… Read moreTurkey: mass pro-secular mobilization
Talk about Phyrric victories. The quick overthrow of the Taliban in 2001 paved the way for the invasion of Iraq and the quick overthrow of Saddam Hussein a year and a half later. Now, just as Iraq is spinning horribly… Read moreAfghanistan: back to the brink?
Remember all those wacky conspiracy theorists who said that “liberating” Afghanistan from the Taliban was really about building an oil pipeline through the country? From India’s Rediff.com, May 19: India joins Afghanistan gas pipeline project The Cabinet on Thursday approved… Read moreAfghanistan pipeline project advances
Today’s Wall Street Journal features a maddening front-page story on Ayaan Hirsi Ali, the Dutch parliamentarian of Somali birth who has been facing death threats for her opposition to Islamism. She has just announced that she is finally leaving Holland… Read moreDutch legislator to step down following Islamist threats
Yet again. All it takes is reading the New York Times to get pretty damn paranoid these days. From May 16: Defendant Says Police Informer Pushed Him Into Bomb Plot A Pakistani immigrant accused of plotting to blow up the… Read moreNYC: police informant behind terror plot?
A national summit of indigenous and campesino organizations is meeting at the Guambiano indigenous reserve of La Maria Piendamó, along the Pan-American Highway in Cauca, southern Colombia, and has just been attacked by the security forces. At least one death… Read moreColombia: army fires on indigenous protesters
From Ya Libnan, May 15: Beirut & Damascus — Prominent writer and democracy campaigner Michel Kilo was detained after calling for better relations between Syria and Lebanon. Syria detained Kilo days after he signed a petition calling for radical reform… Read moreSyrian dissident detained
