Noting the rise of Islamist Shi’ites to power in Iraq, we recently asked Is Iran the real winner? One who seems to think so is Michael Ledeen of the American Enterprise Institute. In the Nov. 30 National Review Online, he… Read moreMichael Ledeen: “regime change” for Iran, Syria
From Reporters Without Borders, Dec. 8: The 2005 Reporters Without Borders/Fondation de France prize in the “cyberdissident” category was awarded on 7 December to Massoud Hamid. He was arrested in July 2004 and sentenced to three years in prison for… Read moreSyrian photojournalist wins “cyber-freedom” award
You can’t make this stuff up. From the Jerusalem Post, Dec. 8: Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad continued his anti-Israel rhetoric Thursday afternoon, denying the Holocaust and calling on Germany and Austria to create a Jewish State within their borders, Israel… Read moreTehran: send Jews back to Germany; Berlin: “totally unacceptable”
The current (Dec. 1) issue of The Economist includes a profile of “China’s far west”—a region variously known as Xinjiang (to the Chinese), or East Turkestan or Uighurstan to its indigenous inhabitants, the Turkic and Muslim Uighurs. After providing some… Read moreChina builds pipeline through restive Uighurstan
The patrician wonks at the Council on Foreign Relations raise the alarm in a January report that Africa will be increasingly strategic to global energy security in the coming century—and that China is beating the US to the punch in… Read moreDarfur: pawn in US-China oil war?
From Amnesty International, Dec. 7: Eritrea: Government must end religious persecution “You will receive no visitors and you will rot here until you sign this paper.” The reported words of an Eritrean military commander to Helen Berhane, a well known… Read moreEritrea cracks down on gospel singers
Nice sentiments. Now we wonder if the good king will abolish public flogging, as demanded by Amnesty International. Dec. 7: MECCA, Saudi Arabia (Reuters) – Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah appealed to Muslim leaders on Wednesday to unite and tackle extremists… Read moreKing Abdullah: Islam in crisis
We wrote in our last post on the Egyptian elections: The first-round results cast a dubious light on the apparent assumption of the neocons that a wave of democratic revolutions in the Arab and Islamic worlds will bring pro-West “moderates”… Read moreElectoral violence in Egypt
Perhaps some of our Eritrean readers could explain the logic of this decision: ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia (AP) – Eritrea has ordered the expulsion of U.S., Canadian and European staff of the U.N. peacekeeping mission that monitors the tense border with… Read moreEritrea expels UN troops
Here’s the exact quote, as reported in the New York Times Dec. 7: “I am Saddam Hussein!” the former ruler said repeatedly, shaking his fist. “Like the path of Mussolini, to resist occupation to the end, that is Saddam Hussein,”… Read moreIts official: Ramsey Clark supports fascism
All sides continue to exhibit the utmost cynicism in the increasingly confused Iraq war. The anti-terrorist SITE Institute notes that the self-declared al-Qaeda in Iraq has issued a communique on the Nov. 28 assassination of Sheikh Ayad al-Izzi, a prominent… Read moreIraq: is Iran the real winner?
The December issue of The Broken Rifle, newsletter of the War Resisters International, which supports conscientious objectors from military service around the world, offers this report from a strategically-placed country not often in the news: Eritrea. We noted in our… Read moreConscientious objection in Eritrea
