From AP, Feb. 23: “We want the correspondent!” shouted two gunmen who pulled up in a pickup truck, fired into the air and then killed the Al-Arabiya newswoman and two of her colleagues. Al-Arabiya’s Atwar Bahjat, whose face is widely… Read moreIraq: another journalist killed
Gee, that didn’t take long, did it? From AKI, Feb. 22: Iran’s Supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has announced a week of mourning following the attack Wednesday morning on one of the holiest Shiite shrines at Samarra in Iraq, and… Read moreIran: US, Israel behind Samarra attack
Well, it sure looks like whoever it is who is trying to plunge Iraq into all-out civil war have finally acheived their aim. Much chance of pulling this one back from the brink? A round-up from the Muslim American Society’s… Read moreIraq: 130 dead in violence following Samarra bombing
It’s about defending our way of life, remember? From Long Island Newsday, Feb. 21: DEADLY HIT-AND-RUN SPREE Cops: Man drove recklessly, hitting several cars before a crash that killed other driver in Massapequa A Coram man who had low blood… Read moreWHY WE FIGHT
In October 2004, we reported on the struggle of traditional Palestinian cave-dwellers in the South Hebron region to maintain their lands from Israeli settler theft and encroachment. An update is now provided by Neve Gordon, who witnessed an inspiring joint… Read moreSettler tree-theft from Palestinian cave-dwellers
How frustrating that a secular anti-imperialist perspective which has been virtually purged from the so-called “alternative media” finds its way onto the front page of the New York Times Metro Section. Peter Applebombe in his “Our Towns” column features a… Read moreExiled Sufi scholar: military action strengthens Islamists
From a late-breaking AP account, Feb. 22. A day after the bombing of a Shiite market in Baghdad’s Dora district, killing 22, comes the destruction of one of Shia’s most sacred shrines in Samarra. Somebody is apparently hell-bent on plunging… Read moreIraq: Samarra’s al-Askari dome destroyed
Still hailing the cartoon protests as heroic anti-imperialism? From AP, Feb. 21: Christian and Muslim mobs rampaged through two Nigerian cities Tuesday, killing at least 24 people in violence that followed deadly protests against caricatures of the Prophet Mohammed during… Read moreNigeria: more religious violence
This brief analysis of the challenges facing the expanded NATO mandate in Afghanistan sheds light on the real politics of the “cartoon jihad”—obviously, the Danish cartoons have been seized upon as a symbol and crystalization of a much wider set… Read moreAfghanistan: violence inaugurates NATO expansion
Afghanistan’s only female warlord, her existence heretofore a rumor, has been contacted by journalists in the remote Darisujan Valley of northern Baghlan province. From The Telegraph, Feb. 18: Fearless female warlord now has UN in her sights From Tom Coghlan… Read moreAfghanistan: “Kalashnikov matriarch” holds out
This would be funny if it weren’t so tragic. Having played the divide-and-conquer game of pitting Iraq’s ethnic and religious groups against each other, treating the nascent state as a pie to be divided up by sectarian factions, the US… Read moreIraq: US threatens to pull support; “resistance” blows up beauty parlors
Ah, yes. “National security.” That magical incantation by which all standards of transparency and humanitarian law can be summarily dismissed. This time applied in the case of Maher Arar, a Canadian citizen who was “renditioned” by US authorities to Syria… Read more“Rendition” victim: case dismissed
