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
Boy, things are really getting out of hand. Here’s how the European double standard on free speech paradoxically legitimizes and strengthens Holocaust revisionism. Europe defends Islamophobia in the name of freedom of expression, while denying that same freedom to the… Read morePoland blasts Tehran’s Holocaust “fact-finding” trip
Hooray! We have had our problems with Holocaust historian Deborah Lipstadt before—last year we had to call her out for defending the dangerous notion of what her critics call “Jewish exclusivism” as genocide victims. But in the current poisonous atmosphere,… Read moreLipstadt defends Irving
The Dalai Lama just visited Israel, where no Israeli official would meet with him. According to the following account, a Palestinian NGO also agreed to cancel his visit to the occupied Palestinian territories at China’s request. From the Middle East… Read more“Separatist” Dalai Lama snubbed by Palestinians
Now, obviously the reality of Abu Ghraib and the Iraq horrorshow generally is an essential backdrop to the anti-cartoon protests. But isn’t there something pretty sick about the paucity of coverage the release of the new torture photos has received… Read moreIraq torture images in the news …barely
On Feb. 16 Haiti’s Provisional Electoral Council (CEP) declared former president Rene Garcia Preval (1996-2001) the winner of the Feb. 7 presidential election. The declaration followed an agreement the night before that the CEP would leave some of the 85,000… Read moreHaiti: Preval declared winner after week of protests
