The Zakai and Tarabin families should be a picture of happy coexistence across the ethnic divide, a model for others to emulate in Israel. But Natalie and Weisman Zakai say the last three years – since the Jewish couple offered to rent their home to Bedouin friends, Ahmed and Khalas Tarabin – have been a …
Continue reading “Israeli Couple Forbidden From Renting to Bedouin Friends”
They were certainly not the proudest moments in what has been called the Tea Party Movement: activists on Capitol Hill this weekend to oppose the Democratic health-care bill accused of slinging the N-bomb at black lawmakers, screaming "baby killer" at Rep. Bart Stupak, calling openly gay Rep. Barney Frank a "faggot," and spitting on Missouri …
Continue reading “Buzzkill at the Tea Party”
Updated at 10:33 p.m. EDT, Mar. 22, 2010
At least five Iraqis were killed and eight more were wounded in the latest violence. The State of Law and Iraqiya parties have apparently begun the process of creating a new government. Because neither party achieved a majority victory, they are forced to ask smaller parties to join them. This is expected to be a long, difficult process.
It is already a commonplace to say that people who don’t learn from history are condemned to repeat their mistakes. Some 1,942 years ago, the Jews in the province called Palaestina launched a revolt against the Roman Empire. In retrospect, this looks like an act of madness. Palestine was a small and insignificant part of …
Continue reading “The Doomsday Weapon”
Police training has been a crucial part of American counterinsurgency warfare and global policy for a long, long time. During the American occupation of Haiti, which began in 1915, the establishment and training of an American-led Gendarmerie d’Haiti would contribute to the sad, brutal modern history of that island; in the late 1950s and 1960s, …
Continue reading “Failing Afghanistan’s Cops”
Last Saturday, the Peace Coalition of Monterey County held an antiwar rally on the seventh anniversary of the U.S. invasion of Iraq. Lawrence Samuels, co-chair of Libertarians for Peace, one of the member organizations, organized the rally with help from Phillip Butler of Veterans for Peace, another member organization. We began with four speeches, broken …
Continue reading “End the Wars”
The most significant problem between the United States and Israel, pace the absurd little flap that developed over Vice President Biden getting blind-sided on a trip to Israel a couple of weeks ago, is that the United states still wants to micromanage an illusory "peace process" that the two entities directly involved in have little …
Continue reading “Time to Move Past Camp David Envy”
An initiative to revise the procedures for reviewing the cases of detainees in order to free marginal insurgents and innocent Afghans has run afoul of the interests of officers of the powerful Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) in defending their role in earlier detention decisions. A study of U.S. detention policy in Afghanistan by Maj. …
Continue reading “JSOC Interests Snag Plan to Free Afghan Detainees”
The first nationwide antiwar protests in quite a while were held this past Saturday, held in part to commemorate the seventh anniversary of the invasion of Iraq, with a few thousands marching in Washington – I’ve seen estimates ranging from two to ten thousand – with scattered events in San Francisco and Los Angeles, and …
Continue reading “Springtime for Obama”
Updated at 6:22 p.m. EDT, March, 21, 2010
At least nine Iraqis were killed and 20 more were wounded in light violence. Full election results are now expected on Friday, but calls for a recount reached a higher level as President Talabani chimed in today.
