At least 66 Iraqis were killed and 175 more were wounded, mostly in one attack in Tikrit. The rest of the reported attacks were in Baghdad or just north of the capital. The curious lack of reporting outside of central Iraq likely is due to a lack of reporters, or perhaps censorship, than an actual decrease in attacks. What little news does escape point to daily attacks still occurring in some cities, such as Mosul.
CAIRO – “Where can I find a Tunisian flag?” The question flooded Egyptian blogs, Twitter, and Facebook pages minutes after news that popular protests had forced out long-time Tunisian dictator Zine el Abidine Ben Ali. Egypt is feeling the ripple effect from Tunisia already. Egypt’s 85 million people constitute a third of the Arab population. …
Continue reading “Will Egypt Follow Tunisia’s Lead?”
JERUSALEM – Guyana became Thursday the seventh Latin American state to recognize an independent Palestinian state. Although the official recognitions are largely nominal, they have irked the state of Israel as they expose its growing diplomatic isolation in the face of the current peace deadlock. It was the announcement in support of Palestinian statehood by …
Continue reading “Latin America Deepens Israel Isolation”
Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown, especially today in the Maghreb and Middle East. For the ouster of Tunisia’s Zine El Abidine Ben Ali has sent shock waves from Rabat to Riyadh. Autocrats, emirs, and kings have to be asking themselves: If rioters can bring down Ben Ali with his ruthless security forces, …
Continue reading “Who Lost the Middle East?”
Vlahos on the missing debate over “shock integration”
Fifty years after Dwight D. Eisenhower’s Jan. 17, 1961, speech on the “military-industrial complex,” that threat has morphed into a far more powerful and sinister force than Eisenhower could have imagined. It has become a “permanent war state,” with the power to keep the United States at war continuously for the indefinite future. But despite …
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Most discussion of China in the mainstream press, especially the left-liberal press, focuses on China’s “human rights” record, or freedom of press and speech, or labor issues, or family planning policies. One may argue endlessly about those matters. But they are China’s internal affairs, and for a genuine anti-interventionist, they are none of our government’s …
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At least nine Iraqis were killed and 22 more were wounded in attacks across central and northern Iraq. To the south, Kuwait is planning to clean oil contamination left from the 1990 Gulf War.
The dethronement of Tunisian strongman Ben Ali, and his flight to Saudi Arabia, has our media conjuring visions of a powerful upsurge of “democratic” populism in what was previously thought of as a minor backwater, famous for its beaches and little else. A friend of the West, Ben Ali was the spitting image of his …
Continue reading “What’s Going on in Tunisia?”
For the third time in the last week, the only reported attacks against Iraqis occurred in Baghdad where at least one Iraqi was killed and 14 more were wounded in three attacks. It is unlikely that the only attacks occurred there, considering that there are other major cities where violence occurs on a daily basis. …
Continue reading “Sunday: 1 Iraqi Killed, 14 Wounded” 
