Archives for 2008

Some 6,000 Muslim clerics from around India have endorsed a formal legal ruling or fatwa condemning terrorism. There have been many such endorsements, as I pointed out in 2005 in response to Tom Friedman. Of India’s population of roughly 1.1 billion, about 147 million (13.4%) are Muslims, giving India the fourth-largest Muslim population in the […]

Unnamed Secret Service field officers have revealed to the press that Sarah Palin’s attacks on President-Elect Obama provoked numerous white supremecist assassination plots against him: ‘The Republican vice presidential candidate attracted criticism for accusing Mr Obama of “palling around with terrorists”, citing his association with the sixties radical William Ayers. The attacks provoked a near […]

President-elect Barack Obama said Friday that “Iran’s development of a nuclear weapon, I believe is unacceptable. . . Iran’s support of terrorist organizations, I think is something that has to cease.” What I cannot understand is why American politicians who speak publicly on this issue do not at least acknowledge that to the best information […]

Dan Rather blames the decline of television news in the US on media consolidation and the corporate bottom line. Rather prescribes greater courage on the part of journalists, but that seems to me not to address his premise. If media consolidation is the problem then Anti-Trust actions would make more sense as a response. His […]

Paul Krugman, among my favorite political commentators, has spoken forthrightly of how during the past few years we have had “monsters” in office, naming Tom Delay, Karl Rove and Dick Cheney. He complains that until recently, if an observer simply called them what they are, he or she was termed “shrill.” (h/t Daily Kos). I […]

Afghan President Hamid Karzai called on president-elect Barack Obama to reverse the increasing US and NATO dependence on air strikes to combat anti-government guerrillas. The call came in the wake of reports that a US bombing raid intended to disrupt Taliban supply lines to the southern city of Qandahar had accidentally killed 40 civilians and […]

Pakistan’s president, Asaf Ali Zardari, and its prime minister Sayyid Raza Yusuf Gilani, gave a warm welcome to Barack Obama as US president. They recently maneuvered military dictator Pervez Musharraf out of office, despite support for him from the Bush White House and much of the Republican Party Establishment, including John McCain. Obama has differed […]