Archives for January 2009

President Barack Obama will meet Wednesday, his first day on the job, with his secretary of defense, the chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and other high security officials to discuss the Iraq War and his plans for withdrawing US troops from that country. Iraqi government spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh said Tuesday that Baghdad welcomes […]

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” Life, 1954: “Baltimore School Riot:Two school teachers & a local minister driving 3 black students home in a white convertible […]

Some 50,000 Palestinians have been left homeless by the Israeli war on the people of Gaza, with 400,000 now lacking access to running water. Rebuilding what the Israeli military destroyed will cost billions of dollars.Cont’d (click below or on “comments”)Ashraf Khalil of the LAT reports that the Israelis destroyed 21,000 buildings. Khalil writes from the […]

The Martin Luther King, Jr. that most Americans know is the man who said, “I have a dream” at a massive rally 250,000 strong in Washington, D.C., on August 28, 1963, while standing on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial during a March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. That speech is about racial justice […]

President-Elect Barack Obama on Saturday evoked Abraham Lincoln’s train procession to Washington DC, the last leg of which took the Great Emancipator from Philadelphia to Baltimore, and from Baltimore to Washington. It is worth considering three texts on this occasion. The first is Lincoln’s speech at Philadelphia, where, as he noted, the Declaration of Independence […]

Israeli war planes stayed home on Sunday morning, sparing densely-populated Gaza the intense aerial bombardment to which it had been daily subjected for the previous three weeks. In the hours leading up to the Israeli decision to stop bombing the defenseless Gazans for the next 10 days, the Israeli military shelled yet a fourth UN […]

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has announced a ceasefire in the Israeli assault on the population of the Gaza Strip, beginning at midnight Saturday, Israeli time. He will not withdraw Israeli ground troops, and Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni threatened a renewal of attacks if Hamas fired more rockets at Israel. Hamas rockets have killed 4 […]

Airport police in Dubai have found some 3,000 abandoned automobiles during the past 4 months, as Indian and other South Asians in the real estate industry lost their jobs and fled the country. They appear to have suddenly found themselves unable to afford their monthly payments on the car loan (“equated monthly installment”) and knew […]

Bahrain is building the world’s first zero carbon emissions skyscraper: ‘ Thomas Lucking, of architectural firm Gerber Architekten, said they have designed a tower which will be completely energy self-sufficient. “We basically achieve this in two steps,” he said. “We first of all designed it to be a highly energy efficient building which requires 60% […]