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Check out the Firedoglake Book Salon on Sunday, All About The Benjamins: A “Follow The Money” Book Salon Preview. It is the story of how Tom DeLay and other corrupt Republican politicians reduced taxes and regulations on big corporations in the name of helping the common person.

Al-Hayat writing in Arabic profiles Sa’d Uraibi al-Ubaidi, known as “Abu Abd”, the ‘tribal awakening’ leader who, it claims, now controls most of the Sunni Arab neighborhoods of Baghdad. Al-Ubaidi, 35, had served as an officer in the Baath Army. He joined the guerrilla movement against the Americans, being active in the “Islamic Army.” He […]

The USG Open Source Center translates excerpts from Pakistani newspaper editorials concerning the visit over the weekend of US Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte to Islamabad. The visit has generated controversy in the United States, as well, since Negroponte declined publicly to condemn Musharraf’s dismissal of the Supreme Court. ‘Pakistan: Urdu Press Roundup on […]

My analysis of this NYT piece is that Bush and the Republicans are betting that they can portray as irresponsible and unpatriotic the Democrats in Congress who decline to give Bush all the war funding he wants. The Democrats are betting that the public desperately wants them to stop the Iraq War, which is hemorrhaging […]

According to the Washington Post’s Tom Ricks, US officers in Iraq are saying that the failure of the government of PM Nuri al-Maliki to capitalize on the reduction of violence in Baghdad to work for political reconciliation forms a grave danger to the future of Iraq. Al-Maliki, a fundamentalist Shiite, has lost the Sunni Arab […]

The USG Open Source Center surveys electronic media in and about Pakistan, reporting on the situation with regard to closure or blocking of television channels, as well as making remarks toward the end on Pakistani blog sites. In other news, on Sunday Gen Pervez Musharraf rejected US calls for him to end the state of […]

Some Saturday reading: At our Global Affairs group blog, Farideh Farhi takes a closer look at the International Atomic Energy Agency and Iran. This issue may be the most important one in world politics today, on which war and peace hang. Farhi shows that the IAEA is saying that Iran has satisfactorily answered questions about […]

The Monreal Mirror carries an interview with me by Samer Elatrash, in honor of the holding of the Middle East Studies Association (MESA) Conference in Montreal. MESA has over 2700 members among teachers and researchers at colleges and universities, mainly in North America. Elatrash writes: ‘ . . . The biggest problem facing Middle East […]

A new poll shows that 81% of Turks favor invading northern Iraq, up from 46% in July. ‘ The number of people saying Turkey should conduct a cross-border military operation against militants of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) stood at 81 percent, up sharply from 46 percent in the last poll in July.’ . […]