We do not want this war, this violence, and we’re ashamed that the President of the United States is from Texas. – Natalie Maines

I don’t even know the Dixie Chicks, but I find it an insult for all the men and women who fought and died in past wars when almost the majority of America jumped down their throats for voicing an opinion. It was like a verbal witch-hunt and lynching. – Merle Haggard

Last night over dinner the subject of The Dixie Chicks came up, and I got mad all over again. Which is unfortunate, because when you think about artists that talented the last thing on your mind ought to be anger. But still, it’s been six long years now since “the top of the world came crashing down,” and I can’t quite free myself of my rage at the staggering ignorance that led so many Americans to piss on the 1st Amendment by attempting to destroy the careers of Natalie Maines, Martie Maguire and Emily Robinson. Full Story »

I’m continually appalled, although no longer surprised, by what both sides in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict (”the conflict” from now on) are willing to do. Islamic Jihad sends a suicide bomber and blows up a bus loaded with Israelis who’s only crime is being Israeli – Israel bulldozes the bomber’s family’s home. Israeli special forces assassinate a leader of Hamas – Hamas responds with Katyusha rockets launched willy-nilly at Israeli towns. Hezbollah kidnaps Israeli soldiers – Israel invades Lebanon and cluster bombs on entire Lebanese villages.

It’s been going on for so long now that we can’t even assign blame anymore. I got pull-off-the-road-and-calm-down furious on Monday when, in an interview on NPR’s All Things Considered Monday afternoon, a Gaza politician claimed that either a) Israeli collaborators had launched the rockets into Israel as a pretext or b) there had been no launches at all and Israel was faking the whole thing. And I got just as furious this morning when I the Israeli ambassador to the U.S. refused to admit that Israeli commandos had been assassinating Hamas leaders during the cease fire in yet another NPR interview.

Hammurabi came up with the first written code of laws – an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. And the result of following that law is that Israelis and Palestinians have each become toothless, blind, deaf, mute, and stupid. Full Story »

Link of the Week (as opposed to the Weakest Link):

John Heileman, New York magazine, The Next New Deal:

“Personally, I think the depth of the Obama realignment is being underestimated,” says the Republican media savant Stuart Stevens, who helped elect Bush twice. “They have basically invented their own party that is compatible with the Democratic Party but is bigger than the Democratic Party. Their e-mail list is more powerful than the DNC or RNC. In essence, Obama [was] elected as an Independent with Democratic backing — like Bernie Sanders on steroids.”

In other words, the Democratic party is but a brigade of the Obama juggernaut. Full Story »

Sarah Palin told ABC’s Charles Gibson yesterday that she favors admitting Georgia and the Ukraine, both on Russia’s borders, to NATO. When Gibson asked her if she would go to war with Russia to defend Georgia, she said, “”Perhaps so. I mean, that is the agreement when you are a NATO ally, is if another country is attacked, you’re going to be expected to be called upon and help.”

Right you are, Ms. Palin, but help doesn’t always mean military help, else the NATO countries would have chosen up sides and embroiled themselves in war when Greece and Turkey went at it over Cyprus. You are technically correct, though, because the defense clause of the treaty reads: Full Story »

Is Supreme Leader Khameini sabotaging his regime by throwing his support behind Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in the upcoming presidential election?

In “Ahmadinejad gets a crucial boost” on Asia Times Online, Golnaz Esfandiari writes that “On August 24, Khamenei, who has the last word on all matters related to the Islamic republic, was quoted as saying that President Mahmud Ahmadinejad should plan on remaining in power for a second term.” Full Story »

Back from Bamyan; the sewing program; village dominance

by Connor O’Steen

I have now been on the road between Kabul and Bamyan for a total of 32 hours, and it’s safe to say that that’s 32 hours too many for my taste. The road is roughly the quality of a rural mountain road in the United States, but the fact that it feels endless makes it much worse. Going to Bamyan, you cross a number of mountain ranges with valleys nestled between, and beyond each steep ridge I hold out the hope that the next section will be smoother. This, of course, just makes it more frustrating when the sections get progressively rougher, and I have to tighten my white-knuckled grip on the car’s overhead handles. The up and down turbulence is unsurprising, it’s the occasional side to side rocking that’s hard to stomach. This last ride back to Kabul was made worse by the presence of a dog and her eight puppies in our trunk. Just like in Kabul, we take in dogs in our regional offices, and through gross oversight one of them was left unspayed. She also acquired the skill of escaping the compound. 2+2= eight puppies to take care of. Full Story »

In, “Dear World, Please Confront America,” Naomi Wolf writes: “I had thought that after so much exposure [to revelations about US torture], thousands of Americans would be holding vigils on Capitol Hill, that religious leaders would be asking God’s forgiveness. . . . And yet [there] is no crisis in America’s churches and synagogues. . . . I asked a contact in the interfaith world why. He replied, ‘The mainstream churches don’t care, because they are Republican. And the synagogues don’t care, because the prisoners are Arabs.’” Full Story »

Sometimes the answer to a problem isn’t as hard as we think it is. In fact, it may be downright easy. But something in our makeup prevents us from either seeing or pursuing the answer. We continue to tread the more arduous path and, in the process, not only perpetuate, but compound the problem.

In a Washington Monthly article, “How many of you want to study in America?,” Kenneth Ballen reports on the extensive polling that his organization, Terror Free Tomorrow, has done around the world. First, he describes a meeting in Jakarta, Indonesia with young Muslims in apparent thrall to bin Laden. Though they didn’t give him credit for 9/ll, which, Ballen writes, they felt was the work of “the CIA and the Israeli intelligence service — how else to explain the fact that there were no Jews in the World Trade Center when it was destroyed?” Full Story »

Jonathan Martin of Politico writes: “Liberal media has traditionally been upstream media, generating information and putting it into circulation. Conservative media is downstream, it’s the second bite at the apple.”

Has a way been finally found to explain the FISA bill to the public? Glenn Greenwald of Salon quotes an ad attacking a Pennsylvanian congressmen who voted yea on it: “Chris Carney is surrendering to Bush and Cheney the same un-American spying powers they have in Russia and communist China.” We have a winner! Full Story »

Nasim’s story:  making and unmaking terrorists

by Connor O’Steen

It turns out the road between [location excised] and [location excised] is currently held by the Taliban, so until NATO clears things up I’ll be here. Seeing how that’s the case, and I now have some extra time on my hands, I might as well tell you some more about what I’ve seen.

Nasim showed up on our doorstep early in the morning, and when asked what he needed, said that he had been told by some of the other children of Chaghcharan that we ran an orphanage. His face was bruised and slightly purplish, both of his eyes were swollen and there were dark rings underneath.

Full Story »

by Connor O’Steen

Editor’s note: Our guest is currently in Afghanistan working for PARSA, a non-governmental organization (NGO) specializing in microeconomic development with an emphasis on women and children. He’s often in rural areas far from Kabul where most other journalists cannot, or will not, go. You’re unlikely to find his insights in the mainstream media. Often, he has no access to the Internet, so excerpts will be sporadic, at best. His correspondence to us is edited for context and to remove information that might put him or his coworkers in danger.

The hard-working orphans of Chaghcharan

Chaghcharan is the largest–essentially only–city in Ghowr province. I use the term “city” lightly, because the “city” part of Chaghcharan is the intersection of two roads around which a number of buildings are clustered. Full Story »

Part 1

In a post titled “Why Johnny Can’t Google,” Rafe Colbun blogs about John McCain’s indifference to computers: “It’s tempting to. . . assume that. . . old guys just aren’t computer users. [But] in 1997 I worked for an IT consulting firm [among whose] clients was the George [H.W.] Bush Presidential library. [Part of our job was] setting up email accounts for President Bush and his friends (folks like Brent Scowcroft), generating PGP keys, and teaching them how to use them. President Bush has a good 12 years on John McCain, and he had his own laptop, email account, and PGP key ten years ago.” Full Story »

History has returned from the dead. The idyllic future, once considered inevitable by Western leaders in the early 1990s, is dead instead. The dreams of a liberal, all-men-are-created-equal world are dead, too.

So says author Robert Kagan in his new book The Return of History and the End of Dreams, a sober, realistic evaluation of the world today.

But while it may be sober, Kagan’s take on the world is not necessarily sobering—at least not in a slap-in-the-face, really-bad-news-from-the-doctor kind of way. Kagan rationally and dispassionately looks at the world stage and the actors currently playing major roles, as well as the actors who wish they were playing major roles. Full Story »

Hint: It’s not just upbringing and culture.

Back in 2005 James Wolcott wrote of torture: “Women may take part — though I imagine it’s rare, and under duress — but only men could devise the intricate and cruel tortures and torture devices that have been inflicted over the centuries.”

This is one generalization about women that feminists let slide. Lynndie England of Abu Ghraib fame was a blip on torture’s radar screen and women would like to keep it that way. But what infuses men with the urge to torture? Full Story »

How do we welcome him into the US? Why, detain him and confiscate his passport, of course. What else do you do with a Muslim, even if he is a Nobel Peace Prize candidate?

The Guinness Book of World Records has no category for World’s Nicest Man. Imagine trying to create the metrics for that? But its 2000 edition features an entry that points us in the right direction.

Titled “Biggest Volunteer Ambulance Organization,” it reads: “Abdul Sattar Edhi began his ambulance service in 1948 by ferrying injured people to the hospital and has since developed a service that attracts funds of $5 million per year with no government assistance.”

Curious, we did some research. Turns out that Edhi’s ambulance corps is just one of a wealth of services his foundation provides. But his Nobel Peace Prize-caliber work flies below the radar of most in the US. Full Story »

Pastor Dan has an absolutely must-read piece on faith and politics over at Street Prophets, and while I feel wholly inadequate for the task of matching the depth of his analysis, he raises a number of issues that got me to thinking. So to use a sports analogy, he’s just crushed an overhead at me, and I’m going to see if I can get a racquet on it in hopes of lobbing something weak back over the net.

For starters, his thoughts on the history and function of civil religion are spot-on, and as I consider how dramatically our culture is changing, they lead me to an obvious conundrum. Full Story »

First off, let’s not shed any tears for Gillian Gibbons, the British teacher sentenced to 15 days in a Sudanese prison for naming a teddy bear “Mohammed.” Any woman who chooses to go live in a nation with Sharia Law, where you can be jailed for allowing yourself to be raped, deserves no sympathy.

More interesting to me are the curious responses from a couple of prominent Christian spokespeople. First, the Archbishop of Canterbury condemns the Sudanese court’s decision: Full Story »

In December 2006 Iran President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad kicked off a two-day conference dedicated to examining whether the Holocaust took place.

In October 2008 he addressed the audience the International Congress on the 800th birth anniversary of Rumi.

Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Balkhi-Rumi, of course, was the Sufi teacher whose wildly ecstatic poetry has achieved as profound a resonance in readers and listeners down through the centuries as any poet who ever lived.

Ironic, isn’t it, that, as his most successful translator Coleman Barks pointed out in 2001, an Iranian was America’s bestselling poet. His popularity, especially with those who consider themselves hip, has only grown since. Full Story »

Now that the U.S. can declare an agency of a foreign government a terrorist organization; now that deposing a political leader for crimes against humanity is an accepted reason for war; now that fundamentalist religious governance is recognized as a threat to world order, the Bush administration can step up and take a hard line on this:

Saudi: Why we punished rape victim

I’ll be waiting right here.

If you haven’t heard of Harun Yahya yet, you may sometime soon. Yahya (don’t you love that name?), whose real name is Adnan Oktar, is a Turkish apologist for Islamic creationism. He’s recently sent copies of his book Atlas of Creation to prominent scientists, academics, and members of Congress.

His avowed purpose is to show, not that Earth is only 4,000 years old or that The Great Flood accounts for mass extinction at one point in paleontology’s history, but instead argues that creatures haven’t evolved at all. Full Story »