John McCain has been running mainly against Barack Obama in recent days, and has been running on the successes he says that the Iraqi government has racked up. McCain (and the US corporate media) manages to avoid noticing that Turkey has staged a major incursion into Iraq and still has ground troops there and is […]
Archives for February 2008
Burke’s Peerage: Queen Elizabeth II Descended from the Prophet Muhammad
I was surprised that the writers of comments over at Salon.com did not know the below. It is common knowledge to anyone interested in genealogy. I know that it is hard for people invested in a hard East/ West dichotomy to imagine that the icon of Western civilization, the British royal family, has Arab Muslim […]
Obama Scores against McCain
So first came the question posed by Tim Russert and Barack Obama’s answer in Tuesday evening’s debate in Cleveland, which went like this according to the official transcript: ‘ MR. RUSSERT: . . . do you reserve a right as American president to go back into Iraq, once you have withdrawn, with sizable troops in […]
Barack Hussein Obama, Omar Bradley, Benjamin Franklin and other Semitically Named American Heroes
At Cincinnati, Bill Cunningham, according to the LAT, who “introduced presidential candidate John McCain at a rally here today accused Barack Obama of sympathizing with ‘world leaders who want to kill us’ and invoked Obama’s middle name — three times calling him ‘Barack Hussein Obama.’ ” John McCain repudiated Cunningham’s low tactics and said that […]
Turkish Army Kills 41 Kurdish Fighters; 4 Shiite Pilgrims Killed in Bombing; 8 Iraqi Soldiers Killed in Diyala
The Turkish military announced on Monday that it had killed another 41 Kurdish guerrillas inside Iraq. It claims to have killed 151 fighters of the Kurdish Workers Party (PKK) during the present operation. It admitted the deaths of 2 more Turkish troops, bringing the total loss for Ankara in this operation to 17 dead. The […]
Sartorial Politics
With reference to this story about Barack Obama dressing traditionally on a good will trip abroad: Here is Bill Clinton doing the same thing: And here is Hillary Clinton in Palestinian dress with Suha Arafat back in her even-handed, fair days: and here is George W. Bush in Chinese robes with Hu Jintao and Vladimir […]
60 Dead in Attack on Shiite Pilgrims; Turkish invaders Kill 33 PKK Guerrillas; 2 US Soldiers Killed; Stewart Skewers McCain
Between 40 and 60 Shiites were killed and 105 wounded on Sunday by a suicide bomber at Iskandariya in northern Babil province as they made their way south to the holy city of Karbala. Entire families were on the move together, so that the bombing killed or wounded many women and children. Many of the […]
Osama Bin Laden’s "Second Life"
My column for Salon.com on “Osama bin Laden’s “Second Life”: In virtual worlds, does it take two terrorists to tango? And how much should we worry about those secret stockpiles of cartoon weapons?” Is now available. By the way, Save the Internet.
Serbs Try to Attack US Embassy in Vienna; Munter Warns Serbia
Frances Trix of Indiana University and a long-time researcher in Kosovo gives the historical and cultural context of the Balkan crisis at our collective Global Affairs blog. Kosovo independence from Serbia continues to provoke Serbian protests, including a rally of 6,000 in Vienna on Sunday that turned violent when 600 hooligans tried to move toward […]