Honduras, Iran, and Iraq

A few updates:

The situation in Honduras is still confused with some in the government still insisting that it was not a coup:

Roberto Micheletti, the veteran congressional leader who was sworn in by his fellow lawmakers on Sunday to replace Mr. Zelaya, seemed to plead with the world to understand that Mr. Zelaya’s arrest by the army [...]

Iran and Democracy

In some ways, the thing that makes what’s happening in Iran (The Lede has been a very good place to get information, but won’t put up anything new over the weekend) so bad is that Iran has more freedom than most of the countries in the Middle East. Women have many more rights and there is some democracy. That’s [...]

Iran and Neo-Cons

I mostly defended my PhD dissertation yesterday, so I should now have a bit more time to post (I have to finish writing the dissertation and give a final next Tuesday, so I still don’t have much time).
And the big story is in Iran, where it seems obvious that the election was rigged and it’s [...]

8 year olds and marriage

A Saudi court has granted a divorce to an 8 year old girl. I’m not sure what the worst aspect of this case is. Is it:
“It is incorrect to say that it’s not permitted to marry off girls who are 15 and younger,” Sheikh Abdul Aziz Al-Sheikh, the kingdom’s grand mufti, said in January, according [...]

Development in Jerusalem

Jerusalem mayor Nir Barkat is in Boston trying to drum up money for the city. And the article says he’s very inclusive:
Working with Weinberg, who’s collaborated with Porter for more than a decade, they formed Startup Jerusalem, a nongovernmental organization that lined up secular and Orthodox Jews as well as Arabs to support the cluster-based [...]

Israel, Gaza, DR Congo, Somalia, Zimbabwe

There is talk of an end to the conflict in Gaza. The question is if things will be any better or if anything has been decided. A couple things make me skeptical. This statement by Secretary Rice:

“There is much that can be done to bring Gaza out of the dark of Hamas’s reign and into the [...]

A Pox on both their houses

This shows that both sides in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict are contemptible:
Some 280 families — 1,674 people — had been sheltering inside the school, Al Fakhura, according to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, which helps Palestinian refugees and their descendants and which runs the school. Most came from farther north in Gaza, near Beit Lahiya, [...]

Saudi Monarch Decries Extremism Except His

Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah has sponsored an inter-faith meeting to speak out against extremism:
“My brothers, we must tell the world differences do not lead to conflict and confrontation,” said King Abdullah, flanked by Spain’s King Juan Carlos at a royal palace west of Madrid.
“Tragedies that have occurred in history were not caused by religion but [...]

Hamas-Israeli Truce?

This would be good news:
“The Palestinian and Israeli sides have accepted the first stage of a reciprocal and simultaneous period of calm, starting in the Gaza Strip, from 0600 on Thursday,” an unidentified senior Egyptian official told the state news agency MENA.
Mahmoud Zahar, a leader of Hamas, the Islamic group that controls Gaza, confirmed at [...]

Israel and Hamas

In some ways these two quotes about the killing of a family in Gaza show the reason people have a problem with the way Israel is acting:
Maj. Avital Leibovich, the Israeli military’s chief spokeswoman for the foreign press, said that while the army was still investigating, an initial inquiry into the events showed that several [...]

Bush Lies In Speech Saying Iran Lies

President Bush just isn’t very good at this public relations stuff is he? In an interview that will be beamed into Iran, Bush makes this statement:
“The problem is the government cannot be trusted to enrich uranium because one, they’ve hidden programs in the past and they may be hiding one now, who knows; and secondly, [...]

Palestinians

This is disturbing:
According to the poll, conducted last week with 1,270 Palestinians in face-to-face interviews, 84 percent supported the March 6 attack on the Mercaz Harav yeshiva, one of Israel’s most prominent centers of religious Zionism and ideological wellspring of the settler movement in the West Bank. Mr. Shikaki said that this is the single [...]

McCain: Sunni, Shiite, One Of Those

Isn’t McCain supposed to be experienced in foreign policy? He sounds a little like Huckabee here:
Speaking to reporters in Amman, the Jordanian capital, McCain said he and two Senate colleagues traveling with him continue to be concerned about Iranian operatives “taking al-Qaeda into Iran, training them and sending them back.”
Pressed to elaborate, McCain said it [...]

The World

Israel is out of Gaza after 2 Israeli troop deaths, 1 Israeli civilian dead, and 116 Palestinians dead. That would be good news (the troops leaving) except nothing was really accomplished, so this will almost certainly be repeated in the near future.
It seems that the scorched earth policies that Sudan used early in the conflict [...]

Israel, Palestine, and Turkey

Turkey has pulled out of Iraq for now, which is good, but the battles will continue.
The situation in Gaza has taken a turn for the worse as Hamas has increased its missile attacks (including longer range ones) and now Israel has made a major strike into Gaza killing at least 54 (and at least two Israeli [...]

Gaza and Egypt

I was curious about the toppling of the walls on the border of Gaza and Egypt. Israel is trying to blockade Gaza to punish Hamas for the rockets launched into Israel and yet there has not been much of an outcry against this (and no action by the Israeli military). I think this article gives much [...]

More on the Iran ‘Incident’

Silly me. In an earlier post, I had said I trusted the Revolutionary Guard of Iran less than the Pentagon when it came to the incident in the Straits of Hormuz. It now turns out that the incident was typical and only played up (with the requisite lying) to make a point (and I’m sure [...]

Same Old Rhetoric

President Bush is again talking about pushing democracy in the Middle East:
“For decades, the people of this region saw their desire for liberty and justice denied at home and dismissed abroad in the name of stability,” the president said. “Today your aspirations are threatened by violent extremists who murder the innocent in pursuit of power.”
This [...]

Iran and the US

Hmm, the ‘confrontation’ between the US and some Iranian boats is even more confused. It now seems at least the audio of the Pentagon’s version might not be accurate (with the threats coming from some other source). I might have to revise my trust of the Pentagon even further down (perhaps now below that of [...]

The World

Things in many places of the world are having problems:
Kenya seems on the verge of tribal warfare;
Pakistan seems to be having more religious strife–the latest a bombing of a planned anti-government rally by lawyers;
Somalia and it’s chaos is one of the main reasons pirate attacks are up;
Darfur, which had been looking a bit better, is having problems with [...]