David Adler
Israel/Kurdistan
Wow, I guess it just became a lot more dangerous for American Jews like me to travel to Iraqi Kurdistan.
“The devil”
Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez has made this UN General Assembly an event to remember, referring to President Bush as “the devil.” Interesting that he should resort to religious symbology. During Ahmadinejad’s recent Venezuela visit, Chavez declared that Islam is “revolutionary.” (In fairness, he said the same of Christianity, though he probably didn’t have “Jesus Camp” in mind.) Marc Cooper notes that
IAEA and Iran
The UN General Assembly is meeting here in New York, and United for Peace and Justice (UFPJ) is rallying against a potential U.S. military strike on Iran. Fine with me — I’m 100 percent opposed to any such attack. But UFPJ’s sample letter to the UN Security Council contains the following inaccuracy: The IAEA is unequivocal that there is no
Islam and the pope
It’s not often that I find myself in a Catholic church. But this past weekend I happened to hear a priest deliver a noxious homily, one that sheds light on the current controversy involving the pope’s remarks on Islam. In this homily, a priest and a Buddhist monk are trekking through the Himalayas in search of a remote monastery. Along
Torture: the real stakes
An essential post from Marty Lederman [all italics in the original]: — “It’s important to be clear about one thing: The question is not simply whether, in the abstract, it would be a good or acceptable idea for the United States to use such techniques in certain extreme circumstances on certain detainees. I happen to think that the moral, pragmatic,
Sunday rally for Darfur
New York info here. There are rallies taking place in other cities around the world. James Traub had a piece on Chinese diplomacy in the NY Times Magazine of September 3. You want to talk about blood for oil? Learn about China’s underwriting of the Darfur genocide.
McLaughlin on the Tonight Show
I knew I wasn’t dreaming when I saw John McLaughlin, fusion guitar god, play “Cherokee” on the Johnny Carson show in 1985, shortly before I graduated high school. Here’s the video. I can’t express how excited I am to rediscover this. There’s lots of other Mahavishnu clips to be found on YouTube.
Bigotry rebutted
In early August I linked to an explicitly antisemitic article in the Berkeley Daily Planet by an Iranian student named Kurosh Arianpour. To her credit, Becky O’Malley, the editor of the Planet, has written a pretty forceful rebuttal, addressed to Arianpour directly. Not sure what took her so long, however, or what possessed her to print Arianpour’s piece without additional