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Rashid Khalidi [Updated]

Updates: There’s a move to push Khalidi’s book, The Iron Cage, into the public consciousness. I haven’t read this particular book, but it’s en route. Get yours here. Juan Cole has some more information. Rosenberg at TPM Café (one of my favorite writers over there) [/end update] ———- Prof. Rashid Khalidi is under fire once more. Apparently John McCain gave him some money and some Republicans don’t like the fact that McCain is running a virulently xenophobic campaign, and borderline anti-Semitic one that treats Jews as mindless, sub-human, single-issue voters, while at the same time funding a xeno. Prof. Khalidi…

Central Asian Elections

First hat-tip here. The NYT is not allowing perma-links on the issue. Try to check out their coverage. Tajikistan, the country with which I’m most familiar, has a great deal of potential in terms of human capital. It would be a shame if the corruption of the government kept it from realizing its potential. While the initial blush of post-Soviet headiness in the international community has faded, I believe there is enough aid and interest in Tajikistan that it still has a short window in which it could develop a sustainable economy.

Prisoner Treatment, Morality, and #Torture

Juan Cole is brilliant in his analysis of how the US lost the moral high ground on prisoner treatment, in part because of our torture polices. But I fear that the argument that the public humiliation of prisoners is against international law won’t take the US very far after 8 years of Bush-Cheney. After the evidence surfaced that the US military took all those humiliating pictures of prisoners at Abu Ghraib to blackmail them by threatening to make them public, the US assertion of support for this principle of the Geneva Conventions will be met with, well, let us say…