UN Security Council Votes for Cease-Fire

If a Jinn asked me what wish I would like to be granted – I would ask that historical amnesia be erased from all peoples.  Alon Levy does a great job reminding us of how other immigrants were viewed by Americans.  A couple of grafs to whet your appetite: Islam and Christianity are so similar that they are almost, but not quite, the same religion. They’re both monotheistic, with all the cultural implications this carries. They both have a progressive view of the world, in which good works and proselytization will create an increasingly better world. Their eschatologies are remarkably…

Good for the Iraqis. Newsday.com is reporting that an estimated 1000 people have marched through the streets of Najaf urging Sadr and his army to leave town. A story on King Abdullah of Jordan on Slate reports other good news. “…On April 29 in Amman, Jordan’s capital, Abdullah’s wife Queen Rania led a march against terrorism. The Pan-Arab daily Al Hayat reported that close to 150,000 people turned out, some of them burning photographs of Osama Bin Laden and al-Qaida associate Abu Musab Zarqawi, a Jordanian national who had allegedly plotted a chemical attack against several targets in Amman. Jordanians…

The BBC is reporting protests in Osh and Jalalabad in Kyrgyzstan in response to the recent election. Bishkek is brewing. I had put the rumblings going on there as flights of fancy. However, if Osh and Jalalabad are in fact under control of the opposition, this could be a very serious movement. The fact that the Bishkek rally was broken up relatively peacefully I think bodes well for the opposition.