God Bless America

The Death of Arafat and the Myth of New Beginnings by Mark Levine in Juan Cole’s Blog Here is a graf: "In the weeks leading up to Palestinian President Yassir Arafat’s death American politicians and pundits have repeatedly called on the Palestinian people to use the opportunity of his passing to transform the intifada from a violent uprising into a non-violent, democratic and pragmatic program for achieving independence. This is very good advice, needless to say, except for one small problem: Palestinians have been trying to build such a movement for the last two decades, and the Israeli Government, IDF…

Does a war-torn country need a garden? [update]: Sectarian bias is a blight on a rare Afghan good news story [update]: Afghanistan’s fight for it’s cultural heritage Afghanistan

An Absurd Rite of Passage – Ta-Nehisi Coates – National – The Atlantic. I wanted to make sure I linked to this excellent op-ed from a young black man, experiencing what all too many of us learn to basically tolerate in New York.