Category: Politics

Where Were the Tunisian Islamists? – NYTimes.com. The Tunisian revolt helps clarify a reality about Arab life: The terrorism we’ve seen over the past few years, with its utopian millennialism, doesn’t stem from the real societies of the Middle East. More Islamic radicals are to be found in the West than at home.

Administration Prepares to Lift Ban on New Guantánamo Cases – NYTimes.com. The Obama administration is preparing to increase the use of military commissions to prosecute Guantánamo detainees, an acknowledgment that the prison in Cuba remains open for business after Congress imposed steep new impediments to closing the facility.

Al Akhbar, a Lebanese Paper, Aims at Provoking Readers – NYTimes.com. They are a remarkable blend: the paper champions gay rights, feminism and other leftist causes, even as it wholeheartedly supports Hezbollah, the Iranian-backed Shiite movement. Al Akhbar’s access to Hezbollah allows it to scoop other papers on Lebanon’s biggest continuing story, but it also publishes muckraking exposés on the abuse of domestic workers, prison overcrowding and other delicate subjects. Add splashy full-page color photos and witty tabloid-style headlines, and you have an alluring product.

Chris Hayes, on the tax cut deal: “It’s the standard bribery model of legislating that has come to characterize Washington in the era of oligarchy: if you want to put food on the table of the unemployed, you must lavishly wine and dine the CEOs and bankers who laid them off.” [From The Era Of Oligarchy]

For God or for Fame? The Making of a Teenage Bomber | Culture | Religion Dispatches. Ironically, while Mohamud lamented how unrepresented he was by American Muslims and Somalis, his arrest has become fodder for speculations about what it tells us about the nature of these communities.

The Deepest Dangers Facing the United States – Newsweek. America’s social harmony has depended at least to some degree on economic growth. It is easier to get along when everyone, more or less, is getting ahead. But when the pie is shrinking, social groups are more likely to turn on each other. America has always been a remarkably classless society—obsessed by status and money, perhaps, but fluid enough so there was never an identifiable social class that was able to keep the rest out.

Tension grows between Calif. Muslims, FBI after informant infiltrates mosque. In the Irvine case, Monteilh’s mission as an informant backfired. Muslims were so alarmed by his talk of violent jihad that they obtained a restraining order against him.

Sepoy asks the tough question over at Chapati Mystery. We’ve been giving money to a fraud, but we believe we can identify targets through drone cameras. Do we even know who we are after? Fake Talibothra. So, tell me, spy novel world, how is it that you cannot identify someone you give money to, someone you introduce to highest officials but you ask us to believe that you know without any doubt that someone you kill without any formal charge, any trial is the right target?

The bravery of a young Staten Island hate crime victim | SILive.com. Ganging up on a helpless special needs kid because his family is Muslim may not walk or quack like a typical hate crime, especially when one of these alleged gems is black and his three alleged beloveds are Hispanic.  Don’t look now, alleged parents, but the apples of your eyes are cheesing in the same big picture with skinheads, the junior Klan and the rest of the Hitler youth.  Too bad your alleged whiz kids cut history class. They missed the lesson that taught about a time when…

Islamic allies help Western agencies infiltrate al-Qaida » Knoxville News Sentinel. The case of Rahman, which Shah recounted to The Associated Press, falls in line with a key aspect of the fight against terror – Western intelligence agencies, with help from Islamic allies, are placing moles and informants inside al-Qaida and the Taliban. The program seems to be bearing fruit, even as many infiltrators like Rahman are discovered and killed.