Japanese PM Hatoyama’s modified base relocation plan looks like a lose, lose, lose proposition for Okinawa, Japan, and President Obama.
Okinawa and Obama’s Base-Based Addiction
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Reader Challenge: Is Jerusalem ‘crumbling under the weight of its own idealization’?
In a full-page ad in the Wall Street Journal last week, Eli Wiesel described Jerusalem as “the world’s Jewish spiritual capital” and “the heart of our heart, the soul of our soul.” The Sheikh Jarrah [Just Jerusalem] activists who, unlike Wiesel, actually live in Jerusalem, say: “We cannot recognize our city in the sentimental abstraction you call by its name.” They describe the city they call home as “crumbling under the weight of its own idealization.” . . . writes Paul Woodward at War in Context…Jerusalem is crumbling under the weight of its own idealization.
Reader Challenge: Can Moderates Make Charges That Suicide Bombers Are Infidels Stick?
Reports Christian Caryl at Foreign Policy, Pakistani newspapers recently learned that jihadists have “just added a new target to one of their death lists. His name is Tahir ul-Qadri, and he’s no government official. He’s one of Pakistan’s leading Islamic scholars, an authority on the Quran and Islamic religious law.”
The Israeli Exception
North Korea and Israel have a lot in common.
Neither is a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), and both employ their nuclear weapons in elaborate games of peek-a-boo with the international community. Israel and North Korea are equally paranoid about outsiders conspiring to destroy their states, and this paranoia isn’t without some justification. Partly as a result of these suspicions, both countries engage in reckless and destabilizing foreign policies. In recent years, Israel has launched preemptive strikes and invaded other countries, while North Korea has abducted foreign citizens and blown up South Korean targets (including, possibly, a South Korean ship in late March in the Yellow Sea).
What is Democracy?
Intentionally blurring the boundaries between art and activism, Vienna-based artist Oliver Ressler has produced a prolific body of explicitly political works. His theme-specific exhibitions, projects in public space, and multi-part video installations embody new methods of global resistance. Through these works, he relentlessly tackles a wide range of critical topics such as racism, economic globalization, and genetic engineering.
Postcard From…Kogelo
Since Senator Barack Obama became the president of the United States, visiting his paternal grandmother — “Mama Obama” — in her remote west Kenyan village of Kogelo became slightly more difficult. A small military camp had been built next to the access road to her house, and the compound is protected by a metal gate and security post.
Zimbabwe: Sanctions and Solidarity
Zimbabwe is currently the subject of sanctions designed to pressure Robert Mugabe and his colleagues to cease human rights abuses and remove other barriers to democratization in the country. Yet despite some recent positive developments — such as the appointment of independent commissions on human rights, elections, and the media — the future of democracy in Zimbabwe remains highly uncertain.
Interview with Mwandawiro Mghanga
ANDRE VLTCHEK: Can you tell us something about the media coverage of Kenya? It seems to be almost exclusively negative.
MWANDAWIRO MGHANGA: The negative coverage translates to negative and hostile actions against Kenya. Up to now, the United States still has travel ban against Kenya. It is amazing Obama’s government still says that Kenya is not a safe place to travel to.
Review: ‘Bridging Partition’
Over one million people would die before the partition of India and Pakistan was over in 1947, when one country suddenly became two. The governments in Delhi and Islamabad quickly set about recasting national identities that would strengthen each individual regime. Central to these newly formed identities was a strong loathing for the other side, developed through closed borders, years of warfare, and a systematic approach by both governments to create fear. The people, once united, became enemies.
It Looks Good…on Paper
How to judge the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) that ended the second north-south civil war in Sudan, one of the bloodiest and longest on the African continent? In short, the CPA is a decent agreement that suffers from lack of implementation.