With polls showing that the war in Afghanistan is becoming increasingly unpopular, members of Congress have begun to express skepticism about the administration’s strategy there. Military officials believe that Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the top US commander in Afghanistan, may ask for as many as 20,000 additional troops. ABC News reports today that Sen. Russ Feingold (D-WI) has called on President Obama to announce a timetable for withdrawal from Afghanistan:
Sen. Russ Feingold, D-WI, called on President Obama to announce a timetable for withdrawal of American troops from Afghanistan. “This is a strategy that is not likely to succeed,” Sen. Feingold said about the troop buildup in Afghanistan. [...]
“I think it is time we start discussing a flexible timetable so that people around the world can see when we are going to bring our troops out,” said Feingold. “Showing the people there and here that we have a sense about when it is time to leave is one of the best things we can do,” he added.
If I go out to speak to Jews in college or in their 20’s and 30’s about Israel. I’ll get an enthusiastic response. But if the event is dominated by seniors — as most Jewish events are — I’m in big trouble.
Young Jews are either dovish on Israel or, most commonly, not interested in Israel at all (that latter group tends not to show up). But Jews in the 65-100 year old range skew heavily to the right. When I spoke in Rhode Island recently, I think I would have been murdered by rampaging (and racist) seniors if Lincoln Chafee had not been there to offer me ex-senatorial protection.
Why are young Jews so dovish on Israel (or indifferent)? Simple, they do not buy into the ethnic solidarity thing that the WW2 generation adheres to. They are friends with all kinds of people. They are not ethnic chauvinists or racists. They like the nice things about being Jewish (the culture, faith, food, the good parts of Israel) but do not buy into the paranoid “the whole world hates us” shtik. They are Americans. They aren’t scared. And, with rare exceptions, they would not go near the mainstream Jewish organizations with a mile long pole. Source Article
At around noon on July 5, EST, a phone call, from a verifiable source, was received by a member of former Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney’s camp indicating that the American prisoners in Israel have been moved to a detainment facility closer to the Ben Gurion Airport.
McKinney’s imprisonment has shed additional light upon the plight of Gaza – which is one of two possible results of her trip – the other one being that supplies and a little joy for the children might have actually been delivered.
Either way, it’s a step toward healing Gaza. And the Palestinians, observing the commitment of the humanitarians to delivering aid, see that some of the world cares. Source Article
Afshin, a shopkeeper from south-west Iran, alleges that one of his friends was beaten and repeatedly raped after being arrested at an opposition rally after last month’s disputed election. He gave this account to Esfandiar Poorgiv, a journalist and academic. It is published here as part of the Guardian’s project to trace those killed and detained during the unrest. The Guardian has been unable to independently verify the account
He came to my shop around 10.30am. You could tell straight away that he had just been released. His face was bruised all over. His teeth were broken and he could hardly open his eyes.
He was not even into politics. He was just an ordinary 18-year-old in the last year of school. Before the election he came to me and asked how he should vote. He looks up to me. His father is an Ahmadinejad supporter.
He had gone home directly after his release, but his father did not let him in. He didn’t mention he had been raped. At first, he didn’t tell me either. It was the doctor who first noticed it and told me. Source Artice
Yesterday we printed a touching letter from an Iranian woman that began with these ominous lines: “I will participate in the demonstrations tomorrow. Maybe they will turn violent. Maybe I will be one of the people who is going to get killed…”
Tonight, she posted a second letter, passed along and translated by two readers. She writes about her “sister” in this cause who was killed today, referring to Neda.
Yesterday I wrote a note, with the subject line “tomorrow is a great day perhaps tomorrow I’ll be killed.” I’m here to let you know I’m alive but my sister was killed…
I’m here to tell you my sister died while in her father’s hands
I’m here to tell you my sister had big dreams…
I’m here to tell you my sister who died was a decent person… and like me yearned for a day when her hair would be swept by the wind… and like me read “Forough” [Forough Farrokhzad]… and longed to live free and equal… and she longed to hold her head up and announce, “I’m Iranian”… and she longed to one day fall in love to a man with a shaggy hair… and she longed for a daughter to braid her hair and sing lullaby by her crib…
my sister died from not having life… my sister died as injustice has no end… my sister died since she loved life too much… and my sister died since she lovingly cared for people…
my loving sister, I wish you had closed your eyes when your time had come… the very end of your last glance burns my soul….
sister have a short sleep. your last dream be sweet.
I don’t remember where I was in the days after the 2001 election. I know for sure I wasn’t out in the streets protesting. I remember being angry – but angry like when a sports team I follow loses in the playoffs. Not angry like I would have been if I’d known George W would spend the next 8 years showering the World with torture and pestilence and taking a virtual hot carl right on our Constitution.
But in Iran they have an election that is flawed (most likely rigged), and instead of just running home to their TV’s and the internet, and going to the mall and buying shit – the Iranian people come out to the street in unprecedented numbers to ensure that the Democratic process is fair and that their voices are heard. They even risk death from the Dick Cheney like police there. Source Article
Mir Hossein Mousavi, the politician at the centre of Iran’s opposition movement, has called for a day of protest and mourning in solidarity with those killed or hurt as tensions over the presidential election results show no sign of ebbing.
Mousavi has urged his supporters to stage peaceful demonstrations or gather in mosques on Thursday.
Ahmadinejad, the conservative incumbent president, was officially declared winner of Friday’s election by a margin of two-to-one over Mousavi, a moderate who was the main challenger.
“In the course of the past days and as a consequence of illegal and violent encounters with [people protesting] against the outcome of the presidential election, a number of our countrymen were wounded or martyred,” Mousavi said on his website on Wednesday. Source Article
Tehran’s streets may be bloody, says Douglas Rushkoff, but the opposition has won the digital war. The battleground: Facebook and Twitter. The weapons: bandwidth and hacking. The prize: the end of totalitarianism.
Perhaps the best indication for Americans that something important is going on in Iran right now is the fact that Twitter has delayed a scheduled downtime for maintenance in order for Iranians and others involved in the post-election digital melee to keep at it. For anyone lacking a Twitter feed and thus missing the intense virtual crossfire, what’s happening is nothing short of a test of Internet users’ ability to challenge not only a regime’s power over an election, but over the network itself. The effort alone constitutes a victory.
Unlike the United States, where Facebook friends, Meetup groups, and other online innovations successfully elected a candidate who (at least initially) lacked top-down support, the Iranian power structure has less compunction about snuffing digital democracy. Incumbent Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is widely believed to have shut down Iranian access to Facebook as soon as it was clear his opponent’s supporters were using the social network to organize rallies and motivate voters. Not that Mousavi’s 36,000 Facebook friends at that point would have led to the undeniable landslide the opposition leader would have needed to actually win—but the heavy-handed gesture hinted at what was to come. It was the opening salvo in a digital war with global implications, and a blueprint for the democratizing influence of the Internet. Source Article
2. Ahmadinejad is claimed to have taken Tehran by over 50%. Again, he is not popular in the cities, even, as he claims, in the poor neighborhoods, in part because his policies have produced high inflation and high unemployment. That he should have won Tehran is so unlikely as to raise real questions about these numbers. [Ahmadinejad is widely thought only to have won Tehran in 2005 because the pro-reform groups were discouraged and stayed home rather than voting.) Source Article
Arab intellectuals remain unsurprisingly split over the speech by Barak Obama to the Islamic world.
While some consider it as bold, historic and an opening of a new chapter in US relations with the Islamic world, others simply see it as evasive and lacking substance.
Ahmed Yousef, senior advisor to the deposed Palestinian prime minister, Ismail Haniya, told Al Jazeera that Obama’s speech was a “landmark”, but had some reservations.
“The things he said about Islam and the Palestinian suffering and their right to have a state is great. It is a landmark and a breakthrough speech,” Yousef said.
“But when it comes to legitimacy of the Israeli right to exist [there are issues]. He knows the Palestinians have to have their own state before recognising another.
“They [the US] recognise the PLO as representative of the Palestinian people, but they don’t recognise the people’s right to return to their own land in Palestine, as set out by the UN resolution. Source Article
With polls showing that the war in Afghanistan is becoming increasingly unpopular, members of Congress have begun to express skepticism about the administration’s strategy there. Military officials believe that Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the top US commander in Afghanistan, may ask for as many as 20,000 additional troops. ABC News reports today that Sen. Russ Feingold (D-WI) has called on President Obama to announce a timetable for withdrawal from Afghanistan:
