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ei: What Obama missed in the Middle East : "When I and other Palestinian-Americans first knew Barack Obama in Chicago in the 1990s, he grasped the oppression faced by Palestinians under Israeli occupation. He understood that an honest broker cannot simultaneously be the main cheerleader, financier and arms supplier for one side in a conflict. He often attended Palestinian-American community events and heard about the Palestinian experience from perspectives stifled in mainstream discussion. In recent months, Obama has sought to allay persistent concerns from pro-Israel groups by recasting himself as a stalwart backer of Israel and tacking ever closer to positions espoused by the powerful, hard-line pro-Israel lobby AIPAC. He distanced himself from mainstream advisers because pro-Israel groups objected to their calls for even-handedness. Like his Republican rival, Senator John McCain, Obama gave staunch backing to Israel's 2006 bombing of Lebanon, which killed over 1,200 people...

A serious of Six videos in Amharic Language. VIDEO: Ethiopian Review publisher on ETN :: Ethiopian Review Ethiopian Television Network interviews Ethiopian Review publisher Elias Kifle. The interview was conducted on May 24, 2008, at the ETN studio in Alexandria, Virginia.

Obama is saying the wrong things about Afghanistan | Salon : "July 23, 2008 | Barack Obama's Afghanistan and Iraq policies are mirror images of each other. Obama wants to send 10,000 extra U.S. troops to Afghanistan, but wants to withdraw all American soldiers and Marines from Iraq on a short timetable. In contrast to the kid gloves with which he treated the Iraqi government, Obama repeated his threat to hit at al-Qaida in neighboring Pakistan unilaterally, drawing howls of outrage from Islamabad. But Obama's pledge to defeat the Taliban in Afghanistan will not be easy to fulfill. While coalition troop deaths have declined significantly in Iraq, NATO casualties in Afghanistan are way up. By shifting emphasis from Iraq to Afghanistan, would a President Obama be jumping from the frying pan into the fire? During the Baghdad stop of his ongoing overseas tour, the convergence between the worldview of the presumptive Democratic nominee and that of his Iraqi hosts provided some e...

Wonk Room » Escalation Architect Fred Kagan Doubles Down On His Claim That Sectarian Cleansing In Baghdad Is A ‘Myth’ In a presentation yesterday at the American Enterprise Institute, escalation architect Frederick Kagan repeated his claim that sectarian cleansing has not affected the drop in violence in Iraq. Kagan called it a “myth”: The bad news from this perspective is that the sectarian areas of Iraq is still mixed. The good news is that the sectarian areas of Iraq are still mixed. And there is a myth out there that the violence has fallen because all of the cleansing is done. That is absolutely not the case. Kagan’s claim is contested by major news organizations and the U.S. military’s own data. In December 2007, the Washington Post published the maps below, comparing the sectarian make-up of Baghdad’s neighborhoods in April 2006 and November 2007, and revealing the transformation of the city resulting from sectarian cleansing:

Meles Zenawi’s executioner is in DC :: Ethiopian Review : "The head of Ethiopia’s notorious Federal Police, Workneh Gebeyenu, is currently in Washington DC. He has been observed at some Ethiopian restaurants socializing and partying. Workneh Gebeyehu is a mass murderer who had executed Meles Zenawi’s order to gun down pro-democracy protesters in 2005. Workneh is personally responsible for the June and November 2005 massacres of pro-democracy protesters in Ethiopia. He was also in charge of building the Nazi-type concentration camps in Zeway, Bir Sheleko, Denkoro Chaka, Shoba Robit and other regions of Ethiopia where close to 100,000 young Ethiopians were rounded up detained by the Federal Police following the May 2005 elections. Many of the detainees have been savagely tortured and exposed to diseases such as malaria. Ethiopian Review is working to identify the whereabout and travel itinerary of this monster criminal so that appropriate legal actions can be taken against him....

Hardline Islamist takes over Somalia's opposition : "MOGADISHU, July 22 (Reuters) - Somalia's hardline Islamist Sheikh Hassan Dahir Aweys said on Tuesday he had taken charge of the exiled opposition in Eritrea from its moderate chairman who attended U.N.-brokered peace talks last month. 'Now I Sheikh Hassan Dahir Aweys am the chairman of the executive committee as well as the general head,' Sheikh Dahir Aweys, who is on U.S. and U.N. lists of al Qaeda associates, told Reuters by phone. Aweys takes over as head of the Alliance for the Re-Liberation of Somalia (ARS) from the moderate Sheikh Sharif Ahmed. 'Sheikh Sharif was replaced because he and his group hated and left the Somali Re-Liberation group in Asmara,' he said. Somalia's interim government and some members of the ARS signed a deal in Djibouti last month calling for the deployment of U.N. peacekeepers and agreeing to a ceasefire after a month. Aweys and other hardline Islamists rejected the pact...

Realists Urge Bush to Drop Iran Precondition - by Jim Lobe : "Two of Washington's most prominent foreign policy graybeards praised Saturday's direct participation in multinational talks with Iran by a senior U.S. diplomat but called on the administration of President George W. Bush to drop his demands that Tehran freeze its uranium enrichment program as a precondition for broader negotiations. Retired Gen. Brent Scowcroft, who served as national security adviser under Republican presidents Gerald Ford and George H. W. Bush, and Zbigniew Brzezinski, who held the same post under Democratic President Jimmy Carter, urged Bush to go further by offering immediate rewards to Tehran in exchange for such a freeze. And both men warned that repeated U.S. threats to use military force against Iran were counterproductive and strengthened hard-line forces in the regime led by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. They said an actual military attack – whether by the U.S. or by Israel – would li...