iran

When Pope Benedict XVI visits the United States for the first time this month, the media will tread lightly.

Some, like Paul Wolfowitz, have criticized Obama for not responding to the Iranian election violence, symbolized by Neda, more aggressively.

For Obama to steer us back to the softer side of Empire, withdrawing from Iraq and Afghanistan (and negotiating with Iran), he’ll have to overrule his key officials, Hillary Clinton and Dennis Ross, risk alienating Israel for its own good, and stand up to bracing public attacks. And he’ll need a hand from a strong, anti-imperial religious and secular peace movement.

When representatives of many Arab and Muslim nations publicly applaud Ahmadinejad’s racist rant, the real losers are the Palestinians.

At the largely symbolic “Durban II” conference, some Islamic states and their allies are busy equating faith with race, conflating religious criticism with bigotry, and fashioning new political cudgels with which to pummel the West.

People were glued to their Twitter feeds this week, as Iranians microblogged their updates of the civil unrest following the election. But is it possible that we’re not able to see the forest for the twee…ts?

Evil has been a favorite foreign policy tool for conservatives in and around the Bush Administration; problem is, there are often unintended consequences.

Why have homosexuality and gender-bending displaced Jews and anti-Semitism as the bogeymen of fundamentalists across the globe?

What we are witnessing in Iran is a coup against elements of the establishment deemed insufficiently committed to a radical reading of Islam. Unable to handle the messy outcome of democracy is the regime in serious trouble?

What do you hope to accomplish, they ask, meeting with “those people”?