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By Ned Sublette $16.47
By Richard Rhodes $28.95
$23
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 USAF / Michael B. Keller
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By Scott Ritter — Iraq is not Vietnam, yet there are parallels between the two wars. The American military dominated the battlefield in both conflicts, and yet America the nation emerged the loser in each. A “decent interval” is now needed for American troops to withdraw.
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By William Pfaff — The steady expansion of nominally illegal colonies into the Palestinian territories has gone on to the point where the political parties are now incapable of disengaging from the settlement enterprise.
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By Amy Goodman — While the Nobel prizes recognize lifetime achievements in medicine, chemistry, physics, literature, economics and peace, and Sweden is a paragon among progressive, social democracies, there is another side to Sweden and the Nobels that warrants a closer look.
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By Ellen Goodman — It was a moment bound to give anyone second thoughts about Hillary Clinton’s nomination as secretary of state: Rush Limbaugh called it a “brilliant stroke.”
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By Amy Goodman — As President-elect Barack Obama focuses on the meltdown of the U.S. economy, another fire is burning: the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
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Carolyn Eisenberg takes a close look at Melvyn Leffler’s “For the Soul of Mankind” to ask whether our current troubles are rooted in a history that continues to haunt us.
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By Rep. Dennis Kucinich — America must move from the errant, retributive justice of 9/11 to a healing, restorative process of truth and reconciliation.
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With Condoleezza Rice fast approaching on a peace mission, Israel offered Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas a show of support on Monday by freeing 198 Palestinian prisoners. The group included Israel’s longest serving prisoner. Israel holds roughly 9,000 Palestinians.
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 AP photo / Muhammed Muheisen
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By Bill Boyarsky — Sen. Barack Obama’s visit to Israel last week no doubt displeased the outspoken hawkish minority in the American Jewish community who want the Palestinians to be crushed. But it may have helped him with the more moderate majority of that community, where he must pick up support.
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Before leaving Jordan for neighboring Israel, Barack Obama promised to pursue peace between Israelis and Palestinians “starting from the minute I’m sworn into office,” and to “be concerned and recognize the legitimate difficulties that the Palestinian people are experiencing right now.” His deference to impartiality comes a month after the candidate seemed to cede the city of Jerusalem, whether accidentally or not, to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee.
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 Flickr / World Economic Forum
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Tony Blair had hoped to visit Gaza in his capacity as Mideast envoy for the Quartet—that’s the U.S., the U.N., the EU and Russia—but had to cancel because of a “specific security threat.” It’s hard to be an envoy if you can’t get to where you need to go, but the former British prime minister promised to make it to Gaza eventually and “press for help for the people there.”
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By Amy Goodman — “Utah” Phillips died this week at the age of 73. He was a musician, labor organizer, peace activist and co-founder of his local homeless shelter.
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The Mosaic Intelligence Report looks at two welcome developments in the Middle East: On Wednesday, Israel and Syria said they had begun indirect talks in Turkey, the first confirmation in eight years of negotiations between the long-time enemies. On that same day, the Gulf state of Qatar scored a diplomatic coup by pulling off a deal intended to end Lebanon’s protracted crisis.
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The just-published journals of Rachel Corrie, killed by an Israeli bulldozer, reveal her to have been a natural-born writer and a spirit full of intensity and yearning whose lust for life and sense of justice made her untimely death all the more tragic.
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 commons.wikimedia.org
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The politically weakened government of Ehud Olmert is engaged in peace talks with neighboring Syria, the two countries have acknowledged. Turkey is moderating the indirect negotiations, the first since 2000. The last round of talks failed over the demand for Israeli withdrawal from the Golan Heights.
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 AP photo / Kevin Frayer
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By Allen McDuffee — George W. Bush’s attempt to juggle Israel’s 60th anniversary, Israeli-Palestinian peace efforts and his hostility toward Iran means that Palestinians lose again.
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 warnewsradio.org
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In this first installment in her series of stories from Iraq for Truthdig, veteran foreign correspondent Anna Badkhen reports about the civilian costs of war, life under occupation and the precarious state of a Baghdad burger joint.
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 AP photo / Lefteris Pitarakis
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Israelis have begun celebrating their nation’s diamond anniversary with fireworks and public cheer. The Jewish state was founded shortly after World War II and has known almost constant conflict as well as remarkable growth in the decades since. Many Palestinians, who refer to the country’s founding as “the Catastrophe,” are preparing to mark the occasion with something less than delight.
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Israel denied Hamas a proposed six-month truce in the Gaza Strip on Friday, claiming such a lull would be used by Palestinians to prepare for future attacks against Israel. The cease-fire bid was seen by Israel as a “game” by Hamas, as Israeli airstrikes and commando raids continued in Gaza.
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 flickr.com / John Barnabas
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“Informed sources” say the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights, a historically contested area between Israel and Syria, may soon find itself under new management. The two countries, which have been at war with each other since 1973, are both looking to resume the stalled 2000 peace talk process, which Syria has declared will not happen until the Golan Heights are returned.
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By Joshua Holland, AlterNet —
What separates Jimmy Carter from the neocons, other than a Nobel Prize, is his genuine desire to negotiate a Middle East peace settlement, and that means talking to everyone.
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 AP photo / Jeff Zelevansky, pool
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Pope Benedict XVI’s latest major stop on his U.S. tour took him to the United Nations, where he held forth about the need to prioritize human rights for all and pointed out how the majority of power to impact global events still remains in the hands of very few key players.
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 AP photo / Walter Petruska
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The State Department says it has twice asked Jimmy Carter not to meet with Hamas leaders, but the former president says he feels “quite at ease” in going ahead with a scheduled meeting because “Hamas will have to be included” if there is to be peace in the region.
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 AP photo / Carol Phelps
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By Robert Scheer — A trillion dollars here, a trillion dollars there, and soon you’re talking real money. But when it comes to reporting on what the Bush war legacy has cost American taxpayers, the media have been shockingly indifferent to the highest run-up in military spending since World War II.
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By Eugene Robinson — Quite a “defining moment” in Iraq, wasn’t it? At this rate, John McCain is going to be proved right: The war will last a century.
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 runcynthiarun.org/votenader.org
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By Chris Hedges — Those of us who oppose the war, who believe that all U.S. troops should be withdrawn and the network of permanent bases in Iraq dismantled, have only two options in the coming presidential elections—Ralph Nader and Cynthia McKinney.
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 AP photo / Oded Balilty
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By Chris Hedges — War creates a world without empathy. Those who have empathy cannot, as did Palestinian gunman Alaa Hisham Abu Dheim, coldly murder students in a Jerusalem library. Those who have empathy cannot drop tons of iron fragmentation bombs on crowded Palestinian refugee camps in Gaza, killing more than 120 Palestinians in a week, of whom one in five were children and more than half were civilians.
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 AP photo / Gerald Herbert
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In keeping with the tradition of U.S. presidents attempting to forge peace agreements during their last years in office, President Bush remains optimistic about securing an Israeli-Palestinian peace deal in the final 10 months of his administration despite the recent outbreak of violence in the Middle East.
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 news.bbc.co.uk
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It’s safe to assume that the people currently advising Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton on foreign policy will continue to do so if their candidate is elected. So what approaches can we expect from an Obama or a Clinton administration? There are some bad apples in either bunch, but Foreign Policy in Focus says the company Obama and Clinton keep largely parallels their votes on the war.
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 AP photo / Baz Ratner
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By Milton Viorst — Can decent Israelis, caught between complacency and conscience, save their beleaguered country from the corruptions of power, religious fanaticism and crippling hubris?
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By Barry Lando — The former “60 Minutes” producer laments the unfortunate tendency to treat any criticism of Israel as an attack on the Jewish people and a denial of their past suffering.
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 AP photo / Haraz N. Ghanbari
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“Men, for years now, have been talking about war and peace. But now, no longer can they just talk about it. It is no longer a choice between violence and nonviolence in this world; it’s nonviolence or nonexistence. That is where we are today.” —Martin Luther King Jr.
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 AP photo / Khalil Hamra
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By Chris Hedges — The former New York Times Middle East bureau chief warns that the actions that led to the humanitarian crisis in Gaza will not bring peace to Israel but will instead create a new generation of Palestinian militants.
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The Mosaic Intelligence Report looks at Bush’s rosy predictions for peace in the Middle East and explains why his optimism is unwarranted.
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 news.bbc.co.uk
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President Bush has arrived in Israel, where he plans to do some legacy shopping and see if he can’t just solve this Mideast conflict everyone is always talking about. Everyday Israelis and Palestinians, however, remain skeptical that their leaders will find a solution before the end of 2008, as promised.
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By Carol Brightman — Three new memoirs by veterans of the New Left provide nuance and complexity to a tumultuous decade whose political and cultural legacy is still contested. Bonus points to those who can answer the question: Do you still need a Weatherman to know which way the wind blows?
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By Zachary Karabell — With religious passions inflaming and complicating politics worldwide, the very project of a secular future is threatened. In “The Stillborn God,” Mark Lilla reveals the roots of the age-old quest to bring political life under God’s authority. He also explores how modern Western thinkers found a way to free politics from theological power and build barriers against destructive religious fanaticism.
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 White House photo / Tina Hager
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For the first time during his presidency, in the final year of his final term, George W. Bush is headed to Israel and the West Bank. Given that he’s even less popular in the Mideast than he is at home, massive security preparations are under way.
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Video blogger and Dennis Kucinich fan Davis Fleetwood hits the streets of Des Moines to find out why the peace candidate was excluded from the final Democratic debate before the Iowa caucus.
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 AP photo / Bela Szandelszky
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By Chris Hedges — The refusal to pay my taxes if we go to war with Iran, and the portion of my taxes spent on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan if we do not cut off funding for these two conflicts, is not a means. It is an end. I do not know if my refusal, and the refusal of others, will be effective in halting these wars. All I know is that it is worth doing.
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Now that the Annapolis peace summit is over, the Mosaic Intelligence Report investigates the fallout from lowering the diplomatic bar, putting the slapstick back in world affairs and the conspicuous absence of Iraq, Iran and Hamas.
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By Robert Fisk — Haven’t we been here before? Isn’t Annapolis just a repeat of the White House lawn and the Oslo agreement, a series of pious claims and promises in which two weak men, Messrs. Abbas and Olmert, even use the same words of Oslo.
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 AP photo / Gerald Herbert
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If Israeli and Palestinian officials can’t find a way to establish a Palestinian state, the state of Israel won’t survive, according to Israel’s Prime Minister Ehud Olmert. These words of warning came on the heels of Olmert’s meeting with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and President Bush in Annapolis, Md., during which the three leaders laid out plans and set goals for formal peace talks.
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Olle Johansson, Sweden —
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