Sunday, March 16, 2008

Young Osama



Osama bin Laden’s old school—the Al Thagher Model School—sits on several dozen arid acres lined by eucalyptus trees, whose branches have been twisted by winds from the Red Sea. The campus spreads north from the Old Mecca Road, near downtown Jedda, the Saudi Arabian port city where bin Laden spent most of his childhood and teen-age years. The school’s main building is a two-story rectangle constructed from concrete and fieldstone in a featureless modern style. Inside, dim hallways connect two wings of classrooms. In bin Laden’s day—he graduated in 1976—there was a wing for middle-school students, and another for the high school. more

Thursday, February 21, 2008

Lugar-Obama: New Initiatives in Cooperation Threat Reduction

Lugar-Obama: New Initiatives in Cooperation Threat Reduction

U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Dick Lugar chaired a hearing on “New Initiatives in Cooperative Threat Reduction” on Thursday, February 9, 2006. The Honorable Robert Joseph, Under Secretary of State for Arms Control and International Security, testified at the hearing that discussed the Lugar-Obama bill.

Introduced on November 1, 2005, by Sens. Lugar and Barack Obama (D-IL), Lugar-Obama is comprehensive legislation that would expand the cooperative threat reduction concept to conventional weapons. It is patterned after the Nunn-Lugar program that focuses on weapons of mass destruction in the former Soviet Union and would expand the detection and interdiction of weapons and materials of mass destruction.

Senate Passes Coburn-Obama Bill to Create Internet Database of Federal Spending




September 8, 2006

(WASHINGTON, D.C.) – U.S. Senators Tom Coburn (R-OK) and Barack Obama (D-IL) today hailed the Senate’s passage of the “Federal Funding Accountability and Transparency Act,” a bill that will create a Google-like search engine and database to track approximately $1 trillion in federal grants, contracts, earmarks and loans.

“Every American has the right to know how their government spends their money, and then to hold elected officials accountable for those decisions. I applaud my colleagues for unanimously supporting a bill that will aid the American people in that effort,” Dr. Coburn said. “This bill is a small but significant step toward changing the culture in Washington. Only by fostering a culture of openness, transparency and accountability will Congress come together to address the mounting fiscal challenges that threaten our future prosperity.” more

Wednesday, January 30, 2008

Seven Questions: The World According to Hamas

"He's been called a terrorist, an extremist, and the mastermind behind the recent chaos in Gaza. The state of Israel has even tried to assassinate him. But Khaled Meshaal, the political leader of Hamas, insists he is a moderate man in search of peace for the Palestinian people."

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FP: Should the American people, who remember what Hamas did in the 1990s with suicide bombers and who read reports about the Qassam rockets, be scared of Hamas?

KM: Hamas is a moderate movement. It is not religiously dogmatic. We are Muslims because we are from a Muslim environment, just as you and others are from a Christian environment. We accept religious pluralism and, likewise, political pluralism. And we have open relations with Christians. And third, the martyrdom operations are part of the response to the Israeli massacres. So why do the people in America, or the West, or the world in general, criticize what is being done by Hamas, or the Palestinian people, but they do not criticize Israel’s behavior? Israel is extremely heavily armed and the strongest state in the region, while we are isolated. Our rockets are extremely primitive, while Israel has American rockets, Apache [helicopter gunships], and laser-guided missiles. more

Tuesday, January 29, 2008

Elevator Prayer in Cairo

I've ridden in many, many Chicago and New York elevators where this would have been very useful... and I LOVE Current.com!

Waving Goodbye to Hegemony - NYTimes

By PARAG KHANNA - Turn on the TV today, and you could be forgiven for thinking it’s 1999. Democrats and Republicans are bickering about where and how to intervene, whether to do it alone or with allies and what kind of world America should lead. Democrats believe they can hit a reset button, and Republicans believe muscular moralism is the way to go. It’s as if the first decade of the 21st century didn’t happen — and almost as if history itself doesn’t happen. But the distribution of power in the world has fundamentally altered over the two presidential terms of George W. Bush, both because of his policies and, more significant, despite them. Maybe the best way to understand how quickly history happens is to look just a bit ahead. more