Category: World News & Politics

First Arab Nominated for Holocaust Honor

Tunisian man is first Arab to be nominated for holocaust honor for risking his life to save Tunisian Jews from Nazi persecution.

At the height of World War II, Khaled Abdelwahhab hid a group of Jews on his farm in a small Tunisian town, saving them from the Nazi troops occupying the North African nation.

Now, Abdelwahhab has become the first Arab nominated for recognition as ”Righteous Among the Nations,” an honor bestowed on non-Jews who risked their lives to save Jews from Nazi persecution.

[…]

… Abdelwahhab, the son of an aristocratic family was 32 when German troops arrived in Tunisia in November 1942.

[…]

Abdelwahhab served as an interlocutor between the population of the coastal town of Mahdia and German forces…

When he heard that German officers were planning to rape Odette Boukris, a local Jewish woman, he gathered her family and several other Jewish families in Mahdia — around two dozen people — and took them to his farm outside town. He hid them for four months, until the occupation ended.

[…]

Abdelwahhab still has to be approved by the Yad Vashem commission that grants the honor. Since the war, Yad Vashem has conferred the status on 21,700 people, including some 60 Muslims from the Balkans. But no Arab had ever been nominated.

[Source: NY Times]

[Thanks to Jimbo for the link]

Doomsday Clock To Move Forward

The keepers of the “Doomsday Clock” plan to move its hands forward next Wednesday to reflect what they call worsening nuclear and climate threats to the world.

The symbolic clock, maintained by the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, currently is set at seven minutes to midnight, with midnight marking global catastrophe.

The major new step reflects growing concerns about a ‘Second Nuclear Age’ marked by grave threats, including: nuclear ambitions in Iran and North Korea, unsecured nuclear materials in Russia and elsewhere, the continuing ‘launch-ready’ status of 2,000 of the 25,000 nuclear weapons held by the U.S. and Russia, escalating terrorism, and new pressure from climate change for expanded civilian nuclear power that could increase proliferation risks.

When it was created by the magazine’s staff in 1947, the doomsday clock was initially set at seven minutes to midnight and has moved 17 times since then.

It was as close as two minutes to midnight in 1953 following U.S. and Soviet hydrogen bomb tests, and as far away as 17 minutes to midnight in 1991 after the superpowers reached agreement on a nuclear arms reductions.

[Source: Yahoo! News]

Top Ten Myths About Iraq 2006

Juan Cole compiles a list of the top 10 myths about Iraq, which goes as follows:

1. The U.S. can still win in Iraq.
2. US military sweeps of neighborhoods can drive the guerrillas out.
3. The United States is best off throwing all its support behind the Iraqi Shiites.
4. Iraq is not in a civil war
5. The second Lancet study showing 600,000 excess deaths from political and criminal violence since the US invasion is somehow flawed.
6. Most deaths in Iraq are from bombings.
7. Baghdad and environs are especially violent but the death rate is lower in the rest of the country.
8. Iraq is the central front in the war on terror.
9. The Sunni Arab guerrillas in places like Ramadi will follow the US home to the American mainland and commit terrorism if we leave Iraq.
10. Setting a timetable for withdrawal from Iraq is a bad idea.

I couldn’t agree more…

For more details, check out the full blog by Juan Cole: Top Ten Myths about Iraq 2006

Barack Obama And Anti-Muslim Paranoia

In a December 18 blog post headlined “Barack Hussein Obama: Once a Muslim, Always A Muslim“, right-wing pundit Debbie Schlussel argued that because Sen. Barack Obama’s middle name is Hussein, his late, estranged father was of Muslim descent, and he has shown interest in his father’s Kenyan heritage, Obama’s “loyalties” must be called into question as he emerges as a possible Democratic presidential candidate.

In the column, Schlussel asked: “So, even if he identifies strongly as a Christian … is a man who Muslims think is a Muslim, who feels some sort of psychological need to prove himself to his absent Muslim father, and who is now moving in the direction of his father’s heritage, a man we want as President when we are fighting the war of our lives against Islam? Where will his loyalties be?”

This follows the lines of CNN host Glen Beck recently suggesting that incoming US congressman, Keith Ellison, might not be a loyal American because he’s a Muslim.

I think this is complete nonsense, insulting and even racist.

But before I get into anything, what’s that about “fighting the war of our lives against Islam?”
That is a very dangerous statement to make, and even though not all Americans believe in that (at least that’s what I like to believe), it is scary to think that there are people who still think that way in our world.

The fight we’re all in together is with extremism of all kinds, not with any certain religion or race.

Back to Barack Obama; The guy says he’s a Christian, why would he be lying? Supposedly, religion shouldn’t be an issue, so why would him being Christian, Muslim or Jew change anything at all?
Or does it make a difference?
If it does then the problem is much bigger than who becomes the next US president or not, it’s a problem that touches the fabric of the American society itself, an underlying reality of racism, bigotry and hypocrisy.

Remarks and attacks of this kind, that will continue to be made against Barack Obama are just ways to try and undermine a possible bid for the US presidency in the upcoming 2008 race. But, whether they have any effect at all on the people will be a serious indicator of how healthy the US society is, and whether the important values of equality and freedom still exist.

Muhammad Yunus’ Nobel Peace Prize

Muhammad YunusEconomist Muhammad Yunus accepted the Nobel Peace Prize yesterday for his breakthrough program to lift the poor through tiny loans, saying he hoped the award would inspire “bold initiatives” to eradicate a problem at the root of terrorism.

Yunus shared the award with his Grameen Bank, which for more than two decades has helped impoverished people start businesses by providing small, usually unsecured loans known as microcredit.

He is the first and so far only Bangladeshi to win the prestigious award. The award also marked a shift away from the conventions by awarding it to someone who worked to promote peace indirectly through economic upliftment of the masses.

The 65-year-old economist said he would use part of his share of the $1.4 million award to create a company to make low-cost, high-nutrition food for the poor. The rest would go toward setting up an eye hospital for the poor in Bangladesh, he said. The food company, to be known as Social Business Enterprise, will sell food for a nominal price.

His Nobel lecture is available in text and video formats here: Nobelprize.org.

For those of you who are interested, you can also buy the book: “Banker to the Poor: Micro-Lending and the Battle Against World Poverty” by Muhammad Yunus.

France 24: Beyond The News

24hr International News ChannelFrance 24, the new French 24-hour international satellite news channel has just gone live in two languages: English and French, with an Arabic channel launching soon and a Spanish one later. The channel started broadcasting online yesterday though.

France 24 wants to characterize itself by respect for diversity and attention to political and cultural differences and identities. It’s goal is to offer an in-depth analysis of current events, aiming to uncover what lies beneath the surface and reveal what the public is not used to seeing, knowing or understanding. It will also be giving special attention to culture and lifestyle.

The France 24 website comes in 3 languages (English, French and Arabic) and is really well done. It mostly follows the new simplistic graphic trends we’re seeing in web design these days, and it’s obviously influenced by the world of blogging, especially evident through it’s tag cloud presentation of the hottest topics.

I think it’s great that more world class players are entering the media market, I hope it will help create a balance and counter the monopoly US media has over news, bringing another view of the world events to the viewers.

I’ve just watched France 24 for a few minutes now and my first impression is a really good one; It’s looking very professional and feels quite promising.

Along with a number of other bloggers from around the world, I was invited to Paris last week to visit the channel’s studios, meet some of the staff and record a show about bloggers, but time was a bit tight and it wasn’t enough for me to get a visa to France.
But if that invitation shows anything, it shows the importance France 24 is giving to bloggers, and the recognition that blogs can be a serious source of information and an important player in the global media market.

George W. Bush Only Fifth Worst US President

So, believe it or not, there were worse presidents in the US…

It’s unfair to claim that George W. Bush is the worst president of all time. He’s merely the fifth worst. In the White House Hall of Shame, Bush comes behind four other Oval Officers whose policies were even more disastrous: James Buchanan, Andrew Johnson, Richard M. Nixon and James Madison.

[…]

… he will be remembered for the Iraq conflict for generations, long after tax-cut-driven deficits, No Child Left Behind and comprehensive immigration reform are forgotten. The fact that Bush followed the invasion of Afghanistan, which had sheltered al-Qaeda, with the toppling of Saddam Hussein, will puzzle historians for centuries. It is as though, after Japan had bombed Pearl Harbor, FDR had asked Congress to declare war on Argentina.

[Source: Washington Post]

Keith Ellison Wants to Take Oath on Koran, Not Bible

Dennis Prager, radio show host and author, wrote the following rambles in a recent article:

Keith Ellison, D-Minn., the first Muslim elected to the United States Congress, has announced that he will not take his oath of office on the Bible, but on the bible of Islam, the Koran. He should not be allowed to do so — not because of any American hostility to the Koran, but because the act undermines American civilization.

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