INTERNATIONAL

Not too long ago I gave a talk on the Palestinian bid for statehood. In the audience was a Russian-Israeli expatriate who politely took exception to my criticisms of Israeli policies and behavior. His main point was that I could not credibly criticize the Israelis because I had not experienced what they had and did not know what they knew. …

  Earlier in January thousands of Egyptians took to the streets of Cairo and camped out in Tahrir Square for 18 days. They demanded the ouster of their president, Hosni Mubarak. Although the protests began peacefully, the streets of Cairo saw clashes between protestors and security forces. According to an article in the BBC last July, an estimated 846 people …

"The Guardian" – – As the most hopeful offshoot of the "Arab spring" so far flowered this week in successful elections in Tunisia, its ugliest underside has been laid bare in Libya. That's not only, or even mainly, about the YouTube lynching of Gaddafi, courtesy of a Nato attack on his convoy.   The grisly killing of the Libyan despot …

WASHINGTON — Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said bluntly Thursday that U.S. outreach to gauge the Taliban-linked Haqqani network’s interest in peace talks after more than a decade of war was answered with “an attack on our embassy” in Afghanistan. Testifying before skeptical members of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Clinton defended the apparent contradiction of U.S. pressure on …

Let’s face it: Qaddafi was a failure. He was looking for unity in all the wrong places: Arab unity, African unity, “third-world” unity. In his doomed quest for unity, Qaddafi was a failed idealist. “Arab”-ness is just another nationalism, another form of empty identity politics. “African-ness” and “Third Worldness” are no better. Africa has two thousand different languages and cultures. The …

Slain leader's body kept in cold storage before secret burial as UN calls video of his last moments "disturbing". Libya's National Transitional Council has delayed the burial for Muammar Gaddafi in order to arrange a secret location and allow for an investigation into his death, officials say. On Friday, as videos continued to surface showing the fugitive deposed leader being captured alive …