To Blair or Not to Blair

This is a Muslim PhD student's view of the class Tony Blair gave at Yale.

And so it went on. I was always polite, never argumentative. I felt like Katy Couric with Sarah Palin - intrusive enough to expose the holes without being rude. At one point in the semester, as soon as he walked into class, he looked around, his gaze finally stopping on me. He winked and said with a smirk, ‘So, Yas-eer, have you got your question up your sleeve already?’ To which I retorted, ‘Not yet, but by the time you finish your lecture I will!’

Nice read. Enjoy

Breathe, breathe...huh, huh--- $3 trillion!

Looks like some serious money coming into the picture here. 

On a single day filled with staggering sums, the Obama administration, Federal Reserve and Senate attacked the deepening economic crisis Tuesday with actions that could throw as much as $3 trillion more in government and private funds into the fight against frozen credit markets and rising joblessness.

This is of note

Obama said in Florida, "I'm going to be personally making an announcement in the next couple weeks what our overall housing strategy is going to be. ... We've got to provide some direct relief to homeowners."

How Bin Laden Bankrupted America

This is a very interesting editorial on the http://www.anti-war.com website. It discusses the how the political confluences of the neocons and the"fundementalists" with the wars in the Middle East contributed to bankrupting the US.

The genius of bin Laden's pinprick attacks, costing a few hundred thousand dollars, has left America reeling with two unending multi-trillion-dollar wars it doesn't know how to get out of. He knew that his own strength was mainly in his appeal to the minds of men, particularly to the lost dignity of Muslims trampled under the heel of their own dictators, Israel's occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, and America's military. Getting rid of the "far" enemy was the way to take on the "near" ones.

The article talks about five ways this has happened. What is very interesting is that some of the pundits have actually predicted something like this. From the article:

Editor John Feffer forecast the wars' consequences precisely in 2002:

"The successful realization of bin Laden's secret strategy will happen not with a bang but with a whimper. Having failed to use the unipolar moment for the world's advantage, the United States runs the risk of following the examples of Russia and England and Turkey, all faded empires whose ambitions overreached themselves. In the worst-case scenario, the U.S. will become the sick man of North America, a victim of military hypertrophy, extremes of wealth and poverty, decay of civil infrastructure, and loss of competitive economic advantage."

Read it. Interesting stuff.

But what is more interesting is this last quote. See the link for the full article. Here is an excerpt from that article. Remember this is written in 2002.

Bin Laden has apparently absorbed the Reagan strategy. It is difficult to know whether he really thought that a handful of terrorist acts would hobble the United States or that al Qaeda and the Taliban could defeat the U.S. and its allies in Afghanistan. What he must have anticipated, however, was the predictable U.S. response: to throw money at the Pentagon.

The Bush administration has obliged by lifting defense spending into the stratosphere. The proposed 14 percent increase brings the military budget to $379 billion. Another $17 billion will be spend on defense programs outside the Pentagon. By 2007, Bush predicts a staggering $451 billion military budget. These figures don't even include the enormous sums devoted to paying for past wars through veterans' payments and interest on the debt associated with military spending ($229 billion in 2001). Coupled with tax cuts that primarily benefit the wealthy, the proposed defense budget will eliminate the budget surpluses and do nothing to improve the health, educational level and long-term employment opportunities of U.S. citizens.

A Muslim in America - "A voyage of discovery"

Thinking out of the box to bring Islam to non-Muslims in America.

He told the story of answering a tear-filled question posed by a Midwestern woman who admitted that she'd never met a Muslim. 

" 'Do they love their children?' " Hayden, 30, remembered her asking. "We were able to tell her that, yes, they love their children. ... But the fact that she asked that question told us so much."

Very good article.