Liberal Talk Radio

If Fashion Week has started to resemble the red carpet at the Oscars (a point amplified by Timothy Greenfield-Sanders on last week’s The Treatment), then the United Nations General Assembly meetings are not far behind.
For a taste, grab your jaundiced monocle and join Ben McGrath in this week’s Talk of the Town:
So many dignitaries, so [...]

Dude, you totally win:
Fanatical terror suspect Abdula Ahmed Ali, 25, and his wife, Cossor, 23, are among those being interrogated by police as suspects in the massive plot to attack trans-Atlantic flights in midair.
What the outwardly normal couple had secretly plotted is almost too horrifying to consider, cops said.
The Alis planned to use [...]

Sad story all around:
The 31-year-old woman accused of barreling through a red light in the Central District and killing a young police officer had just gotten out of a minimum-security prison near Spokane after serving time for drug possession.
Police say she was driving with a suspended license and in possession of cocaine when the black [...]

When I heard about the 48 hr halt to air raids following the bomb raid gone awry, I thought Israel had managed a geo-political judo flip with extraordinary dexterity. With no discernible exit strategy, I figured Israel could at least use this event as an opportunity to declare a de facto cease fire by [...]

Despite my grudging support for the current Israeli military action in Lebanon and Gaza, it seems increasingly clear that they have no exit strategy. The IDF seems completely befuddled by the fact that the Lebanese goverment isn’t playing ball.
I’d be befuddled, too, after all, it’s logical to me that Israel has given [...]

So it looks like there’s actually evidence of Syrian and Iranian complicity with Hezbollah in the current Middle East crisis. From the NY Times:
American and Israeli officials said the successful attack last Friday on an Israeli naval vessel was the strongest evidence to date of direct support by Iran to Hezbollah. The attack was [...]

Exhibit one, a random Google News hit, on why even if Ariel Sharon magically rose from his coma and made Wahhabi Islam the official religion it still wouldn’t change some people’s perception of Israel:
Israeli military attacks on Palestine and Lebanon on retaliation for the kidnapping of a few Israeli soldiers have uncovered Tel Aviv’s global [...]

Israel’s recent actions in Gaza and Lebanon are clearly an endgame strategy. Olmert’s government is acting like the homeowner who tells his neighbor “I’m gonna shoot your dog next time he comes into my yard,” and then makes good on the threat when the offending cur merely pokes his nose through the fence. [...]

Contrarian sez:
Which means that though it may pain us to consider it, Bush was probably right when he floated the “Axis of Evil”
If Bush was right that there’s coordination between states and terrorist groups, he was pretty wrong about which states and which terror groups are doing the coordinating! Now, we know that Hezbollah [...]

As we’re approaching something resembling World War III in the Middle East, can we at least back off the facile assumption that the volatile situation in Israel and the Middle East is all about boys throwing stones at soldiers — like the good old days of the first Intifada? And that the depraved practice of [...]