NewsTrust - Peace - Most Recent Stories: Opinion (Mainstream)

End O'Potamia

Tue, 25 Oct 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Daily Show - By Jon Stewart - Oct. 25 (Comedy News) - Republicans have different reasons for disliking Barack Obama's radical decision to do the thing George Bush signed an agreement to do.

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The coming U.N. debacle

Tue, 20 Sep 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Los Angeles Times - By Yossi Klein Halevi, Los Angeles Times - Sep. 20 - The coming U.N. debacle

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Jimmy Carter: 'We never dropped a bomb. We never fired a bullet. We never went to war'

Sun, 11 Sep 2011 00:00:00 -0700

The Guardian - By Carole Cadwalladr - Sep. 11 - He may live a modest life in a one-horse town, but Jimmy Carter, now 86, retains his global vision. And 30 years after leaving the White House, the peanut farmer turned president is still a man on mission. In Plains, Georgia, we found the 39th US president full of energy… and determined to make a difference Where does Jimmy Carter live? Well, close your eyes and imagine the kind of house an ex-president of the United States might live in. The sort of residence befitting the former leader of the most powerful nation on earth. Got it? Right, now scrub that clean from your mind and instead imagine the sort of house where a moderately successful junior accountant and his family might live. It's what in America is called a "ranch house", or, as we'd say, "a bungalow". There are no porticoes. No columns. No sweeping lawns. There's just a small brick single-storey structure that Jimmy and his wife, Rosalynn, built on Woodland Drive back in 1961 when he was a peanut farmer and she was a peanut ...

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The Past Is a Foreign Country

Wed, 27 Jul 2011 00:00:00 -0700

New York Times - By Jo Nesbo - Jul. 27 (Opinion) - A FEW days ago, before the bombing here and the shootings on Utoya Island, a friend and I were talking about how the joy of being alive always seems to go hand in hand with the sorrow that things change. Not even the brightest future can make up for the fact that no roads lead back to what came before — to the innocence of childhood or the first time we fell in love.

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From a Saudi prince, tough talk on America’s favoritism toward Israel

Tue, 14 Jun 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Washington Post - By Richard Cohen - Jun. 14 (Opinion) - He [Saudi Prince Turki al-Faisal} is also angry as hell, and he lets America have it. He starts by citing what he calls President Obama’s “controversial speech last month, admonishing Arab governments to embrace democracy and provide freedom to their populations.” Saudi Arabia, he wrote, heard what Obama said and took it “seriously,” and he noted, of course, that Obama had not demanded the same rights for Palestinians under Israeli occupation. Point taken.

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WikiLeaks: Call of Duty

Thu, 09 Dec 2010 00:00:00 -0800

Aljazeera - By Mark LeVine - Dec. 09 (Opinion) - No one outside of the Washington establishment and the myriad foreign leaders shamed by revelations of their penchant for hatred, hubris and pedestrian peccadillos can seriously argue that the release of these classified documents has done anything but good for the cause of peace and political transparency.

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At War: War and Conscience: Expanding the Definition of Conscientious Objection

Wed, 10 Nov 2010 00:00:00 -0800

New York Times - By James Dao - Nov. 10 (Opinion) - A coalition of around 60 mostly left-leaning religious, veterans and anti-war groups are calling on Congress to expand the definition of conscientious objection to allow opposition to a particular war.

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A Jewish state or an Israeli democracy?

Tue, 05 Oct 2010 00:00:00 -0700

Haaretz - By Shlomo Sand - Oct. 05 (Opinion) - There's far too little criticism in Israel of this latest whim, which until recently was absent from Israeli diplomacy. For years, Israel struggled to be recognized by the Arab world. But in March 2002, when the Arab League and the Muslim world took up the Saudi initiative to recognize Israel within its 1967 borders, a new threat appeared: peace, which can fragment the Jewish character of the state from within, and rightfully so.

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The skewed Middle East peace talks | Hussein Agha and Robert Malley

Fri, 03 Sep 2010 00:00:00 -0700

The Guardian - By Hussein Agha, Robert Malley - Sep. 03 (Opinion) - Whether there?s a deal or not, the Palestinians can?t really win, while the Israelis have little to lose Israelis and Palestinians who have started peace negotiations in Washington are separated by much more than the gulf between their substantive positions. Staggering asymmetries between the two sides could seriously imperil the talks. Israeli prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu is the head of a stable state with the ability to deliver on his commitments. Celebrations of supposed institution-building notwithstanding, Palestinians have no robust central authority. Their territory is divided between the West Bank and Gaza. On their own, Palestinians would find it difficult to implement an agreement, however much they might wish to. Israel ...

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Mr. President, Don’t Pray for Anything You Really Don’t Want

Fri, 30 Jul 2010 00:00:00 -0700

Foreign Policy - By Aaron David Miller - Jul. 30 (Opinion) - Barack Obama's administration has been lobbying Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and Arab governments hard to return to direct talks with Israel for the first time in several years. That decision could be made as early as Thursday, when the Arab League meets to discuss the matter. But Obama should very careful what he wishes for.

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Why the world needs WikiLeaks

Mon, 26 Jul 2010 00:00:00 -0700

Aljazeera - By Julian Assange - Jul. 26 (Interview) - The controversial website WikiLeaks collects and posts highly classified documents and videos. Founder Julian Assange, who is reportedly being sought for questioning by US authorities, talks to TED's Chris Anderson about how the site operates, what it has accomplished and what drives him.

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A special report on Egypt: America's lieutenant

Sat, 17 Jul 2010 00:00:00 -0700

Economist - Jul. 17 () - Would-be rulers of the world have always coveted Egypt, and for good reason. Rich in resources and in a choice position, it is also easily controlled, with no forests or mountains for rebels to lurk in. The Assyrians, Persians, Greeks and Romans all grabbed it. So did Muslim Arabs, Ottoman Turks, Napoleon’s France and finally Britain. The Crusaders, Tamerlane and Hitler all tried and failed to take it. The cold-war superpowers vied for influence too; Egypt flirted with both, but America bid higher and won. Egypt became America’s Arab poodle, a role that is no less uncomfortable under Barack Obama than it was under George Bush. Mr Mubarak’s policy of helping Israel to punish Hamas by keeping Gaza shut in smells rotten to most of his people, and particularly to the many who sympathise with the Muslim Brotherhood, the resilient Egyptian wellspring of modern Islamism. Egyptians are only intermittently interested in foreign affairs, and many remain grateful that Mr Mubarak, unlike his predecessors, has shunned risk. Yet the feeling that Egypt has lost its rightful place as a country with influence, that it has fallen from grace, is widespread.

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Israel naval raid a folly foretold

Wed, 02 Jun 2010 00:00:00 -0700

Los Angeles Times - By David Grossman - Jun. 02 (Opinion) - How insecure, confused and panicky a country must be to act as Israel acted. With a combination of excessive military force and a fatal failure to anticipate the intensity of the reaction of those aboard the ship, it killed and wounded civilians, and did so — as if it were a band of pirates — outside Israel's territorial waters. Clearly, this assessment does not imply agreement with the motives — overt or hidden, and often malicious — of some participants in the Gaza flotilla. Not all are peace-loving humanitarians, and the declarations of some of them regarding the destruction of the state of Israel are criminal. But these facts are simply not relevant at the moment; such opinions, so far as we know, do not deserve the death penalty.

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Driving Drunk in Jerusalem

Tue, 16 Mar 2010 00:00:00 -0700

New York Times - By Thomas Friedman - Mar. 16 (Opinion) - The fracas over Israel’s announcement of plans for new housing in East Jerusalem is a distraction from a potentially history-making moment.

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Swat diary: 'A new beginning'

Fri, 01 Jan 2010 00:00:00 -0800

BBC News - By Munir - Jan. 01 (Opinion) - Hundreds of thousands of people were displaced as a result of the Pakistani military operation again the Taliban in the Swat region of north-west Pakistan in 2009. Munir (not his real name), an administrator in Swat, reflects on a difficult year but is hopeful about the future. Exactly a year ago, I remember coming home one evening and learning that four women, two men and a child were killed by the Taliban in our village. Our worries now are more about the future of the country as a whole. I remember that time so clearly and I'll remember it till my last breath - the cruelties done to us have never happened in another part of the world. We couldn't talk freely outside our homes because there were spies of the Taliban all around us. We couldn't listen to music: satellite dishes had to be removed and TV sets broken or sold.

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In Oslo, Obama Sounds Like Bush

Thu, 10 Dec 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Newsweek - By Howard Fineman - Dec. 10 (Opinion) - The Norwegians weren't applauding the peace-prize acceptance speech President Obama just gave in Oslo and I know why. The speech in many ways could have been written for, and delivered by, a man they loathe: George W. Bush.

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America's defining choice: war in Afghanistan or health care at home

Thu, 12 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Seattle Times - By Nicholas D. Kristof - Nov. 12 (Opinion) - Where's the best place to spend $100 billion a year? Is it on patrols in Afghanistan? Or is it to refurbish our health-care system so another American doesn't die unnecessarily every 12 minutes?

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Comment: absurd decision on Obama makes a mockery of the Nobel peace prize

Fri, 09 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

The Times - By Michael Binyon - Oct. 09 (Opinion) - The award of this year’s Nobel peace prize to President Obama will be met with widespread incredulity, consternation in many capitals and probably deep embarrassment by the President himself. Rarely has an award had such an obvious political and

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Progressives shouldn't confuse a party with a movement

Tue, 08 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Seattle Times - By David Sirota - Sep. 08 (Opinion) - Though the 2006 and 2008 elections were billed as progressive movement successes, the story behind them highlights a longer-term failure. During those contests, most leaders of Washington's major labor, environmental, antiwar and anti-poverty groups spent millions of dollars on a party endeavor — specifically, on electing a Democratic president and Democratic Congress. In the process, many groups subverted their own movement agendas in the name of electoral unity.

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A brave man who stood alone. If only the world had listened to him

Mon, 30 Mar 2009 00:00:00 -0700

The Independent - By Robert Fisk - Mar. 30 (Opinion) - Tom Hurndall had stayed in Rafah. He was only 21 where – in his mother's words – he lost his life through a single, selfless, human act. "Tom was shot in the head as he carried a single Palestinian child out of the range of an Israeli army sniper." Mrs Hurndall asked me to write a preface to Tom's book and this article is his preface, for a brave man who stood alone and showed more courage than most if us dreamed of. Forget tree huggers. Hurndall was one good man and true.

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Israelis for peace speak out

Thu, 08 Jan 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Seattle Post Intelligencer - By Amy Goodman - Jan. 08 (Opinion) - Israeli professor Neve Gordon is chairman of the Department of Politics and Government at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in southern Israel, the region most impacted by the Hamas rockets. Speaking over the phone from Beersheba, Gordon said: "We just had a rocket about an hour ago not far from our house. My two children have been sleeping in a bomb shelter for the past week. And yet, I think what Israel is doing is outrageous. ...

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A New Chance for Peace?

Thu, 18 Jan 2007 08:24:13 -0800

Washington Post - By Jimmy Carter - Jan. 18 (Opinion) - I am concerned that public discussion of my book "Palestine Peace Not Apartheid" has been diverted from the book's basic proposals: that peace talks be resumed after six years of delay and that the tragic persecution of Palestinians be ended. Although most critics have not seriously disputed or even mentioned the facts and suggestions about these two issues, an apparently concerted campaign has been focused on the book's title, combined with allegations that I am anti-Israel. This is not good for any of us who are committed to Israel's status as a peaceful nation living in harmony with its neighbors.

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