Top Items:
Washington Post:
Baghdad Braces For More Reprisals — Cellphones and Web Spread Threats, Fear — In the aftermath of one of the deadliest spasms of violence, a new level of fear and foreboding has gripped Baghdad, fueled in part by sectarian text messages and Internet sites, deepening tensions in an already divided capital.
Discussion:
Healing Iraq
RELATED:
Edward Wong / New York Times:
A Matter of Definition: What Makes a Civil War, and Who Declares It So? — Is Iraq in a civil war? — Though the Bush administration continues to insist that it is not, a growing number of American and Iraqi scholars, leaders and policy analysts say the fighting in Iraq meets the standard definition of civil war.
Discussion:
Prairie Weather
Mercury News:
Al-Sadr loyalists take over Iraqi television station — BAGHDAD, Iraq - Followers of the militant Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr took over state-run television Saturday to denounce the Iraqi government, label Sunnis "terrorists" and issue what appeared to many viewers as a call to arms.
Discussion:
Riehl World View, The Reaction, Ezra Klein, Unfogged, The Belmont Club and Pajamas Media
Associated Press:
Despite truce, Palestinian attacks go on — JERUSALEM - Israeli troops withdrew from the Gaza Strip as an unexpected truce took hold Sunday, but two major Palestinian militant groups, saying they had no intention of stopping their attacks, fired volleys of homemade rockets into Israel.
RELATED:
Washington Times:
Rockets fire into Israel — Militants fired at least five rockets into southern Israel from Gaza Sunday on the first day of a cease-fire agreement. — No one was injured in the attacks. — Islamic Jihad claimed responsibility for the attacks and said it would not agree …
Observer:
Spy death linked to nuclear thefts — An investigation was under way last night into Russia's black market trade in radioactive materials amid concern that significant quantities of polonium 210, the substance that killed former spy Alexander Litvinenko, are being stolen from poorly protected Russian nuclear sites.
RELATED:
Alexander Litvinenko / BBC:
In full: Litvinenko statement — Russian former spy Alexander Litvinenko dictated a statement two days before his death, which was read out by his friend Alex Goldfarb outside University College Hospital in London on Friday. — I would like to thank many people.
Discussion:
The Belmont Club
Robin Wright / Washington Post:
Iraq Group a Study In Secrecy, Centrism — In the history of U.S. foreign policy, there's been nothing like it: a panel outside government trying to bail the United States out of a prolonged and messy war. — The innocuously titled Iraq Study Group, which has evolved into a parallel policy establishment …
RELATED:
Glenn Greenwald / Unclaimed Territory:
The "centrist" position on the war in Iraq — This Washington Post article on the inner workings of the bizarrely revered Baker-Hamilton Commission is notable for several reasons, the first of which is that neoconservatives are stomping their feet and whining loudly because they feel …
Discussion:
Eschaton
G. Willow Wilson / eteraz.org:
AZHAR OUTLAWS FEMALE CIRCUMCISION — The Grand Sheikh of Al Azhar, the oldest and most highly respected institution in Sunni Islam; and the Grand Mufti of Egypt have released an official fatwa declaring the practice of female circumcision (also called female genital mutilation or female genital cutting) un-Islamic.
Tom Raum / Associated Press:
U.S. involved in Iraq longer than WWII — WASHINGTON - The war in Iraq has now lasted longer than the U.S. involvement in the war that President Bush's father fought in, World War II. As of Sunday, the conflict in Iraq has raged for three years and just over eight months.
Discussion:
Redstate
Gateway Pundit:
Another Massive Anti-Chavez Protest in Caracas — Amazing! — It was the largest protest in Venezuelan history! — V-Crisis has the story and more photos from the demonstration today in Caracas. — (Hat Tip Instapundit) — Venezuela News and Views has video!
RELATED:
Louis Uchitelle / New York Times:
Here Come the Economic Populists — FOR years, the Clinton wing of the Democratic Party, exercising a lock on the party's economic policies, argued that the economy could achieve sustained growth only if markets were allowed to operate unfettered and globally.
Laurie David / Washington Post:
Science a la Joe Camel — At hundreds of screenings this year of "An Inconvenient Truth," the first thing many viewers said after the lights came up was that every student in every school in the United States needed to see this movie. — The producers of former vice president Al Gore's film …
Robert D. McFadden / New York Times:
Police Kill Man After a Queens Bachelor Party — Hours before he was to be married, a man leaving his bachelor party at a strip club in Queens that was under police surveillance was shot and killed early yesterday in a hail of police bullets, witnesses and the police said.
Discussion:
the talking dog
Pajamas Media:
EASY PREY IN PARIS — "A jackpot, a Black and a Jew." — In which a French policeman protects a Jewish fan of Israeli soccer team assaulted by Paris St. Germain hooligans. Score: 1 dead, 1 critically injured. National state of anti-semitic denial continues in France unabated.
Discussion:
Israel Matzav