An Arab perspective on Rice visit to Middle East

"The heavily fortified Green Zone in Baghdad from where the American administration indirectly administers most things in Iraq seems to have caught the fancy of the Administration in Washington — which seems to be repeating in the rest of the Middle East the isolation from its surroundings that it practises in Iraq. This is evident in this week's trip to the region by US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who appears to be pursuing a fanciful strategy based on unrealistic American hopes rather than actual realities in the region.

Being clueless about Middle Eastern realities has been an occasional American official hazard; making this a chronic recurrence and operating procedure seems really stupid. Rice and American diplomacy fail to grasp a central point about US policies in the Middle East. Many of the problems she says she wants to solve are usually exacerbated by American policies, especially Washington's extreme support for Israel rather than being even-handed in the Arab-Israeli conflict."

So writes Rami Khouri - director of the Issam Fares Institute at the American University of Beirut and editor-at-large of the Daily Star, Beirut - in this op-ed piece in The Age here.

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No comment called for in this piece from CommonDreams: Another young black man: The strange sad case of 21-year-old Chavis Carter. Police in Jonesboro, Arkansas stopped him and two friends, found some marijuana, searched put Carter, then put him handcuffed behind his back into their patrol car, where they say he shot himself in the head with a gun they failed to find. The FBI is investigating. Police Chief Michael Yates, who stands behind his officers' story, says in an interview that the death is "definitely bizarre and defies logic at first glance." You think?

Mahler's Prodigal Son

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