Free Republic

DAMASCUS, Syria, Aug. 8 — Moderate reformers across the Arab world say American support for Israel’s battle with Hezbollah has put them on the defensive, tarring them by association and boosting Islamist parties. The very people whom the United States wanted to encourage to promote democracy from Bahrain to Casablanca instead feel trapped by a policy that they now ridicule more or less as “destroying the region in order to save it.” Indeed, many of those reformers who have been working for change in their own societies — often isolated, harassed by state security, or marginalized to begin with —...

Native lands HILARY LEILA KRIEGER, THE JERUSALEM POST May. 3, 2006 Growing up in Canada's Yukon, Ricky Vernon O'Brien heard stories from the tribal elders of the devastation indigenous people suffered at the hands of the Europeans and their descendents: discrimination, abuse, forced integration and genocide. They told him it was like the Holocaust. "I cried when I saw the connection first-hand. In some way it's so similar to what our people have been through. It brought back a lot of bad memories for me," said O'Brien, fresh from a trip to Yad Vashem. "They killed our spirit. That's what...

JAKARTA, INDONESIA -- Islamic hardliners barged in on Indonesia's transvestite beauty pageant, panicking its skimpily dressed contestants but failing to stop the show -- the second year running that the world's most populous Muslim nation has staged such an event. Dressed in white tunics and prayer caps, 10 members of the Islamic Defender's Front pushed their way into the nightclub on Sunday where 30 contestants were competing for the title of Miss Transvestite, witnesses and organizers said. After 20 minutes of tense negotiations, the show continued, though organizers agreed to finish early in deference to the group, which has a...