Muslims in Syria Like Obama’s Tone but Want New Policy

Thursday, June 04, 2009 - New America Media

DAMASCUS, Syria--Muslim shopkeepers, activists, and analysts in Damascus who watched Obama’s speech Thursday appreciated what they saw as a clear change in the U.S. attitude toward the Muslim world. But most are skeptical, saying they want a fundamental shift in American policy, not just a shift in rhetoric.

Al-Qaeda Violence Rising as US Stretegy Unravels in Iraq

Monday, May 11, 2009 - New America Media

The U.S. military’s temporary strategy to use Sunni militias to bring stability to Iraq is starting to unravel, causing more violence than the country has seen in seven months.

Government statistics show that 355 Iraqis were killed in April, 290 of whom were civilians. Almost all of those deaths were caused by suicide bombings, and all of the attacks targeting civilians seemed to be aimed at the Shia. Eighty Iranian pilgrims were also slain.

Three of the April attacks killed more than 50 people each--a third of all attacks of this size in Iraq for all of 2008.

The steady increase in violence can be attributed in large part to the fact that the Iraqi government has been increasingly targeting the Sahwa, or Awakening Councils, often with the support of U.S. forces. As a result, many Sunni fighters credited for bringing down sectarian violence in Baghdad have been leaving their posts, making room for al Qaeda to resume its operations in the Iraqi capital.

Syrians Ambivalent over Obama Victory

Friday, November 07, 2008

In Damascus, the prevailing reaction to Barack Obama’s victory as the next president of the United States is markedly ambivalent, if reservedly hopeful. Discussions here about the U.S. elections tend to revolve around the end of the current administration, more than faith in the next. As the world exploded into unprecidented celebration for the victory of a US president, Syrians were saying, “Inshallah, he will be better than the last guy.”

I wrote about Syrians’ response to Obama’s victory for New America Media.

Hellarity Burns

Tuesday, May 27, 2008

In one corner of North Oakland, California, a cauldron of squatters and property owners, stirred by green dreams and the bursting housing bubble, set an unusual Oakland house ablaze.

The house called Hellarity was originally part of a green property owner’s attempt to create a network of sustainable, affordable housing. When his project floundered, the residence was slowly taken over by his tenants, a group of people who one-upped his radicalism. Both sides claimed to be avowed anticapitalists, but their strategies were at odds; his was to produce an alternative to the local housing market by creating a nonprofit that would help tenants own their homes as a collective. Theirs was to make space for themselves in a rent-based housing market by seizing property from investors and absentee landlords.

The owner eventually went bankrupt — drowned in the early stages of the deflating housing market — and the property fell into the hands of a small-time real estate investor, despite the tenants’ attempts to buy it themselves. The tenants refused to leave, transforming themselves into squatters, and fought it out with the buyer in court for three years. As the court case bogged down, housing values plummeted, making the landlord’s investment lose value by the day.

Then, just after the squatters gave up their fight and agreed to turn the house over to the landlord, a new group of squatters moved in to reoccupied it. Two weeks later, the house went up in flames.

For months, I poured through court records, interviewed current and former occupants, the former landlord, and pieced together the story leading up to arson, which I found to have started before the house even started ten years ago. To read the 5,000 word feature I wrote for the San Francisco Bay Guardian this week, click here.

Divorcing the US

Thursday, March 20, 2008

In December of 2007, a group of Lakota people declared that they were withdrawing from the United States and forming their own country. USA Today reported in the declaration from Washington D.C. and a spur of international media attention followed. I hoped in a 4x4 and drove to the Pine Ridge reservation in South Dakota with Shon Meckfessel and spent four days in the United States’ second poorest county covering the story. I wrote a piece for New Internationalist magazine in the UK. You can read it here.