Rebecca Hamilton THE LOCAL, EAST VILLAGE For much of America’s Muslim community, the 9/11 terrorist attacks changed their relationship with the rest of American society – for the worse.  Broad government surveillance and discriminatory law enforcement policies, combined with an increased suspicion of Muslims by the general public, left many feeling that daily worship had [...]

Not the usual fare for this blog, but a little vignette I wrote up for my local paper – quite a change from my usual subject matter. As one comment writer noted, “The most interesting part is that a number of people will stop to help once one person does.” I think that is true [...]

I’m sharing here a graf from the conclusion of Fighting for Darfur that I feel much more hopeful about now than when I wrote it, with today’s fantastic announcement by the Obama administration of an Atrocities Prevention Taskforce which, according to the NYT, will “be assigned with coming up with a range of American responses [...]

I just had the thoroughly enjoyable experience of “guest hosting” (which really just means throwing in a couple of lines here and there) The Stream, an Al Jazeera English show on serious current events that are being discussed in the social media, but are under-covered in the traditional media. I may do a separate post [...]

As many of you know, the Sudanese government has blocked journalists from entering Southern Kordofan, making verifiable information difficult to come by. But a pair of Al Jazeera journalists managed to get in illegally last week, and have produced what is by far the most comprehensive first-hand documentation to date of the impact of the [...]

The New York Times, which has two correspondents in Sudan right now, chose – on South Sudan’s independence – to run a story from there that starts and ends with George Clooney, who is not in Sudan right now. JUBA, Sudan — On the desk in his office in Juba, the capital of what will [...]

I write this, five hours into the life of the Republic of South Sudan, not from the new nation’s capital Juba, but from – New York. Not being in Juba was a conscious choice. Being in New York was not. I decided a while back not to put myself in Juba for the celebrations. My [...]

Something I wrote in Fighting for Darfur feels particularly salient at this moment, as my inbox fills up with increasingly panicked messages from those with friends in Southern Kordofan: “As has been clear for some years, and was true in the case of Darfur, a lack of information per se is not what accounts for [...]