Current Events and the Psychology of Politics
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Archive for November, 2008


Summary: The fallout from a three-day terrorist rampage that killed nearly 200 people in Mumbai threatens to unravel India’s improving ties with Pakistan and prompted the resignation of India’s security minister. … Iraq’s influential Shi’ite cleric Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani reportedly has reservations about a status-of-forces allowing U.S. troops to stay in the country until the end of 2011, but is leaving it up to politicians to decide the value of the security pact.


Nov 29th, 2008

Summary: A rocket attack on a U.N. compound in Baghdad’s heavily fortified Green Zone has killed two foreigners and wounded 15. … A suicide bomber struck Shiite worshippers at a mosque run by followers of anti-American cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, killing at least 12 people, a day after Iraqi lawmakers approved a status-of-forces agreement with the Bush administration. … The Iraqi parliament’s approval of a security pact with the U.S. has propelled Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki into a position of strength unsurpassed among Iraqi political leaders since the fall of Saddam Hussein; however, it has also set the stage for a power struggle in the run-up to the 2010 Iraqi elections, which may weaken Maliki’s dominance.


Nov 28th, 2008

Summary: Al-Qaida’s second-in-command, Ayman al-Zawahiri, said in an Internet video the U.S. financial crisis was caused by Washington’s military campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan and taxpayers were paying the price. … Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has emerged as a nationalist strongman after reaching a status-of-forces agreement with the Bush administration requiring U.S. forces to withdraw from Iraq by the end of 2011.


Nov 27th, 2008

Summary: A suicide car bomber targeting an American convoy exploded about 200 yards outside the U.S. Embassy in Kabul, killing at least four Afghan bystanders. … Iraq’s parliament approved a security pact with the United States that lets American troops stay in the country for three more years.


Nov 26th, 2008

Summary: In an exodus that began after the 1991 Gulf War, and escalated dramatically after the U.S.-led invasion in 2003, Iraq has lost more than half its Christian population of some 1 million. … In the third such shooting in the Mosul area in less than a year, two U.S. troops were killed when a gunman in an Iraqi army uniform opened fire while they were distributing humanitarian aid in northern Iraq.


Nov 25th, 2008

Summary: KBR, a contractor providing services to the U.S. military in Iraq and Afghanistan, has committed serious violations of its contract, mainly by conducting inadequate inspections of electrical wiring and grounding at American bases. The Pentagon findings stem from the death of Sgt. Ryan Maseth, a highly decorated 24-year-old Green Beret from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, who was electrocuted on January 2, 2008 while taking a shower at his base in Baghdad.


Nov 24th, 2008

Summary: A female suicide bomber blew herself up near an entrance to the U.S.-protected Green Zone and a bomb tore through a minibus carrying Iraqi government employees in separate attacks in Iraq, killing at least 20 people.


   Sunday
Nov 23rd, 2008

Summary: St. Francis Xavier Catholic Church in Sartell, Minnesota.


Nov 22nd, 2008

Summary: In the summer of 2008, U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann claimed she had a plan to lower the price of gasoline to $2 a gallon by increased drilling, including offshore drilling and drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. However, by fall, the price at the pump dropped to nearly $2 in a matter of weeks, simply as a result of reduced demand during the economic recession.


Nov 21st, 2008

Summary: Followers of Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr stomped on and burned an effigy of President George Bush in the same central Baghdad square where Iraqis beat a toppled statue of Saddam Hussein with their sandals five years earlier. Chanting and waving flags, thousands of Iraqis filled Firdous Square to protest a proposed U.S.-Iraqi security pact that would allow American troops to stay for three more years.