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The Atlantic Home todaysDate();Monday, March 7, 2011Monday, March 7, 2011 Go Follow the Atlantic » Politics Presented by The Rise and Fall of John Ensign Chris Good Sarah Palin Feud Watch Tina Dupuy In Wisconsin, the Mood Turns Against Compromise Natasha Vargas-Cooper Business Presented by Credit Card Balances Resume Their Decline Daniel Indiviglio 5 Ways the Value of College Is Growing Derek Thompson America's 401(k)'s Are a Mess, Are Its Pensions? Megan McArdle Culture Presented By 'Spy' Magazine's Digital Afterlife Bill Wyman http://as

To many on the right, this inequality is a non-issue, and in an abstract sense, I agree. Penalizing people for their success does not help the less successful. But at a time of real sacrifice, it does seem to me important for conservatives not to ignore the dangers of growing and vast inequality - for political, not economic, reasons. And by political, I don't mean partisan. I mean a genuine concern for the effects of an increasingly unequal society.

it increasingly seems wrong to me to exempt the very wealthy from sacrifice, in the context of their gains in the last three decades, if we are to ask it of everyone else. It's not about fairness. It isn't even really about redistribution, as we once understood that from the hard left. It's about political stability and cohesion and coherence. Without a large and strong middle class, we can easily become more divided, more bitter and more unstable. Concern about that is a legitimate conservative issue. And if someone on the right does not find a way to address it, someone on the left may well be empowered to over-reach.

Ayatollah Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, Ex-President of Iran, Dies at 82

Argentina has accused Mr. Rafsanjani and other senior Iranian figures of complicity in the 1994 bombing of a Jewish community center in Buenos Aires, in which 85 people died. In 1997, a German court concluded that the highest levels of Iran’s political leadership had ordered the killing five years earlier of four exiled Iranian Kurdish dissidents in Berlin

Mr. Rafsanjani, for instance, was credited with suggesting that “Death to America” be dropped from the litany of slogans at Tehran’s Friday prayers, a weekly moment of fervor in Iran’s political and religious calendar.

Yemen’s trajectory should not surprise anyone. It follows a familiar pattern in the Arab world, one that we are likely to see again — possibly in larger and more significant countries like Egypt.

Yemen was ruled for 33 years by a secular dictator, Ali Abdullah Saleh. He ruthlessly suppressed opposition groups, especially those with a religious or sectarian orientation (in this case, the Houthis, who are Shiite). After 9/11, he cooperated wholeheartedly with Washington’s war on terrorism, which meant he got money, arms and training from the United States.

Since we have learned little from this history, we are now repeating it. The Obama administration praises Egyptian President Abdel Fatah al-Sissi, who arguably rules in a more repressive manner than did Hosni Mubarak. Sissi’s regime has killed hundreds of protesters and jailed tens of thousands, mostly members of the political opposition, according to Human Rights Watch. It has censored the media and imprisoned journalists.

“I am a Muslim and there is nothing Islamic about killing innocent people in Paris, San Bernardino, or anywhere else in the world,” Ali said in a statemen

True Muslims know or should know that it goes against our religion to try and force Islam on anybody.”

Trump’s sweeping call for a “total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States”

Donald Trump cancels Israel trip 'until I'm president' and insists UK in denial about 'massive Muslim problem'

Four years ago, she joined the war against Islamic State—part of a Kurdish militia allied with the U.S. She has been wounded twice and has shrapnel lodged in her head. During the battle for Raqqa last year, she braved land mines near the front lines. Now, Ms. Ali is done fighting. “I’m tired,” she says, curled up on a sofa in her parents’ home in northeastern Syria, intently chipping away at her pink fingernail polish.

Ms. Ali’s mother, Ahin Ali, winces at the details. “It hurts a lot, that she witnessed all this pain,” she said. But even as she mourns the cost to her daughter, she doesn’t regret the sacrifice she made in allowing her to figh

Amid the chaos of the war, the Kurds have been fighting for self-rule in Syria. But their aspirations are increasingly under threat. Turkey is determined to reverse Kurdish gains and the U.S., which armed the Kurds’ YPG militia for years so it could fight Islamic State, hasn’t come to the group’s defense.

Striking a defiant tone, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said Donald Trump was a “clown” who pretended to support the Iranian people but would push a poisonous dagger into their backs.

The “cowardly” killing of Suleimani had taken out the most effective commander in the battle against the Islamic State group, he said.

He also lashed out at western countries, saying they were too weak to bring Iranians to their knees.

First, that atheist materialism is too weak a base upon which to ground Western liberalism in a world where it’s increasingly beset, and the biblical tradition from which the liberal West emerged offers a surer foundation for her values.

Second, that despite the sense of liberation from punitive religion that atheism once offered her, in the longer run she found “life without any spiritual solace unendurable.”

I have no criticisms to offer myself. Some sort of religious attitude is essentially demanded, in my view, by what we know about the universe and the human place within it, but every sincere searcher is likely to follow their own idiosyncratic path

With more than 2 million Syrians already living outside their war-torn country and 1 million more expected to flee in the coming months, there is a growing protection gap. Indeed, a report (PDF) released in November by Harvard University shows that even Canada, which prides itself on being hospitable to refugees, has been systematically closing its borders to asylum seekers. Without a doubt, development-related aid is an important incentive to host countries, and providing sanctuary for vulnerable populations is just as vital, but what refugees need most is a legal status, which can be achieved only through a regional framework of protection and national asylum policies. The Bangkok Principles are a good start because they highlight the commitment among these states to develop a regional framework and national solutions to protect refugees, with the support of the international community. The U.S. must do its part and encourage the Middle East to build on these principles. Syrians deserve an organized and effective framework, and the risk of turning our backs is that Syrians, along with the Palestinians, will be wandering without a homeland. Galya Benarieh Ruffer is the founding director of the Center for Forced Migration Studies at the Buffett Center for International and Area Studies at Northwestern University and a public voices faculty fellow with the OpEd Project.  The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera America's editorial policy. 180401 Join the Conversation Post a new commentLogin   c

Although the cause of Syrians fleeing their homeland today differs fundamentally from the flight of Palestinians in 1948, one crucial similarity is the harsh reception they are experiencing in neighboring countries. The tragedy of the Syrian refugee crisis is palpable in news stories and in the images of those risking their lives in rickety boats on Europe’s shores. More than one-third of Syria’s population has been displaced, and its effects are rippling across the Middle East. For months, more than 1,500 Syrians (including 250 children) have been detained in Egypt. Hundreds of adults are protesting grotesque conditions there with a hunger strike. Lebanon absorbed the most refugees but now charges toward economic collapse, while Turkey will house 1 million Syrians by the year’s end.

The surge of Syrians arriving in urban centers has brought sectarian violence, economic pressure and social tensions. As a result, these bordering countries, having already spent billions of dollars, are feeling less hospitable and are starting to close their borders to Syrians.

Deadly violence and street protests in Tunisia on Wednesday postponed talks intended to end a political standoff that had thwarted completion of a new constitution in the birthplace of, and a relative bright spot in, the Arab Spring revolts.

the second anniversary of Tunisia’s first free election, the promise appeared to have slipped away again with attacks from two fronts on the moderate Islamist governing party, from militant hard-liners on one side and secular political factions on the other.

slamist militants in Sidi Bouzid, an interior province, killed at least six security officers on Wednesday and wounded several others, apparently in an attempt to disrupt the reconciliation

How do you win Muslim hearts and minds in Kandahar when you are calling Muslims every filthy name in the book in New York?

An America at war with Islam plays right into Al Qaeda’s recruitment spiel. This month’s incessant and indiscriminate orgy of Muslim-bashing is a national security disaster for that reason — Osama bin Laden’s “next video script has just written itself,” as the former F.B.I. terrorist interrogator Ali Soufan put it — but not just for that reason. America’s Muslim partners, those our troops are fighting and dying for, are collateral damage. If the cleric behind Park51 — a man who has participated in events with Condoleezza Rice and Karen Hughes, for heaven’s sake — is labeled a closet terrorist sympathizer and a Nazi by some of the loudest and most powerful conservative voices in America, which Muslims are not?

In doing so, he shaped the relationship between religion and politics here as distinctly different from the Shiite theocracy in Iran, where another ayatollah wields supreme power.

Ayatollah Sistani’s son, meanwhile, has kept up direct phone communication to the prime minister’s office, pushing for quicker reforms.

This latest intervention has provoked a new round of questioning by political leaders and diplomats in Baghdad: As Ayatollah Sistani has stepped in, once again, in the name of helping a country plagued by crisis, is he actually creating a fundamental shift toward clerical rule?

The sun was rising on the Mediterranean one recent morning when the crew of an Iranian cargo ship heard an explosion. The ship, the Shahr e Kord, was about 50 miles off the coast of Israel, and from the bridge they saw a plume of smoke rising from one of the hundreds of containers stacked on deck.

But the attack on the Shahr e Kord this month was just one of the latest salvos in a long-running covert conflict between Israel and Iran. An Israeli official said the attack was retaliation for an Iranian assault on an Israeli cargo ship last month.

The Israeli campaign, confirmed by American, Israeli and Iranian officials, has become a linchpin of Israel’s effort to curb Iran’s military influence in the Middle East and stymie Iranian efforts to circumvent American sanctions on its oil industry.

The Guantánamo story may finally be coming to an end, and as the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks approaches, the question is who will write the last chapter, the White House or the Supreme Court?

President Biden has vowed to close the island detention center, through which nearly 800 detainees have passed since it opened in early 2002 to house some of the “worst of the worst,” in the words of the Pentagon at the time

President Barack Obama also wanted to close Guantánamo but couldn’t manage to do it. Circumstances are different now

ranian election authorities say several high-profile politicians, including reformists and allies of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the outgoing president, have registered for presidential elections to be held on June 14.

The campaign is taking shape as open season on Ahmadinejad's legacy and his combative style that bolstered his stature among supporters but alarmed critics.

He favours economic reforms, revitalising Iran's economy and fixing it after the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s. But he also favours better relations with the US, with Arab countries and the rest of the world

The drive-by shooting took place late Saturday night in the southern port city of Karachi. Four me

This was the third high-profile killing of a rights activist in Karachi in recent years and points to the immense dangers faced by activists in a country troubled by religious extremism a

Mr. Zaki, 40, a blogger, rose to prominence after he campaigned with other activists against Maulana Abdul Aziz,

Why Rafsanjani's death offers the US a unique opportunity to reshape its Iran policy

Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, one of the founding fathers of the Iranian regime, died last week on January 8. He served as President, Speaker of Parliament, Deputy Commander of the Armed Forces, head of the Assembly of Experts--the 88-member body of clerics tasked with nominating the Supreme Leader, and head of the Expediency Council, a body adjudicating disputes over legislation between the parliament and the Guardian Council.

“Now, the regime will lose its internal and external equilibrium,” opposition leader Maryam Rajavi said, suggesting the clerical regime is “approaching overthrow.”

Iran: Nuclear deal will not be renegotiated

Iran's deputy foreign minister says the nuclear deal between the Islamic Republic and world powers "will not be renegotiated" ahead of U.S. President-elect Donald Trump taking office this week.

Trump was critical of the nuclear deal during the presidential campaign and pledged to renegotiate it, but he hasn't offered many specifics on his plans since the election.

American commandos are on the front lines in Syria in a new push toward the Islamic State’s de facto capital in Raqqa, but in Iraq it is an entirely different story: Iran, not the United States, has become the face of an operation to retake the jihadist stronghold of Falluja from the militant group.

On the outskirts of Falluja, tens of thousands of Iraqi soldiers, police officers and Shiite militiamen backed by Iran are preparing for an assault on the Sunni city, raising fears of a sectarian blood bath

But the United States has long believed that Iran’s role, which relies on militias accused of sectarian abuses, can make matters worse by angering Sunnis and making them more sympathetic to the militants.