Somewhere in Minneapolis or Jackson or Baltimore, somewhere in America today, there is a young couple that is feeling vulnerable. Maybe one has been laid off due to outsourcing, and maybe, the other is working for something close to a minimum wage. They probably have no medical benefits. Today real income is lower for the typical family than in 2000, while the incomes of the wealthiest families have grown significantly. Things are tough for working people, but in America, we often turn to our faith in tough times.

From Rep. Ellison’s website:

He has just been named a Vice-Chair of the newly-formed Congressional LGBT Equality Caucus. For someone like Keith, who has spent his entire adult life fighting for human and civil rights, helping to kick-off the LGBT Equality Caucus was an especially proud moment.

The Washington Post reports that the U.S. and Iraq have abandoned attempts to forge a long-term security agreement. The focus is now on a “bridge document” that would provide for basic military operations after the UN mandate expires at the end of this year, and it would fall to the next administration to deal with any extended security agreement.

Story here.

Leaders of 43 nations with nearly 800 million inhabitants inaugurated a new Union for the Mediterranean on Sunday, designed to bring the northern and southern countries that ring the sea closer together through practical projects dealing with the environment, climate, transportation, immigration and policing.

Story here.

Lawrence Pintak, a journalist and Arab media expert, says the problem with Darfur when it comes to the Arab media is that it does not fit the template of Arabs being the victims and other people the aggressors.

“Arabs here are good guys and bad guys,” he says.
....

“There is always going to be some sort of reluctance to demonise their own, the Arabs as they will see themselves,” Opheera McDoom, Reuters correspondent in Darfur, says.

I came across the following quote below. I hope when you read this kind of stuff from the US military that just because the military is arrogant enough to claim democracy is a “western idea,” as though democracy is some sort of ideological colonization, that doesn’t mean you have to get it wrong too. Popular democratic movements in Pakistan, Iraq and Palestine have resisted US coercion, and are causing a major pain in the ass right now for Prez Bush.

Enemy formation against muslims is all too common today, but it’s important to call bullshit on haters whenever we can, especially when they are slipping it into popular culture through entertainment mediums. Came across a link to a new novel by some guy named Brad Thor that he is touting as the “Islamic Da Vinci Code.” Apparently, he had a book that made the best-seller list once.

Aziz at Talk Islam posted a link to Muslim Advocates, which sounds like a cool organization that deserves props and attention. I say (re)introducing, rather than just introducing, because on their website they say they launched summer of 2005 (I wasn’t even a muslim then!).
No matter. Check them out. And Aziz writes elsewhere that muslims should not look on Muslim Advocates as a replacement for CAIR, with which I agree. We need multiple and diverse advocacy organizations as much as we need multiple and diverse blogs and bloggers.

Chilling Effects Clearinghouse

A joint project of the Electronic Frontier Foundation and Harvard, Stanford, Berkeley, University of San Francisco, University of Maine, George Washington School of Law, and Santa Clara University School of Law clinics.

Do you know your online rights? Have you received a letter asking you to remove information from a Web site or to stop engaging in an activity? Are you concerned about liability for information that someone else posted to your online forum? If so, this site is for you.

From Seeing the Forest blog, an observation about a recent comment by Joe Lieberman.

Glenn Greenwald recently had a courageous post on his blog exploring the issue of dual loyalty, and how the accusation of anti-semitism is used to silence legitimate reporting, commentary and observation.