DOCSLIB.ORG

Jewish Communitynews

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Jewish Communitynews Campaign Sarfan Center UJCVP Trip Full Court Press News & Dates Israel July 2015 Page 7 Page 8 Page 9 News JewishNews of the Jewish VA Peninsula Community Community“A Lifetime of Caring” December 2014/5775 8th Annual Community Menorah Lighting Tues., December 16 at 6 PM et’s celebrate Hanukkah together at the 8th annual Community LHanukkah Celebration! The Hanukkah Extravaganza is at City Center, Oyster Point in Newport News across from the Market Stage Plaza. • Hear the Community Hebrew School Students sing! • Listen to live music by Bagels and Fraylox Klezmer Band! • Celebrate with Mayor Price & Community Rabbis. • Enjoy potato pancakes and jelly donuts to celebrate the miracle of Sponsored by the United Jewish Community of the VA Peninsula. All are the oil. welcome to this free community program. • Sing songs! Please let us know if you need transportation by calling the UJCVP office at • Enter to win raffle prizes. 757-930-1422 Menorah Lighting Schedule Preschool Hanukah De-Lights Thursday, December 18th at 5:30 PM • Wednesday, Dec. 17th at 6 PM - Temple Beth El Oh Hanukkah, Oh Chanukah….. It’s time to • Thursday, Dec. 18th at 6 PM - light the menorah and see our Sarfan Center Rodef Sholom Temple children perform in a once in a lifetime • Friday, Dec. 19th at 6:45 PM - show called Hannukah-De-Lights! Watch the Congregation Emet v’Or preschool children sing and glow! • Saturday, Dec. 2oth at 6:30 PM Adath Jeshurun Synagogue Parents, bring your menorahs and candles • Sunday, Dec. 21st at 5 PM - (we will have a few extra on hand) and we Temple Sinai will light candles and sing the prayers together. • Monday, Dec. 22nd at 6 PM National Council of Jewish Nosh (munch) on some latkes (potato pancakes) Women and donuts for the holiday. • Tuesday, Dec. 23rd at 6 PM Sarfan Center Preschool What a wonderful way to celebrate Hanukkah Families UJC Fund Donations Diamonstein Leroy M. Spigel Early Marc Minkoff Sports Scholarship Fund for Childhood Education Scholarship Fund Holocaust Studies Fund In memory of Lonnie Scoggin Karen Minkoff Speedy Recovery to Beverly In memory of Sally Sarah Cohen Diamonstein: Estelle Fineman Lori & Jeff Luckman Betty Levin Joy and Larry Spigel Philanthropic Fund In memory of Herman Spigel In honor of Jeff Luckman’s birthday Preschool Fund Joy and Larry Spigel Robin and Guy Levy In memory of Boyd Briskin In memory of Leonid Kotlyar Joy and Larry Spigel Bebe & Norman Petock Speedy Recovery to Barry Spigel Delegate David Yancey Joy and Larry Spigel UJC Endowment Mazur Education Fund Unrestricted Fund In honor of Leslie Needham for her work on the Artful Pursuits exhibit In honor of Linda Molin’s retirement Elaine Abrams Ettalea Kanter KAVIT JUDIE PHOTO: How to Give to the Jewish Family Service Hanukkah Gift Program In its twenty second year, Jewish Family Service reaches out to Hanukkah to local Jewish families with children and teens whose families are struggling with finances. Although Hanukkah may or may not be a time where gifts are exchanged in every family, we hope that your family will want to support this gift drive and reach out to those in need. Jewish Family Service expects to serve almost one hundred different local children and teens in 2014. How can you help? • Call Jewish Family Service at 757-459-4640 • Please have Hanukkah donations to Jewish Family • Shop with your family to purchase new and Service by December 4, 2014. practical gifts for children and teens in need • Checks need to be payable to Jewish Family Service • Please drop off your gifts unwrapped so that • and mailed to Jewish Family Service of Tidewater, parents can have the joy of wrapping themselves 260 Grayson Road, Virginia Beach VA 23462 • Consider buying extra items Attention: Maryann Kettyle • Gift cards (Visa, Target, Wal-Mart, Kmart, Music • Jewish Family Service assists local Jewish Families Stores, Movie Theaters, Grocery Cards) are greatly in need at all times of the year and will keep any appreciated. surplus donations throughout 2014-2015. • Send Jewish Family Service a tax deductable monetary donation and Jewish Family Service will do the shopping for you For more information, contact Maryann Kettyle at 757-459-4640 or [email protected] 2 Jewish Community News | December 2014 ExecutiveDirectorsMessage TOGETHER WE CAN DO GREAT THINGS STEVEN WENDELL n Thursday evening, November 13, Temple Sinai and the UJC co-sponsored a special event as part of Jewish Book Fair in our community. With the Ohelp of a special grant from the UJC Endowment, an exceptional author, dealing with a timely and critical subject, was our community’s guest speaker at the JCC. For those of you who missed this program, below is an excerpt from the NY Times Book Review from November 13, 2014. A limited number of signed copies of Mr. Dreazen’s books are still available at the Temple Sinai gift shop. Great things are happening in our Jewish community whether they be at the VERDEROSA CHRISTINA PHOTO: UJC, our area synagogues and congregations, or our organizations. Yochi Dreazen speaking at UJCVP We’d love to see you join us. Jewish Book Fair, Nov. 13, 2014. Sunday Book Review ‘The Invisible Front,’ by Yochi Dreazen By DAVID ROHDE NOV. 13, 2014 When Jeff Graham was killed in Iraq -Afghanistan suicides. To his credit, suffering from depression, anxiety and in 2004, the Kentucky State Legislature Dreazen takes the book a step further. sleeplessness. Called “shell shock” after passed a resolution hailing the young He uses one American military family’s World War I, “combat fatigue” after second lieutenant. Tens of thousands tragedy to expose a vast double standard World War II and “post-traumatic of fans applauded when his boyish — and spreading epidemic — in stress disorder” after Vietnam, the face was displayed on the scoreboard American society. condition has been remarkably at a University of Kentucky basketball consistent. Yet a deep-seated military game. Hundreds of mourners waved By 2012, more American soldiers were culture that views mental illness as a American flags as his hearse passed. killing themselves than were dying in weakness helped make America’s post- One sergeant even named his son after combat. But the problem goes beyond 9/11 military a psychic charnel house. the fallen hero. those in uniform. Suicide rates among American adults between 35 and 64 are Dreazen uses the story of Kevin When Jeff’s younger brother, Kevin, at record rates as well, notes Dreazen, Graham, the doomed R.O.T.C. cadet, committed suicide in 2003 while the managing editor of Foreign Policy to investigate depression in detail. enrolled in a University of Kentucky and a former military affairs writer From a young age, Kevin struggled R.O.T.C. program, his aunt opposed for The Wall Street Journal. He offers with the disease, which ran in his holding his funeral in a local church. a sophisticated examination of an act family, but strived to join the Army His memorial service was sparsely of ultimate despair that irreversibly like his father. Tall, bookish and attended. Members of the community wounds the living and remains hidden, outwardly successful, Kevin took suggested to Kevin’s parents, Mark stigmatized and largely misunderstood. Prozac but knew that disclosing his use and Carol, that their son had been “a of it would destroy his military career. weakling, a coward and even a sinner.” In alternating sections, Dreazen’s From boot camp on, Dreazen writes, book describes how war functions American soldiers are told mental “Strangers told them that Kevin’s as a psychological caldron and how illness is a character flaw: suicide had been a sin in the eyes of the American military serves as Continue reading the main story God,” Yochi Dreazen writes in his new a social science laboratory. To its book, “The Invisible Front,” “something credit, the military once served as a “Roughly 75 percent of the troops Carol, a deeply religious woman, often largely successful testing ground for surveyed . told pollsters that they worried about.” overcoming America’s racial divides. But wouldn’t seek help because they were its initial effort to address its warriors’ afraid it would make their colleagues Jeff, Kevin and their deaths are the psychological wounds was appalling. think less of them, harm their chances spine of this harrowing book, a for promotion, or bring their military courageous effort to examine the Surveying accounts of war from the careers to a premature end.” military’s abysmal initial response “Iliad” to Iraq, Dreazen details how to rising numbers of post-Iraq and soldiers have returned from combat Continued on page 4 December 2014 | Jewish Community News 3 Sunday Book Review ‘The Invisible Front,’ by Yochi Dreazen By DAVID ROHDE NOV. 13, 2014 continued Fearing he would be deemed “mentally ill and not fit for One military chaplain claimed that witches living in nearby military duty,” Kevin stopped taking Prozac in the late spring mountains had cursed Fort Carson soldiers. of 2003. Weeks later, he hanged himself from a ceiling fan in The Grahams battled against the military culture at Fort the off-campus apartment he shared with his younger sister, Carson and other bases, speaking publicly about their son’s Melanie, who discovered his body. suicide, but the struggle took its toll. At one point, so many people told Kevin’s mother her family was cursed that she Melanie and her parents, like other friends and relatives tried to find a priest to perform an exorcism. of suicide victims, entered a world that was “darker and emptier,” Dreazen writes. Shame and guilt consumed them. “The Invisible Front” has its shortcomings, with some slow- moving early passages.
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Usma Class of 2006 War Studies Conference Reassessing Deterrence in the 21St Century
    USMA CLASS OF 2006 WAR STUDIES CONFERENCE REASSESSING DETERRENCE IN THE 21ST CENTURY UNITED STATES MILITARY ACADEMY NOVEMBER 13–15, 2016 CONTENTS Welcome Letter 2 About West Point 3 Agenda 4 Important Administrative Information 8 Conference Staff 9 Keynote Speaker Profiles 10 Participant Profiles 15 1 WELCOME TO THE USMA CLASS OF 2006 WAR STUDIES CONFERENCE On behalf of Lieutenant General Robert L. Caslen, Jr., the superintendent of the United States Military Academy, it is my honor to welcome you to West Point. This is our inaugural War Studies Conference, an annual event organized by the Modern War Institute within West Point’s Department of Military Instruction. The purpose of this conference is to convene a select and interdisciplinary group of thinkers across government, academia, media, and the business world to discuss a topic of vital importance to our ability to fight and win modern wars. The title of this year’s conference is “Reassessing Deterrence in the 21st Century.” To encourage a free and open exchange of views, all comments during the conference’s panels are “not for attribution,” but our keynote addresses will be “on the record.” Fifty years after Thomas Schelling wrote Arms and Influence, globalization, modernization, and the pervasiveness of non-state actors have fundamentally changed our credibility as well as our capacity to deter. Put simply, tomorrow’s potential threats require a new approach for American strategic deterrence. If deterrence is “the art of coercion and intimidation,” as Schelling noted, how do we deter non-state adversaries with no return address? How do we deter potential cyber warriors? How do we keep our 20th-century alliances strong and capable of extended deterrence going forward? Finally, how can we enhance our geo-economic and other non-military tools of deterrence? The discussions we have over the next few days will shape our first edited conference volume, which will inform the national debate we have on this important issue.
    [Show full text]
  • CTC Sentinel Welcomes Submissions
    Combating Terrorism Center at West Point Objective • Relevant • Rigorous | April 2018 • Volume 11, Issue 4 FEATURE ARTICLE A VIEW FROM THE CT FOXHOLE Five Years After the NYPD vs. Revolution Muslim Boston Marathon Bombing The inside story of how the NYPD defeated the radicalization hub Jesse Morton and Mitchell Silber William Weinreb and Harold Shaw FEATURE ARTICLE Editor in Chief 1 NYPD vs. Revolution Muslim: The Inside Story of the Defeat of a Local Radicalization Hub Paul Cruickshank Jesse Morton and Mitchell Silber Managing Editor INTERVIEW Kristina Hummel 8 A View from the CT Foxhole: Five Years After the Boston Marathon Bombing EDITORIAL BOARD Nicholas Tallant Colonel Suzanne Nielsen, Ph.D. ANALYSIS Department Head Dept. of Social Sciences (West Point) 15 The Islamic State's Lingering Legacy among Young Men from the Mosul Area Scott Atran, Hoshang Waziri, Ángel Gómez, Hammad Sheikh, Lucía Lieutenant Colonel Bryan Price, Ph.D. López-Rodríguez, Charles Rogan, and Richard Davis Director, CTC 23 Challenging the ISK Brand in Afghanistan-Pakistan: Rivalries and Divided Loyalties Brian Dodwell Amira Jadoon, Nakissa Jahanbani, and Charmaine Willis Deputy Director, CTC 30 The British Hacker Who Became the Islamic State's Chief Terror Cyber- Coach: A Profile of Junaid Hussain CONTACT Nafees Hamid Combating Terrorism Center U.S. Military Academy Between 2006 and 2012, two men working on opposite sides of the strug- 607 Cullum Road, Lincoln Hall gle between global jihadis and the United States faced of in New York City. Jesse Morton was the founder of Revolution Muslim, a group that prosely- West Point, NY 10996 tized—online and on New York City streets—on behalf of al-Qa`ida.
    [Show full text]
  • Hezbollah and the Use of Drones As a Weapon of Terrorism
    Hezbollah’s Drones Hezbollah and the Use of Drones as a Weapon of Terrorism By Milton Hoenig The international terrorist group Hezbollah, driven by resistance to Israel, now regularly sends low flying drones into Israeli airspace. These drones are launched and remotely manned from the Hezbollah stronghold in Lebanon and presumably supplied by its patron and strategic partner, Iran. On the U.S. State Department’s list of terrorist organizations since 1995, Hezbollah has secured its presence in Lebanon through various phases. It established a strong social services network, and in 2008 it became the dominant political party in the Lebanese government and supported the Assad regime in the Syrian Civil War. Hezbollah’s drone flights into Israeli airspace Hezbollah’s first flight of an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) or drone, into Israeli airspace for reconnaissance purposes occurred in November 2004, catching Israeli intelligence off guard. A Mirsad-1 drone (an updated version of the early Iranian Mohajer drone used for reconnaissance of Iraqi troops during the 1980s Iran-Iraq War), flew south from Lebanon into Israel, hovered over the Western Galilee town of Nahariya for about 20 minutes and then returned to Lebanon before the Israeli air force could intercept it. Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah boasted that the Mirsad could reach “anywhere, deep, deep” into Israel with 40 to 50 kilograms of explosives.1 One report at the time was that Iran had supplied Hezbollah with eight such drones, and over two years some 30 Lebanese operatives had
    [Show full text]
  • Sustainment of Army Forces in Operation Iraqi Freedom
    THE ARTS This PDF document was made available from www.rand.org as CHILD POLICY a public service of the RAND Corporation. CIVIL JUSTICE EDUCATION Jump down to document ENERGY AND ENVIRONMENT 6 HEALTH AND HEALTH CARE INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS The RAND Corporation is a nonprofit research NATIONAL SECURITY organization providing objective analysis and POPULATION AND AGING PUBLIC SAFETY effective solutions that address the challenges facing SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY the public and private sectors around the world. SUBSTANCE ABUSE TERRORISM AND HOMELAND SECURITY TRANSPORTATION AND Support RAND INFRASTRUCTURE Purchase this document WORKFORCE AND WORKPLACE Browse Books & Publications Make a charitable contribution For More Information Visit RAND at www.rand.org Explore RAND Arroyo Center View document details Limited Electronic Distribution Rights This document and trademark(s) contained herein are protected by law as indicated in a notice appearing later in this work. This electronic representation of RAND intellectual property is provided for non-commercial use only. Permission is required from RAND to reproduce, or reuse in another form, any of our research documents. This product is part of the RAND Corporation monograph series. RAND monographs present major research findings that address the challenges facing the public and private sectors. All RAND monographs undergo rigorous peer review to ensure high standards for research quality and objectivity. Sustainment of Army Forces in Operation Iraqi Freedom Battlefield Logistics and Effects on Operations Eric Peltz, John M. Halliday, Marc L. Robbins, Kenneth J. Girardini Prepared for the United States Army Approved for public release; distribution unlimited The research described in this report was sponsored by the United States Army under Contract No.
    [Show full text]
  • AGENDA June 3 – 4, 2017
    Pulitzer Center Pulitzer Center Gender Lens Conference Gender Lens Conference June 3 – 4, 2017 AGENDA June 3 – 4, 2017 Saturday, June 3, 2017 2:00-2:30 Registration 2:30-3:45 Concurrent panels 1) Women in Conflict Zones Welcome: Tom Hundley, Pulitzer Center Senior Editor • Susan Glasser, Politico chief international affairs columnist and host of The Global Politico (moderator) • Paula Bronstein, freelance photojournalist (G) • Sarah Holewinski, senior fellow, Center for a New American Security, board member, Center for Civilians in Conflict (CIVIC) • Sarah Topol, freelance journalist (G) • Cassandra Vinograd, freelance journalist (G) 2) Property Rights Welcome: Steve Sapienza, Pulitzer Center Senior Producer • LaShawn Jefferson, deputy director, Perry World House, University of Pennsylvania (moderator) • Amy Toensing, freelance photojournalist (G) • Paola Totaro, editor, Thomson Reuters Foundation’s Place • Nana Ama Yirrah, founder, COLENDEF 3) Global Health • Rebecca Kaplan, Mellon/ACLS Public Fellow at the Pulitzer Center (moderator) • Jennifer Beard, Clinical Associate Professor, Boston University School of Public Health (Pulitzer Center Campus Consortium partner) • Caroline Kouassiaman, senior program officer, Sexual Health and Rights, American Jewish World Service (AJWS) • Allison Shelley, freelance photojournalist (G) • Rob Tinworth, filmmaker (G) 4:00-4:30 Coffee break 4:30-5:45 Concurrent panels 1) Diversifying the Story • Yochi Dreazen, foreign editor of Vox.com (moderator) (G) • Kwame Dawes, poet, writer, actor, musician, professor
    [Show full text]
  • Winter 2016 SYLLABUS US Foreign Policy Professor
    The University of Chicago Harris School of Public Policy Studies PPHA 42810: Winter 2016 SYLLABUS U.S. Foreign Policy Professor: Dr. Felicity Vabulas Email: [email protected] Classes: Tuesdays and Thursdays, 1:30pm – 2:50pm in 289B Office Hrs: Thursdays 12pm - 1:20pm in office 181 Course Description This course explores contemporary relations between the United States and the world. The primary goal is to give students conceptual and critical tools to understand and analyze how international relations theory, U.S. foreign policy outcomes, and current events fit together, especially in the post 9/11 world. It is designed to develop students’ capacity both to explain the foreign policy-making process in the United States, and to better understand the underlying patterns, logic, and implications of American foreign policy in the world at large. The course is divided into three main topics. First, we will discuss International Relations theory that grounds U.S. foreign policy focusing on American international power and the goals for which this power is employed. The second part of the class will examine the institutions and processes that guide foreign policy formation and implementation. Questions will revolve around who are the important people setting the foreign policy agenda and what are the important institutions attempting to implement this agenda. Finally, the last third of the course will review some of the more salient foreign policy challenges facing the U.S. in the 21st century, including particular focus on geographic regions. Some of these issues include how the recent global economic crises may influence foreign policy, how terrorism and democracy promotion continue to shape U.S.
    [Show full text]
  • From Dictatorship to Democracy: Iraq Under Erasure Abeer Shaheen
    From Dictatorship to Democracy: Iraq under Erasure Abeer Shaheen Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY 2015 ©2015 Abeer Shaheen All rights reserved ABSTRACT From Dictatorship to Democracy: Iraq under Erasure Abeer Shaheen This dissertation examines the American project in Iraq between 1991 and 2006. It studies the project’s conceptual arc, shifting ontology, discourses, institutions, practices, and technologies in their interrelatedness to constitute a new Iraq. It is an ethnography of a thixotropic regime of law and order in translation; a circuit through various landscapes and temporalities to narrate the 1991 war, the institutionalization of sanctions and inspection regimes, material transformations within the American military, the 2003 war and finally the nation- building processes as a continuous and unitary project. The dissertation makes three central arguments: First, the 2003 war on Iraq was imagined through intricate and fluid spaces and temporalities. Transforming Iraq into a democratic regime has served as a catalyst for transforming the American military organization and the international legal system. Second, this project has reordered the spatialized time of Iraq by the imposition of models in translation, reconfigured and reimagined through a realm of violence. These models have created in Iraq a regime of differential mobility, which was enabled through an ensemble of experts, new institutions and calculative technologies. Third, this ensemble took Iraq as its object of knowledge and change rendering Iraq and Iraqis into a set of abstractions within the three spaces under examination: the space of American military institutions; the space of international legality within the United Nations; and, lastly, the material space of Baghdad.
    [Show full text]
  • Naval Postgraduate School Thesis
    NAVAL POSTGRADUATE SCHOOL MONTEREY, CALIFORNIA THESIS THE EXPLOITATION OF A WEAK STATE: AL-QAEDA IN THE ARABIAN PENINSULA IN YEMEN by Nicholas J. Hedberg June 2010 Thesis Advisor: Mohammed M. Hafez Second Reader: Robert Springborg Approved for public release; distribution is unlimited THIS PAGE INTENTIONALLY LEFT BLANK REPORT DOCUMENTATION PAGE Form Approved OMB No. 0704-0188 Public reporting burden for this collection of information is estimated to average 1 hour per response, including the time for reviewing instruction, searching existing data sources, gathering and maintaining the data needed, and completing and reviewing the collection of information. Send comments regarding this burden estimate or any other aspect of this collection of information, including suggestions for reducing this burden, to Washington headquarters Services, Directorate for Information Operations and Reports, 1215 Jefferson Davis Highway, Suite 1204, Arlington, VA 22202-4302, and to the Office of Management and Budget, Paperwork Reduction Project (0704-0188) Washington DC 20503. 1. AGENCY USE ONLY (Leave blank) 2. REPORT DATE 3. REPORT TYPE AND DATES COVERED June 2010 Master’s Thesis 4. TITLE AND SUBTITLE 5. FUNDING NUMBERS The Exploitation of a Weak State: al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula in Yemen 6. AUTHOR(S) Nicholas J. Hedberg 7. PERFORMING ORGANIZATION NAME(S) AND ADDRESS(ES) 8. PERFORMING ORGANIZATION Naval Postgraduate School REPORT NUMBER Monterey, CA 93943-5000 9. SPONSORING /MONITORING AGENCY NAME(S) AND ADDRESS(ES) 10. SPONSORING/MONITORING N/A AGENCY REPORT NUMBER 11. SUPPLEMENTARY NOTES The views expressed in this thesis are those of the author and do not reflect the official policy or position of the Department of Defense or the U.S.
    [Show full text]
  • In Paradoxes of Professionalism
    Paradoxes of Professionalism Paradoxes of Risa Brooks Professionalism Rethinking Civil-Military Relations in the United States In 2009, President Barack Obama ordered a comprehensive review of the United States’ strategy for the war in Afghanistan that revealed some troubling dynamics in the coun- try’s civil-military relations. During the review, top military leaders, including the commander of the International Security Assistance Force led by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, Gen. Stanley McChrystal, pushed for “a fully resourced counterinsurgency” and a controversial new troop commitment, ar- guing that it was the best available option.1 Accounts of the review reveal, however, that U.S. military leaders seemed to underplay the political and stra- tegic constraints that mitigated against a successful counterinsurgency, and that they were impervious to other options that might better advance Obama’s overarching goal of preventing foreign terrorists from attacking the United States.2 They also seemed dismayed by public perceptions that their appeals for support for their preferred plans from allies in Congress and the press, as well as in public commentary, were boxing in the president.3 In 2019, McChrystal reºected that perhaps he should have avoided controversy and proceeded with fewer troops, but that he had no other choice than to advo- cate for the deployment of more forces. As he framed it, while the war in Afghanistan was the civilian leadership’s responsibility, as a “techni- cian,” he needed the additional troops to achieve his operational objectives.4 McChrystal’s comments are striking, revealing how narrowly he conceived of Risa Brooks is Allis Chalmers Associate Professor of Political Science at Marquette University.
    [Show full text]
  • Annual Report 2011
    ANNUAL REPORT 2011 Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting PULITZER CENTER ON CRISIS REPORTING | ANNUAL REPORT 2011 | 1 We will illuminate “dark places and, with a deep sense of responsibility, interpret these troubled times. JOSEPH PULITZER III (1913-1993)” Founded in 2006, the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting is a leader in sponsoring Pulitzer Center on the independent journalism that media organizations are increasingly less able to Crisis Reporting undertake on their own. The Pulitzer Center’s mission is to raise the standard of coverage of global affairs and to do so in a way that engages the broad public and 1779 Massachusetts Avenue, NW government policy-makers. Suite 615 Washington, DC 20036 The Pulitzer Center is a bold initiative, in keeping with its sponsorship by a family whose name for more than a century has been a watchword for journalistic 202-332-0982 independence, integrity and courage. The Center is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization. www.pulitzercenter.org TABLE OF CONTENTS Letter from Board Chair and 3 Executive Director 2011 Reporting Projects 6 Global Gateway 12 Campus Consortium 16 Event Highlights 19 Awards and Honors 20 Staff, Board of Directors and 22 Advisory Council Donors 23 ” Contact Information and Credits 24 PULITZER CENTER ON CRISIS REPORTING | ANNUAL REPORT 2011 | 1 one on water and sanitation in West Africa and the second on reproductive health issues across Africa. Each pairs an international journalist with local journalists recruited from African countries. LETTER FROM BOARD CHAIR Thanks to a generous group of diverse donors we had the opportunity in 2011 to expand greatly our coverage of gold, AND EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR oil and other extractive industries as well as commodities in general.
    [Show full text]
  • The Anbar Awakening: an Alliance of Incentives
    John A. McCary The Anbar Awakening: An Alliance of Incentives The now-deceased leader of the Anbar Awakening, Sheikh Abd al Sittar Abu Reesha, once said, ‘‘Our American friends had not understood us when they came. They were proud, stubborn people and so were we. They worked with the opportunists, now they have turned to the tribes, and this is as it should be.’’1 Until 2007, the most violent region of insurgent attacks against U.S. forces in Iraq had been al Anbar, the largely rural, expansive western province stretching from the outskirts of Baghdad to Iraq’s lengthy, mostly unsecured desert borders with Sunni-dominated Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and Syria.2 In what is most easily described as a marriage of convenience, Sunni insurgents and foreign Sunni al Qaeda fighters in al Anbar had formed a strategic and tactical alliance against what was perceived as an occupation by the United States or, more pointedly, against the occupation of a Muslim land by a largely Christian force, a deep affront to traditional Muslim values harkening back to the Crusades of the Middle Ages.3 Iraqis in al Anbar provided local knowledge, logistics, and up to 95 percent of the personnel, while experienced foreign al Qaeda fighters provided training, expertise, and financing. The pitch was simple: ‘‘We are Sunni. You are Sunni. The Americans and Iranians are helping the Shi‘a*let/ ’s fight them together.’’ 4 Yet, as al Qaeda mounted a campaign of deadly intimidation, and slowly but surely began taking control of money-making activities traditionally held by the tribes, this alliance began to wear thin.
    [Show full text]
  • Pakistan's Nuclear Calculus
    Andrew Bast Pakistan’s Nuclear Calculus Immediately following the assault that killed Osama bin Laden in May, Pakistanis were furious that an array of specially-equipped U.S. Sikorsky Black Hawk helicopters was able to penetrate their sovereign territory so deeply and inconspicuously. That Pakistani authorities may have been providing cover to the world’s most-wanted terrorist was, at best, a secondary concern. Pakistan’s Army, unquestionably the country’s most powerful institution, had been caught shockingly off guard, and the population was furious. General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, the Chief of Army Staff, conceded that the raid constituted a significant intelligence failure, and ordered an investigation. At the same time, many Pakistanis were asking: what else might be at risk? The Army’s Corps CommandersÑthe top of the military brassÑhustled out an ominous statement: ‘‘Unlike an undefended civilian compound, our strategic assets are well protected and an elaborate defensive mechanism is in place.’’1 Behind the bureaucratese hides a chilling reality: ‘‘strategic assets’’ is Islamabad’s rhetorical reference to the country’s nuclear arsenal. That an outside power could slip in under the cloak of night and strike a target with such impunity immediately raised questions about how far and wide such sovereign vulnerabilities spread. ‘‘Even if the country is not safe from Islamist terrorists and suicide bombers, or from drones, CIA agents run amok, and now U.S. helicopters and SEALS,’’ remarks Zia Mian, who has taught in Islamabad and is an expert on nuclear weapons at Princeton. ‘‘They felt they had to reassure themselves and the public that the bomb was safe.’’2 The statement from the Corps Commanders did little to quell anxieties either at home or abroad, however.
    [Show full text]