Archives for February 2009

Mitchel Cohen writes in a guest op-ed for IC: All it takes is dragging myself to one local Democratic Party meeting, even one hosted by a progressive and Green-friendly State Assembly member like Bill Colton (47 A.D. – Bensonhurst), to make me again realize two things: 1) How important regular local meetings are for congealing […]

Reuters says that Israel’s elections on Tuesday are too close to call. Binyamin Netanyahu of the far right Likud Party had been the front runner, but the race has recently been tightening. Avigdor Lieberman’s Yisrael Beiteinu, a far, far-right faction that advocates ethnically cleansing Palestinians, has been drawing votes away from the Likud. If the […]

Chuck Todd thinks that the Great Crash of 2008-2009 was caused by consumer spending??? What the hell? ‘OBMAMA: All right, Chuck Todd. Where’s Chuck? Question: Thank you, Mr. President. In your opening remarks, you talked about that, if your plan works the way you want it to work, it’s going to increase consumer spending. But […]

Here is Technorati.com’s list of the top 15 searches in blogs by users of its site. It is the oddest assemblage things and at first I could not make any sense of it at all. ‘ Top searches 1. taskbar 2. news 3. environment 4. jennifer garner 5. men 6. cheat-codes 7. google 8. paris […]

You have an economy in shambles, increasing international isolation, the danger of further wars, an unpopular millenarian president who thinks God put him in office to reshape the world, and an alarmed public across the board. And you have a liberal challenger to the woeful status quo who is known for an ability to reach […]

While the attention of the US public and the news media here has been consumed (understandably enough) by the congressional debate over the economic stimulus plan, America’s war in Afghanistan has nearly collapsed because of logistical problems. First, the Taliban destroyed a crucial bridge west of Peshawar over which NATO trucks traveled to the Khyber […]

Al-Hayat reports in Arabic that Da`wa Party official Hasan Sunayd said the al-Maliki government has been conducting secret behind-the-scenes negotiations with armed guerrilla groups active in the Sunni Arab provinces, as well as with ex-Baathist officers in exile in Dyria. The government wants to use the recent provincial elections in the Sunni Arab provinces as […]

Iran has unveiled what it says is the world’s most powerful natural-gas driven automobile engine: ‘TEHRAN, Feb. 7 (MNA) – The world’s most powerful natural-gas-based car engine was unveiled on Saturday by the Iranian carmaker Iran Khodro under the intellectual property of the Islamic Republic of Iran. According to IRINN, the engine is to be […]

UN Secretary-General Ban ki-Moon made a surprise visit to Baghdad on Friday, and praised Iraq’s recent provincial elections. The USG Open Source Center translated Iraqi television coverage of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki’s remarks on this occasion, in which he sought a new relationship of iraq to the UN Security Council: “Within its 1500 GMT newscast, […]