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Archives: April 2011
Syrian Army Splits over Deraa Repression
The Syrian regime of Bashar al-Asad's decision to quell popular protests in Deraa with military force and live ammunition may have begun splitting his army. AP reports eyewitness accounts on Thursday that…
Birth Certificate just Jim Crow all Over Again
There isn't actually any mystery about the phenomenon of birtherism, the denial that Barack Obama is a US citizen and has a right to vote and hold office, or why obnoxious billionaire…TomTom, Apple and the Security-GPS Complex
TomTom, the maker of a popular Global Positioning Device that helps drivers navigate their way in unknown territory, sold its data to the Dutch government. Dutch police requisitioned the data, and used…
Russia & China Block Condemnation of Syria as 200 Baathists Resign
For those who keep asking why there should be an international intervention in Libya but not in Syria, here is one answer: Russia and China have blocked an attempt to have the…
Free Libya Forces Hold out in Misrata, Zintan, As Tribes Say Qaddafi Must Go
CNN's Ray Sayeh intrepidly reports from Misrata on the further shelling its port area took from Qaddafi brigades on Wednesday. Those loyalist brigades have been pushed out of the center of the…
Corporate Welfare Royalty
Courtesy Moveon.org:
Top Ten Arab Spring Advances this Week
With the horrid crackdowns on dissent in Syria and Bahrain and the vicious shelling by Qaddafi brigades of the port of Misrata in Libya on Tuesday, it would be easy to concentrate…An Arab Spring for Women: the Coles in Tomdispatch
Just out in Tomdispatch.com, an essay by Shahin Cole and Juan Cole on "An Arab Spring for Women". Excerpt: ' The Arab Spring has proven an epochal period of activism and change…
Misrata Reprieved
The city of Misrata, a port and steel-making city and Libya's third-largest urban center, was sentenced to death 7 weeks ago by the Qaddafi family, which sent its armored brigades and professional…Casio Watches an Arresting Offense in Afghanistan: Wikileaks on Guantanamo
Wikileaks has released the Pentagon assessments of nearly 800 suspected al-Qaeda prisoners held at Guantanamo Bay to newspapers such as the Washington Post. The documents show that some of the prisoners were…
The Tyrants Strike Back
Syria Early Monday morning, columns of Syrian tanks led the way into the southern city of Deraa (pop. 75,000), followed by infantry brigades who took cover behind them as the city was…
Fighting Rages in Misrata despite Withdrawal Pledge
Fighting continued in Misrata on Sunday morning despite claims of the Qaddafi regime that it was withdrawing its troops from the city, which seems to have been a bald-faced lie. In fact,…
Syrian Security fires on Protesters, Kills 90
You never issue an ultimatum unless you are prepared for war. Syrian President Bashar al-Asad abolished the forty-year-old emergency law on Thursday, and he had dismissed two unpopular governors against whom there…
Free Libyan fighters exult in small Victories, as US begins Drone Strikes
In the west on the Tunisian border, Berber rebel troops have taken a checkpoint and chased away 200 Qaddafi loyalists, who took refuge in Tunisia. The checkpoint is on a road that…Apple Tracking likely a “Bug” or Oversight
The database of all our movements being kept on our iPhones by Apple is likely a software bug or oversight, according to John Gruber. The positions recorded are not exact, unlike GPS,…
Thousands Protest in Syria as Emergency Law is Lifted
Massive protests have forced the Baathist regime of Bashar al-Asad to lift the state of emergency that has governed the country since 1963. Without the emergency laws, which permit arbitrary arrest and…
Bush’s Pre-War Iraq Oil Deals Alarmed BP
George W. Bush was quietly approaching US petroleum corporations and trying to do deals with the French and Russian governments and their energy companies regarding Iraqi petroleum fields in fall of 2002,…Starship Amerika and Obama’s GPS Surveillance (Cole in Truthdig)
My column in Truthdig is out: "Starship Amerika." Excerpt: 'President Barack Obama is actually siding with police who want to use GPS devices to track you without a warrant. It always disturbed…
Saif admits Qaddafis are Brutal Foreign Occupiers
Saif al-Islam Qaddafi, son of the dictator, gave an interview yesterday to the Washington Post. In it he justified the Libyan army's horrific attacks on the besieged city of Misrata: ' “You…
Israeli Soldiers’ Brutality at Prison Camp for Palestinians
Israeli television has shown shocking cellphone video of the October, 2007, actions at Ketziot Prison, against unarmed Palestinian prisoners, by Israeli security forces. The thousand or so prisoners there revolted at a…Informed Comment & Big Blog on Campus
Pamela Paul includes Informed Comment in her Sunday NYT piece, "Big Blog on Campus." Favorite line from her interview with me: “Good blogging involves attitude and snark.” Now if only I finally…Saving What’s Left of the Constitution
Hmm. Somehow I missed this one. The American Civil Liberties Union lawsuit against the US government under George W. Bush regarding surveillance of phone calls made and emails sent overseas by US…
Egypt’s Ruling Party Dissolved
A special administrative high court in charge of ruling on Egyptian political party affairs on Saturday declared the former ruling party, the National Democratic Party, to be defunct. For Egypt, a major…
Yemeni Women: “We Will not be Silent!”
Oh no he di'n't! Thousands of Yemeni women demonstrated against President Ali Abdullah Saleh on Saturday in Sanaa and Taizz, saying "We will not be silent!" They were protesting his complaint on…
The Music of the Libyan Resistance
Libyan rock guitarist Massoud Abu Assir is entertaining Free Libya forces and volunteers not far from the front lines, says AP. I couldn't find Abu Assir's video clips, but here are is…
Arab Spring Protests Continue
1. Syria: In the biggest day of protests in Syria so far, tens of thousands of Syrians demonstrated against the Baathist state of Bashar al-Asad on Friday. Large crowds came out in…Qaddafi Using Cluster bombs on Civilian Areas
The NYT has confirmed that the pro-Qaddafi military in Misrata is using cluster bombs and other forms of indiscriminate anti-personnel weapon in the middle of a city full of non-combatants. Indiscriminate fire…African Languages origins of the Rest?
Quentin Atkinson of the University of Auckland, New Zealand, has done a computer analysis of certain sounds (phonemes) in about 500 languages, and concludes that all of them likely descended from African…
Allies Insist on Qaddafi departure
French President Nicolas Sarkozy, British Prime Minister David Cameron, and US President Barack Obama are publishing a joint op-ed in three newspapers on Friday in which they make it clear that the…
Free Libya plans Tripoli Uprising as Doha Conference Urges More Help to Civilians
Al-Sharq al-Awsat reports in Arabic that the Transitional National Council in Benghazi says that it has a network of cells in Tripoli and plans to launch an uprising in the capital. A…
Mubaraks Arrested
Al-Ahram is reporting in Arabic that Gamal and Ala Mubarak, the sons of deposed dictator Hosni Mubarak, have been arrested and will be moved from Sharm El Sheikh to the maximum security…
Misrata’s People under Siege
Misrata, a city of several hundred thousand people about 150 mi. east of the capital of Tripoli, is under, and for weeks has been under siege. Qaddafi's strategy is to starve it…Sea Water for Honolulu Air Conditioning
Here's a neat, practical idea: Honolulu is going to draw in sea water for air conditioning. The system "will reduce Hawaii’s consumption of oil by some 178,000 barrels a year and cut…Benghazi Rejects AU Plan to Leave Qaddafi in Power
Reuters reports that, as expected, the Transitional National Council in Benghazi has rejected the African Union proposal for a cease fire. Since Muammar Qaddafi's forces are actively attacking civilian cities such as…
Fukushima Core Failure a Level 7 (the Worst)
It's official. The Fukushima nuclear core failure is now more like what happened in Chernobyl than what happened a Three Mile Island, and is being declared a Level 7 nuclear emergency-- one…
Romney Haunted by Ghosts of Romney Past
Mitt Romney Has announced another run for the White House. Here is his 1994 debate with Senator Teddy Kennedy, in which he talked about his deeply held and obviously relatively liberal beliefs.…Wisconsin is not Broke, “Budget Crisis” a Fraud
Wisconsin was not and is not "broke." Its pension system gets a "gold star" for soundness, and it has no enduring structural shortfall in revenues. Gov. Scott Walker gave business a $500…
AU proposes Ceasefire, NATO protects Misrata, Ajdabiya
NATO finally seemed to get its act together on Sunday, striking multiple Qaddafi tanks at Misrata and Ajdabiya and allowing the rebels to hang on in each place. At Twitter we read,…
Al-Sadr Threatens Mahdi Army Revival if US Troops Stay
Al-Hayat writing in Arabic reports that nationalist Shiite clergyman Muqtada al-Sadr threatened on Saturday to revive his Mahdi Army militia if US troops tried to stay in Iraq past December 31, 2011.…
Hundreds of Thousands of Arabs Protest their Governments
On Friday, the US Congress endeavored to decide whether American democracy has irretrievably broken down because the representatives of the Billionaires refused to compromise with the representatives of the People ("cutting spending"…
Thomas Jefferson in Arabic
I am excited to announce that the Global Americana Institute has, in partnership with Dar al-Saqi of Beirut brought out a volume of selected writings of Thomas Jefferson in Arabic. It was…Is the FBI Lying to Congress about its Abuses of the “PATRIOT” Act?
Techdirt asks, "Is the FBI lying to Congress about its abuses of the PATRIOT Act? and answers in the affirmative. Actually there is plenty of indication in the public record of abuses…
Should Professors in Public Universities Give up their Email Addresses?
The latest McCarthyite tactics of the American Right Wing is to attempt to intimidate professors at public universities by launching Freedom of Information Requests for their emails, as part of a witch…
Reuters: Saudi-US Plan to Nudge Saleh Out as Demonstrators Stage Tsunami of Taiz
Reuters reporters in Dubai are saying that a diplomat with knowledge of the negotiations going on between the Gulf Cooperation Council and Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh told them that the plan…OSC: Yemeni Tribes, Movements, Youth, Organizations Decry Regime’s ‘Bloody Massacres’
The USG Open Source Center translates reactions of major political groupings in Yemen to the massacre of protesters in Taiz [Ta'izz] by security forces on Monday and the wounding of some 50…Wholesale Solar Energy Costs Rivalling Coal
Bloomberg reports that wholesale solar energy costs are falling 8% a year and may already rival coal in sunny climes like the Middle East and Japan. They're expected to be halved in…Green Energy in 20-40 Years?
All the power the world needs could be provided by alternative energy sources within 20-40 years if the political will could be found, according to Stanford researchers. Note that they do not…
24 Dead in Fresh Yemen Violent Repression
Violent repression of Yemen's protesters led to 24 deaths on Tuesday in Sanaa and Taizz. Demonstrations were put down near Sanaa university, and dissident Gen. Ali Mohsen Ahmar maintains that an assassination…Impatient Rebels Critique NATO Aid
Gen. Abdelfatah Yunis, the commander of rebel military forces in Benghazi expressed dissatisfaction on Tuesday with the pace of the NATO/ UN intervention in his country. He worried that Misrata, the country's…Amnesty Int’l: United Nations Must Reject Israeli Campaign to Avoid Accountability for Gaza War Crimes
This came to me as a news release from Amnesty International: Amnesty International Public Statement Tuesday, April 5, 2011 United Nations Must Reject Israeli Campaign to Avoid Accountability for Gaza War Crimes,…
UN Allies Strike Convoy near Brega as Rebels begin Oil Exports
NATO airstrikes near the oil city of Brega (Marsa al-Buraiqa) on Tuesday morning repelled the advance of an 8-vehicle military convoy of Qaddafi loyalists. The Transitional government in Benghazi is eager to…
Japan Nuclear Woes Galvanize Indian Protests
Indian peasants in Maharashtra are protesting plans to build a nuclear plant on an earthquake fault at Jaitapur. India has an ambitious set of plans to build 21 further nuclear reactors. The…Libyan Rebels Aspire to Democracy
The USG Open Source Center translates an article about a rebel news conference in which they lay out their vision of Libya' future: Libya's TNC Presents Memo Detailing Vision for Post-Al-Qadhafi Stage…
Crackdowns Against Arab Spring Continue
1. Tens of thousands of protesters are said to have come out in the Yemeni city of Taizz on Monday, but were fired on by security forces, who killed 11 and wounded…Libyan Rebels Grateful to West, say Qaddafi Psycho
The USG Open Source Center translates radio broadcasts on Sunday of the Voice of Free Libya Radio, which is based in Benghazi: ' Libyan Rebel Radio Eulogizes Slain Doctor, Mocks State TV…Westbrook: Half-Measures in Libya will Fail
Here is David A. Westbrook's guest column for Informed Comment It is in many ways a critique of the position Juan Cole has taken, that a limited air intervention in Libya was…Questions for Glenn Greenwald on Libya and the end of NATO
I have a set of questions for Glenn Greenwald. I ask them in the spirit of open and reasoned dialogue and am genuinely interested in his response. He is a hero of…
Afghan Protests against Qur’an-Burning cause Deaths
Some 2000 protesters came out in Qandahar on Friday, meeting police fire that left 9 dead and 73 injured, when they protested the burning of the Qur'an, the Muslim holy book, by…
7 Dead in Syria Unrest
Smaller than expected protests were held in Syria on Friday that were nevertheless met with deadly force that left between 7 and 10 dead. An alleged 5000 come out in the southern…Libya Rebels: Reject Violence, Terrorism, Give Rights to Minorities
The USG Open Source Center in conjunction with the BBC translates a broadcast of the Libyan liberation movement in Benghazi on Friday that emphasizes the rebels' commitment to religious and ethnic tolerance:…