William deBuys writes at Tomdispatch.com Of course, it’s an easy city to pick on. The nation’s 13th largest metropolitan area (nudging out Detroit) crams 4.3 million people into a low bowl in a hot desert, where horrific heat waves and windstorms visit it regularly. It snuggles next to the nation’s largest nuclear plant and, having […]
Archives for March 2013
Top Ten Ways Pope Francis heralds the Emergence of Global South
The selection of Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio of Argentina as the new pope signals the first time the Roman Catholic Church has been headed by a non-European since St. Gregory III (d. 741), who was what we would today call either a Lebanese or a Syrian. (Of course, the church holds that a Palestinian was […]
What the US invasion felt like to Iraqis (Kukis)
Journalist Mark Kukis (Time magazine correspondent in Iraq 2006-2009) writes in a guest piece for Informed Comment Iraqis have a phrase they use to describe the U.S. invasion and early occupation. They call it “the collapse,” and in conversation the term is understood to mean the time covering the fall of Saddam Hussein to roughly […]
Amazing Social Media Facts 2013 (video)
Social media facts 2013, by the numbers:
Falsity of Nuclear Accusation against Iraq Was Known before Bush’s Invasion
As we approach the ten year anniversary of the launching of George W. Bush’s war on Iraq, it is worth my pointing out that I concluded even before the war began that the main rationale then given for it, Iraq’s alleged nuclear weapons program, was a fiction. I was following the inspectors which Bush had […]
Bradley Manning Explains his Leaks in his own Voice in new Tape (Goodman)
Amy Goodman’s Democracy Now! airs excerpts from a leaked interview in which Bradley Manning for the first time since his arrest can be heard explaining why he gave government documents to Wikileaks for public release. He wanted to show everyone the “true costs of war” and to “spark a domestic debate on the role of […]
Everybody Leaks in Washington: What the Bradley Manning Trial Tells us about a Broken System (Schanzer)
DAVID SCHANZER writes at ISLAMiCOMMENTARY When you cut through the bluster and controversies surrounding the Bradley Manning/Wikileaks case, it raises a difficult unresolved question that has great significance for our democracy: How can the government be held accountable for its national security policies (and mistakes) in a world where there are far too many secrets, […]
Syrian Regime running out of Troops as Britain Threatens to arm Rebels
British Prime Minister David Cameron said Tuesday that he would veto the renewal of a European Union ban on weapons exports to Syria, and hinted that Britain might go it alone in supplying rebels with arms. The Syrian opposition wants the ban lifted, arguing that the rebels would benefit more than the regime (which is […]
Pakistan, Iran defy US Sanctions to Inaugurate Gas Pipeline
Iran’s president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Pakistani president Asaf Ali Zardari on Monday inaugurated a gas pipeline that will supply Pakistani cities with Iranian natural gas. The pipeline has been largely completed on the Iranian side, but Pakistan had problems getting the international financing to complete its leg, which will cost $1.5 billion. Iran is loaning […]
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