Archives for May 2013

The release of Yanira Maldonado from a Mexican jail after an apparent attempt to frame her for marijuana trafficking underlines the need to end the disastrous “war on drugs” and to legalize marijuana. Maldonado only escaped a very unpleasant fate because she happened to be exonerated by a surveillance video showing her boarding a bus […]

The Brahma Kumari spiritual community in Mt. Abu, Rajasthan, seeks to live a life in harmony with nature. Their solution to the need for power for residents and the 20,000 pilgrims a year? A solar farm being built with backing from the Indian and German governments. Germany is a leader in solar energy and is […]

The Ethiopian government’s unilateral and high-handed decision to build an enormous dam on the Blue Nile has thrown Egypt into a state of high anxiety. Egyptians already suffer from too little water (700 cubic meters/ yr vs. about 1,000 cubic meters average in rest of world). Water shortages were among the impetuses to rural populations […]

Lauren Williams of The Daily Star (Beirut) reported that when Sen. John McCain made a visit to rebel-held northern Syria on Monday, one of his photo ops was with a man implicated in the kidnapping of 11 Lebanese Shiite religious pilgrims, 9 of whom are still being held. The report provoked controversy because it undermined […]

by JULIE POUCHER HARBIN, EDITOR, ISLAMiCommentary, on MAY 30, 2013: Mohsen Kadivar Several Iranian opposition figures have declared Iran’s upcoming June 14 presidential election illegitimate, following last week’s decision by Iran’s constitutional body to disqualify several candidates. Among the disqualified is leading opposition-backed candidate and former Iranian President Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani. Exiled Iranian dissident and […]

A twitter friend commented that he was finding my book, Napoleon’s Egypt great summer reading. Here is my talk 3 years ago at AUC on Bonaparte’s invasion of Egypt as an 18th century Neoconservative blunder:

Michele Bachmann has announced that she won’t run for Congress again (she is under investigation for, let us say, irregularities in her campaign finances). I once wrote of her, “It has become increasingly apparent that politics and business often attract psychopaths, because of the opportunities they offer for the gratification of narcissism, grandiosity, sadism and […]

British actor and writer Stephen Fry‘s rant against grammar Nazis, with kinetic typography:

Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Yaalon bluntly threatened the Russian Federation on Tuesday, saying that if Moscow followed through on its plan to send the S-300 air defense system to Syria, Israel would bomb the arrays. Since the systems will be accompanied by Russian experts, any Israeli strike on them could well kill Russian personnel and […]