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Archives for July 2013

European Union
European Union Boycotts Israeli Colonies on the Palestinian West Bank

European Union Boycotts Israeli Colonies on the Palestinian West Bank

Juan Cole

The Israeli government’s de facto annexation and colonization of the Palestinian West Bank is illegal in international law. United Nations members cannot acquire territory by warfare according to the UN Charter (it doesn’t matter from whom they acquire the territory). The UN Charter was written by people who disapproved of the behavior of the aggressors […]

Iraq
Iraq:  92-Year-Old Iraqi Man marries 22-Year-Old Woman

Iraq: 92-Year-Old Iraqi Man marries 22-Year-Old Woman

Juan Cole

“A 92-year-old man in Iraq marries a woman 70 years his junior. Muslai Mohammed, one of the most prominent figures in his village, decided to get married three years after the death of his first wife, who died aged 58. “I remained alone when my wife died, there was nobody to share anything with. I […]

US politics
Obama: “Trayvon Martin could have been me 35 years ago”

Obama: “Trayvon Martin could have been me 35 years ago”

Juan Cole

President Obama has spoken out on the Trayvon Martin case, saying that “Trayvon Martin could have been me 35 years ago.” He spoke of how African-Americans are marked in US society as objects of special scrutiny, followed for no reason by security in department stores or reacted to with the body language of fear. He […]

US politics
Detroit’s Bankruptcy and America’s Future:  Robots, Race, Globalization and the 1%

Detroit’s Bankruptcy and America’s Future: Robots, Race, Globalization and the 1%

Juan Cole

The big question is whether Detroit’s bankruptcy and likely further decline is a fluke or whether it tells us something about the dystopia that the United States is becoming. It seems to me that the city’s problems are the difficulties of the country as a whole, especially the issues of deindustrialization, robotification, structural unemployment, the […]

Uncategorized
GOP to Poor American Kids:  Silly wabbits, Food Stamps are for Corporations! (Jamiol Cartoon)

GOP to Poor American Kids: Silly wabbits, Food Stamps are for Corporations! (Jamiol Cartoon)

Juan Cole

The GOP-dominated House of Representatives has stripped food stamps from the farm bill, while supporting subsidies to agricultural corporations and lower taxes on the rich. I mean, you expect representatives elected by corporate campaign funds to go to bat for the 1%. But they didn’t used to be so mean about it. h/t Paul Jamiol

Domestic Surveillance
Glenn Greenwald: Growing Backlash Against NSA Spying Shows Why U.S. Wants to Silence Edward Snowden

Glenn Greenwald: Growing Backlash Against NSA Spying Shows Why U.S. Wants to Silence Edward Snowden

Juan Cole

In an epic boxing match, we have in one corner 600 pound gorillas like Rep. Mike Rogers (R-MI), head of the House Intelligence Committee that is determined to abet spying on you in your bedroom, and in the other corner we have 98 pound weaklings like Edward Snowden and Glenn Greenwald, who are without Rogers’s […]

Egypt
Top Ten Ways Egypt Actually Does deeply Matter to the United States

Top Ten Ways Egypt Actually Does deeply Matter to the United States

Juan Cole

A Pew poll shows that far fewer Americans are following events in Egypt closely now than in January-February 2011. Actually, about the same percentage are following it “fairly closely” as then (a quarter now versus 31% in 2011). The big fall-off is in people following events on the Nile “very closely,” which are only 15% […]

CIA
Obama Administration Facing Congressional Rebellion, Civil Suits over NSA Surveillance

Obama Administration Facing Congressional Rebellion, Civil Suits over NSA Surveillance

Juan Cole

The Electronic Frontier Foundation and the ACLU, among other important civil society organizations, are suing the Federal government over the National Security Agency’s unconstitutional domestic surveillance. The administration is also facing House hearings on the issue. By the way, the argument made by Homeland Security and other such officials that the NSA’s domestic spying could […]

Energy
Guna People of Panama's islands Flee rising Seas

Guna People of Panama’s islands Flee rising Seas

Juan Cole

The indigenous community of the Guna (Kuna) live on islands off Panama and along a narrow strip of its coast, in the province of Guna Yala (Kuna Yala). But global warming and sea level rise are threatening their lives on those islands, and those of Carti Sugdup (Gardi Sugdup) have decided that they have to […]

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