Egypt’s appointed interim President Adly Mansour swore in a cabinet of 33 ministers on Tuesday, including 3 women, 7 members of the National Salvation Front, and 5 members of the previous, Hisham Qandil, government who agreed to stay on. The cabinet contains some of Egypt’s best economists, raising hopes that the country’s deep economic doldrums […]
Archives for July 2013
How America has Failed African-American Youth, by the Numbers
At age 25, 7.5 percent of whites are high school dropouts. At age 25, 14.4 percent of African-Americans are high school dropouts By age 25, 30% of whites have earned a college Bachelor of Arts degree. About 14% of African-Americans have: Some 22 percent of American children under 18 live in households below the poverty […]
Pussy Riot Protests Russian Oil Oligarchs and Putin
The Russian Punk Rock band “Pussy Riot” has released a new video, Rolling Stone reports, entitled “Like a Red Prison,” in which they attack Russia’s oil magnates and their ties to President Vladimir Putin. The song likens Putin to Iran’s Ayatollah Ali Khamenei because of his favoritism toward the Russian Orthodox Church, and complains that […]
The End of Dissidents: The National Security State wants a World without Thoreaus (Engelhardt)
Tom Engelhardt writes at Tomdispatch.com It’s hard even to know how to take it in. I mean, what’s really happening? An employee of a private contractor working for the National Security Agency makes off with unknown numbers of files about America’s developing global security state on a thumb drive and four laptop computers, and jumps the nearest plane to Hong […]
Top 10 Reasons Americans should Dismiss Israel’s Netanyahu on Attacking Iran
The Iranian electorate did about the most cruel thing possible to uber-hawk Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu. It replaced former Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad with an eminently reasonable and personable successor, Hasan Rouhani. The Israeli and American politicians who desperately want to fall on Iran the way a hungry lion does on a lamb had […]
“Mull”: Twitter word of the Day (Short Words for 140-Character Messages)
Twitter imposes a 140-character limit on messages, requiring that authors make every word count. To “consider” or to “contemplate” are long words, and character-hogs. The Middle English word “mull” gets the same work done. The Oxford English Dictionary lists the verb “mull” as of unknown origin. It could be from the noun, “mull,” which in […]
Kenya: Solar Power on a Pay as you Go Plan gives Light, rechargers to Villagers
“Small solar home systems bring good quality light and phone-charging to off-grid households and save them money. Yet their upfront costs render them out of reach for the people who would benefit most from them. UK-based startup Azuri has developed a pay-as-you-go interface which allows households [in Kenya and East Africa] to pay for solar […]
Obama Explains his NSA Domestic Spying & Why it differs from Bush’s (Cartoon satire)
Cartoon satire: “President Obama explains why Americans should not be concerned about the NSA’s secret data collection program and that he is very different from George W. Bush.” The video is here:
Israel’s District 9: Its Biggest Ethnic Cleansing since 1948
30,000 Palestinian-Israelis of Bedouin heritage are are being forcibly transferred by the Israeli government, and thousands of acres of their land is being stolen from them. The 972 article compares it to Apartheid South Africa’s District 6, the inspiration for the film, “District 9” The Palestinian-Israelis are mounting big protests today. Aljazeera English reports Amjad […]
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