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Archives for August 2013

Egypt
Must US Aid to Egypt be Cut Off? (Wang & Meyer)

Must US Aid to Egypt be Cut Off? (Wang & Meyer)

Juan Cole

Marian Wang and Theodoric Meyer write at ProPublica Questions about the United States’ aid to Egypt have intensified in the wake of last month’s military coup. More than 1,000 Egyptians have been killed in the last week, most apparently supporters of ousted president Mohamed Morsi. A few members of Congress have called for cutting off […]

Afghanistan
Bradley Manning in a World of Cheneys, Hadithas, and NSA Domestic Surveillance

Bradley Manning in a World of Cheneys, Hadithas, and NSA Domestic Surveillance

Juan Cole

The sentencing of Bradley Manning to 35 years in prison came because he leaked government documents, mostly with a low level of classification that probably shouldn’t have been classified in the first place. Some of the leaked documents showed the US government or other governments behaving badly, in ways the American people had a right […]

Barack Obama
Syria: Will Killing of Hundreds with Sarin Gas force Obama’s Hand?

Syria: Will Killing of Hundreds with Sarin Gas force Obama’s Hand?

Juan Cole

Syrian sources on the ground and expatriate human rights organizations are alleging Wednesday morning that Syrian aircraft have killed hundreds of people in rebel-held East and West Ghouta and some other areas outside the capital with bombings and poison gas. The attack comes as international observers are in the country to investigate past alleged use […]

Iraq War
Alleged Torturers sue Abu Ghraib Torture Victims (Lazare)

Alleged Torturers sue Abu Ghraib Torture Victims (Lazare)

Juan Cole

Sarah Lazare writes at Commondreams ‘Defense’ contractor CACI International has taken the shocking step of suing four former Abu Ghraib detainees who are seeking redress in U.S. courts for the company’s role in [allegedly] torturing, humiliating and dehumanizing them, with the U.S. corporation recently requesting that the judge order the plaintiffs—- all of whom are […]

Egypt
Egypt’s Revenge of the Leftovers: Mubarak to be released, Muslim Brotherhood leader Badie Arrested

Egypt’s Revenge of the Leftovers: Mubarak to be released, Muslim Brotherhood leader Badie Arrested

Juan Cole

Too much could easily be made of the pending release from prison of former Egyptian dictator Hosni Mubarak, who is still facing charges of complicity in killing some 900 young protesters during the Jan. 25, 2011, uprising. The courts couldn’t find evidence tying him to corruption (which either means that Mubarak’s accountants hid their trail […]

censorship
Greenwald Partner falsely detained as Terrorist: How to Create a Dictatorship

Greenwald Partner falsely detained as Terrorist: How to Create a Dictatorship

Juan Cole

How to turn a democracy into a STASI authoritarian state in 10 easy steps: 1. Misuse the concept of a Top Secret government document (say, the date of D-Day) and extend classification to trillions of mundane documents a year. 2. Classify all government crimes and violations of the Constitution as secret 3. Create a class […]

Energy
Climate Change Activism as a Nonviolent Movement without Leaders (McKibben)

Climate Change Activism as a Nonviolent Movement without Leaders (McKibben)

Juan Cole

Bill McKibben writes at Tomdispatch.com The history we grow up with shapes our sense of reality — it’s hard to shake. If you were young during the fight against Nazism, war seems a different, more virtuous animal than if you came of age during Vietnam. I was born in 1960, and so the first great […]

Afghanistan
Has Military Suppression of Political Islam ever Worked?

Has Military Suppression of Political Islam ever Worked?

Juan Cole

The Egyptian military’s obvious determination to crush the Muslim Brotherhood involves serious human rights violations, apparent in the appalling scenes of the siege of members in a mosque on Saturday. A separate question, which any political pragmatist would ask, is, can it work? If we look at long term attempts to limit political expressions of […]

Energy
New Hot Zones now cover 5% of Earth; Only Fix is Halting CO2 (Lazare)

New Hot Zones now cover 5% of Earth; Only Fix is Halting CO2 (Lazare)

Juan Cole

Sarah Lazare writes at Commondreams.org A new study dishes out some very bad news about the global warming crisis. It is too late to stop a “several folds” increase of deadly heat waves caused by greenhouse gases—and the floods, fires, and storms they bring. The report comes as a record heat wave hits North Asia, […]

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