My essay, “The Corruption Game: What the Tunisian Revolution and WikiLeaks Tell Us about American Support for Corrupt Dictatorships in the Muslim World is up at The Nation Institute’s Tomdispatch. Excerpt: In July of 2009, for instance, the U.S. ambassador dined with Nesrine Ben Ali el-Materi and Sakher el-Materi, the president’s daughter and son-in-law, at […]
- Africa (237)
- Animals (1)
- Asia (1,219)
- Australasia (8)
- Australia (25)
- Authoritarianism (382)
- Canada (6)
- Cats (1)
- Celtic Religion (1)
- Culture (516)
- Dehydration (1)
- Democracy (323)
- Dissent (419)
- Ecology (1)
- Economy (1,020)
- Agriculture (3)
- Banking (67)
- Carbon Footprint (6)
- Corporations (50)
- Cryptocurrency (2)
- Debt (21)
- Democratic Socialism (20)
- Demographic Decline (1)
- Development (26)
- Downward Mobility (1)
- Employment (118)
- Food Insecurity (21)
- Homelessness (15)
- Industry (5)
- Inequality (422)
- Inflation (5)
- infrastructure (10)
- Investment (92)
- Market Crash (10)
- Middle Class (61)
- Monopolies (8)
- Neoliberalism (200)
- Plutocracy (612)
- Poverty (205)
- Regulation (2)
- Sanctions (4)
- Taxes (37)
- Technology (3)
- Trade (113)
- Weapons sales (6)
- Education (135)
- Elderly (3)
- Electricity Cost (2)
- Energy (1,696)
- Batteries (49)
- Coal (137)
- Fossil Fuels (317)
- Fracking (50)
- Geothermal (7)
- Green ammonia (5)
- Green Energy (409)
- Green Hydrogen (8)
- Heat Pumps (5)
- Hydroelectric (14)
- Natural Gas (107)
- Nuclear Energy (157)
- Petroleum (297)
- Power Grid (12)
- Pumped Hydro (6)
- Solar Energy (398)
- Tar Sands (13)
- Wave Energy (9)
- wind energy (333)
- Environment (2,594)
- Climate Change (1,539)
- Acidification of Oceans (54)
- Agriculture (25)
- Biodiversity (12)
- Climate Refugees (2)
- CO2 (114)
- Dehydration (5)
- Denialism (145)
- Desalinization (4)
- Desertification (158)
- Divestment (2)
- Dust Storms (6)
- Environmental Investment (1)
- Extreme Weather (294)
- Flooding (135)
- Food Supply (2)
- Forests (17)
- Green New Deal (39)
- Greenwashing (3)
- Mass Extinction (61)
- Methane (20)
- Net Carbon Zerio (8)
- Nitrous Oxide (2)
- Rainforests (19)
- Rivers (11)
- Sea Level (334)
- Soil Carbon Release (14)
- Super Storms (250)
- wildfires (232)
- Wood Buildings (1)
- Climate Crisis (1,245)
- Drought (288)
- Ecology (10)
- Environmentalism (392)
- Green Transportation (249)
- Ice Melt (132)
- Invasive Species (2)
- Islands (1)
- Oceans (100)
- Oil Spills (7)
- Pollution (226)
- Water (92)
- wildlife (19)
- Climate Change (1,539)
- Europe (1,334)
- Featured (3,878)
- fiction (5)
- Food (13)
- G20 (1)
- Guns (9)
- Health (662)
- History (342)
- Human Rights (1,403)
- Apartheid (258)
- censorship (286)
- Death Penalty (30)
- Disappeared (3)
- Displaced and Refugees (558)
- Food Insecurity (15)
- Gay rights (29)
- Genocide (33)
- Human Rights Watch (90)
- Migrants (4)
- Slavery and Trafficking (16)
- Torture (97)
- Trans Rights (3)
- Transgender Rights (4)
- Unlawful Imprisonment (99)
- Unlwful Killing (75)
- War Crimes (372)
- War Rape (7)
- Immigration (20)
- International (791)
- Islamophobia (374)
- Juan Cole (270)
- Latin America (99)
- Latinos (4)
- leisure (21)
- media (469)
- Middle East (9,286)
- Arab World (5,146)
- Iran (1,283)
- Israel (877)
- Israel/ Palestine (3,082)
- Israel/Palestine (8)
- Kurds (289)
- Turkey (575)
- Turkiye (101)
- military (123)
- Modernism (3)
- nationalism (116)
- NATO (36)
- Natural Disasters (13)
- Neocolonialism (1)
- nuclear weapons (103)
- Patriarchy (10)
- Peace (136)
- Persian mythology (1)
- Pete Buttigieg (1)
- Planetary Exploration (1)
- Popular Culture (24)
- Poverty (12)
- privacy (21)
- racism (462)
- Rape (8)
- religion (1,467)
- Rights (139)
- robots (3)
- Romance (1)
- science (149)
- Secular (West) (9)
- Secularism (30)
- Sexual Assault (2)
- South Pacific (2)
- Spirituality (22)
- Statelessness (15)
- Stranded Assets (1)
- Surveillance (278)
- Terrorism (1,091)
- Tolerance (6)
- Uncategorized (8,075)
- United Nations (136)
- Urbanization (4)
- US Foreign Policy (1,282)
- US politics (5,234)
- Anti-War Movement (12)
- Campaign Finance (31)
- Censors (22)
- Central Intelligence Agency (63)
- Charity (1)
- Civil Rights (96)
- Congress (78)
- Conspiracy Theories (23)
- Constitution (397)
- Courts (12)
- crime (12)
- Democratic Party (942)
- Democratic Socialists of America (22)
- Domestic Terrorism (20)
- Drone Warfare (27)
- Espionage (124)
- Ethnicities (380)
- Far Right (387)
- FBI (47)
- Foreign Policy (204)
- Gay Rights (17)
- Guns (94)
- Immigration (236)
- Israel Lobbies (124)
- Marijuana (4)
- Militarization (271)
- National Security State (471)
- Native Americans (40)
- Nuclear arsenal (7)
- penitentiaries (6)
- Pentagon (557)
- Police (43)
- prison reform (9)
- Private Prisons (2)
- Progressive Politics (12)
- Puerto Rico (30)
- Religious Right (15)
- Reproductive Choice (66)
- Republican Party (2,917)
- Supreme Court (125)
- Voter suppression (35)
- Whistleblowers (5)
- Xenophobia (9)
- Veterans (35)
- Voting Rights (16)
- War (499)
- White Supremacists (225)
- wikileaks (8)
- women (550)
- workers (231)
- Writing (5)
- Youth (208)
Afghanistan
Olbermann Departs, as Media Consolidate Further
People are blaming the abrupt departure of Keith Olbermann from MSNBC on that company’s merger with Comcast and Olbermann’s loss of the protection and patronage of Jeff Zucker, the former head of NBC programming. MSNBC says that the issue has nothing to do with Comcast. It seems Olbermann is too extreme for US television. But […]
Biden: US Could be in Afghanistan Past 2014; Bombing Shakes Capital
Vice President Joe Biden said Tuesday in Kabul that the US might keep troops in Afghanistan after 2014 if asked to do so by the Afghanistan government. He thus reversed his earlier pledge that the US would be out of that country by that date, “come hell or high water.” He has been under pressure […]
Death Penalty for Blasphemy Rare in Muslim World
Pakistani campaigners against the country’s blasphemy laws are pointing out that out of 54 Muslim-majority countries in the world, at most 5 permit capital punishment for blasphemy. They are Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Iran, the United Arab Emirates, and possibly Afghanistan (the new Afghan constitution incorporates human rights norms that could affect statutes treating blasphemy as […]
Wrong Again, Sen. Graham: Cole in Truthdig
My column is just out in Truthdig, entitled “Wrong Again, Sen. Graham,” on the South Carolina senator’s modest proposal to keep two big American air bases in Afghanistan “permanently.” Graham says the bases would keep Afghanistan from being taken back over by the Taliban. But is that anyway an actual prospect? And wouldn’t the bases […]
Taliban Getting Stronger, As US Public Support for Afghanistan War Collapses
Afghan President Hamid Karzai is getting weaker over time, and the Taliban are getting stronger, according to Jessica Mathews, president of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Matthews says that there will be a lull in the winter, but insurgent operations will pick up in the spring. As NATO allies draw down (many have announced […]
Top Ten Myths about Afghanistan, 2010
10. “There has been significant progress in tamping down the insurgency in Afghanistan.” Fact: A recent National Intelligence Estimate by 16 intelligence agencies found no progress. It warned that large swathes of the country were at risk of falling to the Taliban and that they still had safe havens in Pakistan, with the Pakistani government […]
Collateral Damage in Pakistan: Cloughley
Brian Cloughley writes in a guest column for Informed Comment: I started thinking about the phrase after a recent, disturbing trip to Pakistan. ‘Collateral damage’ is a seemingly bland phrase, but it indicates stomach-churning contempt for human life. It was fashionable during the Vietnam war, when countless thousands of civilians were blown to bits, burned […]
80 Killed in Bombing, Military Strikes in Pakistan
On Saturday, a suicide bomber targeted a food aid center in Khar in Bajaur, one of Pakistan’s northwestern Federally Administered Tribal Areas, killing 43 and wounding 100. The development has implications for US troops in Afghanistan, since Bajaur abuts the strategic and troubled Kunar Province in Afghanistan and Taliban based there and in Mohmand raid […]