With the opening of Paul Greengrass’s film “Captain Phillips,” written by Billy Ray and starring Tom Hanks, the phenomenon of piracy in the waters off the Horn of Africa is back as a topic of discussion. This CNA study by Ghassan Schbley and William Rosenau says that piracy took off after 2006 after the fall […]
Sakharov Prize-winner Malala Yousafazai Calls on US Gov’t to Conduct talks with Taliban (Queally)
Malala Yousafzai has won the Sakharov Prize for free speech and human rights. Jon Queally writes at Commondreams.org: ” Malala Yousafzai, the sixteen-year-old girl shot in the head by Taliban members in her native Pakistan for speaking out for women's right to education, is calling out the U.S. government and her own for refusing to […]
Why “Fracking” should be against the Law (Giesen)
Tom Giesen writes in a guest column for Informed Comment: As our stocks of cheap and easy gas and oil diminish, we seek oil in remote places – in rock formations 10,000’ below the surface of the Gulf of Mexico; in the Arctic; and held in essentially impermeable geologic formations. Those impermeable geologic formations are […]
Libyan Prime Minister Abducted, released by Armed Group
Early morning on Thursday, today, the news came of the abduction of Libyan Prime Minister Ali Zeidan from a hotel in the capital, Tripoli. He was released Thursday afternoon. It is not clear which armed group took him captive. On Monday, armed troops demanding back pay occupied the Prime Minister’s office. Zeidan broke with Gaddafi […]
Plight of Syrian Refugees in Jordan
Some 750,000 Syrians have been forced to seek refuge in Jordan. About 2/3s live in apartments or with families, with about a third forced to live in unsanitary tent cities. DeutscheWelle reports: Rochelle Davis and Abby Taylor have [pdf] have just issued a report at Georgetown University on the difficulties the Syrian refugees face: They […]
Dear Tea Party: The Gov’t Shutdown is Hurting White People, Too
When the Republican Party was reduced to its bare minimum of support in 2008, as the American people finally rebelled against the Bush/ Rove dismantling of the economy and wasteful adventurism abroad, it was left with representatives from the Southern states. That election revealed that at its core, the GOP is now a party of […]
World Bank: Israelis strangling Palestinian Economy
Israeli-imposed restrictions on Palestinians in the Palestinian West Bank impede easy access to fertile farmland and other resources, costing the Palestinians $3.4 billion a year, according to a new World Bank study. This land falls in Area C, which the Israelis agreed to turn over to the Palestinian Authority by 1998. They never did so, […]
Big Brother’s little Brothers: How Surveillance Companies Mine your Info for the Gov’t (Chatterjee)
Pratap Chatterjee writes at Tomdispatch.com The Data Hackers Mining Your Information for Big Brother By Pratap Chatterjee Big Bro is watching you. Inside your mobile phone and hidden behind your web browser are little known software products marketed by contractors to the government that can follow you around anywhere. No longer the wide-eyed fantasies of […]
Netanyahu and Iranian Jeans: Ironies of Modernity and Tradition
Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu provoked a lot of mocking humor by saying in an interview for BBC Persian that “if Iranians were free they would wear blue jeans, and listen to Western music.” Iranian youth were surprised and annoyed by the ignorant comment, and responded by posting to the web photos of themselves wearing […]
© 2025 All Rights Reserved