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 […]
Stop it Now! Keystone XL will Bring Us the Dirtiest Oil on the Planet (Giesen)
Tom Giesen writes in a guest column for Informed Comment The US already imports over 2.5 million barrels of Canadian oil each day. Much of it is tar sands oil. The proposed Keystone XL pipeline in the US for tar sands oil is a huge and irreversible mistake. Tar sands processes have contaminated huge quantities […]
Day of Division in Middle East: Bloody Clashes in Egypt, Iraq
Sunday was another bloody day in the Middle East. In Egypt, the establishment commemorated the success of the Egyptian army 40 years ago in crossing the Suez Canal and taking back most of the Sinai Peninsula, Egyptian territory occupied by Israel in 1967. But the commemorations, which were lively and joyous in Tahrir Square and […]
The Great Solar Car Race begins in Australia: Can it save Humankind?
On Sunday, the every-other-year great solar car race (the Bridgestone World Solar Challenge) began in Australia, as vehicles powered by sunlight competed to get from Darwin to Adelaide (3000 km/ 1800 miles) as quickly as possible. An electric car with the right range and speed is crucial to solving the problem of climate change, since […]
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