The quirky Emir of Qatar since the mid-1990s, Sheikh Hamad b. Issa al-Thani, stepped down in favor of his fourth son, Tamim, 33, this morning. It is a historical step and insofar as it might form a precedent in the Gulf Cooperation Council of 6 Gulf sheikhdoms heretofore mainly ruled by old men, it is […]
The Syrian War comes to Lebanon as Sidon Explodes into Violence
The Syrian civil war spilled over onto Lebanon dramatically on Sunday and again on Monday morning when violent clashes broke out between the Salafi militia of Sheikh Ahmad Asir in Sidon and the Lebanese army and Shiite Hizbullah fighters. The army maintains that the Salafis (hard line Sunni Muslims influenced by Saudi Arabia’s Wahhabism) attacked […]
Top Ten Ways US TV News are Screwing us Again on NSA Surveillance Story (Iraq Redux)
US television news is a danger to the security of the United States. First, it is so oriented to ratings that it cannot afford to do unpopular reports (thus, it ignored al-Qaeda and the Taliban for the most part before 9/11). Second, it is so oriented toward the halls of power inside the Beltway that […]
Why Correa might give Snowden Asylum: All the Horrible things the US has done to Ecuador
Rafael Correa of Ecuador, who won a third term this year, has significantly improved the lives of his people, reducing poverty rates and building out infrastructure. Correa, an economist trained at the University of Illinois, has a nuanced view of the US, but he has had significant frictions with the behemoth of the North, which […]
Top Ten American Steps toward a Police State
The police state, a term first coined in the mid-19th century in German (Polizeistaat), is characterized by a standing political police, by intense domestic surveillance and by restrictions on the movements of citizens. Police states are on a spectrum, and unfortunately in the past decade the Unite States has moved toward police-stateness in small but […]
Arab Idol Winner performs “I want it that Way”
The just-announced winner of Arab Idol 2013, Muhammad Assaf of Gaza, performs a cover of the Back Street Boys’ 1999 “I want it that Way.” The video is here: Assaf sings classical Arabic ballads in a soulful way that reminded listeners of the great Egyptian crooner of the 1950s and 1960s, Abdel Halim Hafez. Assaf’s […]
Obama’s New Syria Strategy is Nixon’s Vietnam Negotiation Tactics Redux (Meyer)
Carlyn Meyer writes in a guest column for Informed Comment For better or worse, Obama came of age well after the Vietnam war. Had he lived through the daily body counts, he may have stood strong against arming the Syrian opposition. The President’s new ‘strategy’ is to get enough arms to the ‘right people’ in […]
So When will Dick Cheney be charged with Espionage? His Crime was the Same as Snowden’s
The US government charged Edward Snowden with theft of government property and espionage on Friday. Snowden hasn’t to our knowledge committed treason in any ordinary sense of the term. He hasn’t handed over government secrets to a foreign government. His leaks are being considered a form of domestic spying. He is the 7th leaker to […]
Snowden was Right, they’re Reading your Mail: How British Intelligence and the NSA are Tag-Teaming US
When President Barack Obama said ‘no one is listening to your phone calls,’ he was either misinformed or was being disingenuous. The British are at least gathering up the voice signals of your phone calls, and sharing 200 million of them a day with the US National Security Agency via a joint database. According to […]
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