The emails to Jill Kelly of Gen. John Allen, US commander in Afghanistan and a friend of ex-CIA chief David Petraeus, are being investigated as possibly inappropriate. Meanwhile, actual Afghans face a difficult and perhaps bleak future because the way over-ambitious American project in their country is failing. And US veterans of the war struggle […]
The Tesla S and World Peace: Can American Green Energy End the Gulf Oil Wars?
Petroleum makes the world go round, with 70% of it used to power automobiles. About a fifth of the world’s 90 million barrels a day of oil production comes out of the Persian Gulf/ Arabian Gulf. A large part of the US stand-off with Iran has to do with petroleum. The US doesn’t want a […]
Juan Cole: Real Petraeus Failure Was Counter-Insurgency in Iraq, Afghanistan (Democracy Now!)
Here is Amy Goodman’s interview with me, which was broadcast on Democracy Now! This morning. Via YouTube here Here is DN’s lead-in: CIA director David Petraeus has resigned following revelations of an extramarital affair with his biographer, Paula Broadwell, a married U.S. Army reservist. "This personal issue that cropped up that ruined his career at […]
Drone, Sanctions affecting Medicine, Intensify US-Iran Tensions
Among President Obama’s first decisions after his reelection was to further increase already severe sanctions on Iran. Just before that, Iran shot at a US drone it claims was spying on Iranian vessels in the Gulf. Russia Today reports: Obama’s sanctions regime, it is argued, is already damaging Iranian public health. Medicines are not getting […]
Bradley Manning would Cop to Wikileaks if Spying, Aiding Enemy charges are Dropped (DemocracyNow!)
Mirrored from DemocracyNow! Accused U.S. Army whistleblower Bradley Manning has offered to submit a partial guilty plea on charges of leaking classified documents to WikiLeaks in return for the government agreeing to pursue lesser charges. Manning’s attorney David Coombs says he is prepared to plead guilty to some of the charges, but not the entire […]
Tracking down Mubarak’s Ill-Gotten Gains (Loveluck)
Louisa Loveluck writes at the Bureau of Investigative Journalism In Egypt’s Tahrir Square, the vast fortune of Hosni Mubarak and his inner circle was also a focal point of resentment. Previous estimates of the Mubarak family wealth placed the figure at between $40bn and $70bn. A report by The National last week, looked at official […]
On Malala Day, Pakistani Girls chant “I am Malala”
Pakistan, and people around the world, commemorated yesterday as “Malala Day”, in honor of Malala Yusufzai, who was shot in the head by a Taliban militant for demanding the right of girls’ education. UN special envoy Gordon Brown submitted a petition to Pakistani President Asaf Ali Zardari with nearly a million signatures from around the […]
Companies are Mining your Facebook/ Twitter Info… and Selling it (Beckett)
Lois Beckett writes at ProPublica Yesterday, we got a rare look at how information on your public social media profiles—including Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn—is being harvested and resold by large consumer data companies. Responding to a congressional query, nine data companies provided answers to a detailed set of questions about what kinds of information they […]
Real Petraeus Issue was Evaluation of Afghanistan
Maybe it is because I was brought up in part in Europe, but I just cannot understand American puritanism’s obsession with public officials’ private lives. I can’t see that most private issues affect the quality of public service, and I don’t think people’s private lives are any of our business, nor become our business because […]
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