I sometimes talk to Muslim audiences. There is often an FBI agent in the audience and sometimes an ACLU representative. Maz Jobrani suggested at one such event that everyone else leave and let the two of them talk. Now it turns out that the agents often are there gathering information on participants and storing it, […]
Senate Bill Allows Arrest of Americans by Military Anywhere
The Senate passed a war expenses appropriation bill on Thursday that appears to hold out the possibility that the military could be ordered to arrest and hold an American citizen anywhere in the world (including the US) without trial and indefinitely. Senator Lindsey Graham insisted that the move is necessary so that information can be […]
Britain Closes Tehran Embassy
The British government has closed its embassy in Tehran and given Iranian diplomats two days to depart the UK. London has not severed diplomatic relations with Iran, but has reduced them to the lowest level possible without a break. Some other European countries have followed suit. Apparently the angry students and other forces suspected the […]
Iranian Students attack British Embassy
Persons portraying themselves as angry Iranian students occupied the yard and foyer of the British embassy in Tehran on Tuesday, as well as a smaller facility where six embassy employees appear briefly to have been taken hostage. The militant students (or possibly members of the Basij paramilitary) were protesting increased British financial sanctions on Iran, […]
Letter on Bahrain to Secretary Clinton
The Project on Middle Esst Democracy has written a letter to Secretary of State Clinton on the Bahrain crisis, which I co-signed. It asks the US take seriously the findings of severe human rights violations on the part of the regime, and to pressure it to take concrete steps to end them. The letter anticipated […]
Democratic Developments in the Arab Upheavals
The Arab upheavals of 2011 have been very different from one another across countries, but have in common a language of parliamentary democracy as the ultimate ideal (albeit one that sounds more like the old West German Social Democratic Party ideal than like the Neoliberal parliamentary regimes of the US and its close allies). Democracy […]
Assassinating Dreams in Egypt: Amr
Ahmed Amr writes in a guest op-ed for Informed Comment: Nostalgia for more innocent times is a comforting refuge when hope is scarce. last week, as we inhaled a toxic dose of tear gas in Tahrir Square, we were all gasping for a resurrection of the spirit of the January uprising that led to the […]
Did the Muslim Brotherhood Threaten to Kill “All Jews”?
The Muslim Brotherhood and other religious parties in Egypt (including the Salafis and the Gama’a al-Islamiya) held a rally at al-Husayn Square in Cairo last Friday to which a few thousand people came. The big rally was at Tahrir Square in downtown Cairo and was dominated by secular forces. This is an Arabic news article […]
Empire by the Numbers
Number of Pakistani troops killed at checkpoint Saturday by a US helicopter raid from Afghanistan: 25 Number of NATO supply trucks allowed to cross from Pakistan to Afghanistan Saturday: 0 Number of Afghan children killed near Qandahar Wednesday by a US air strike: 6 Percentage of Pakistanis [pdf] who want US troops out of Afghanistan: […]
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