Carlyn Meyer writes in a guest column for Informed Comment: I recently returned from a trip to Israel and the West Bank. I am not Jewish but work with JStreet, the trip’s sponsor, because it is the only group in the US actively lobbying Congress and the Administration for a two-state solution to the Palestine/Israeli […]
The Arab Spring comes to Israel
Contrary to the line taken by the Israeli leadership, the Palestinian protests on May 15, Nakba Day, were not an Iranian or Syrian plot but rather the grassroots protests of a dispossessed and displaced people that refuses to accept its fate as flotsam of the earth, deprived of their identity and dignity by the great […]
Why was Strauss-Kahn Arrested but W. & Cheney went Free?
What is it about the United States that makes for harsh prosecutions over sex crimes but lets leaders off the hook when it comes to war crimes? New York police rushed to arrest Dominique Strauss-Kahn , the head of the international Monetary Fund, on Saturday on learning of charges against him by a hotel maid […]
Pakistani Parliament Reacts against US Incursions
Pakistan’s elected parliament held a 10-hour session on Friday and decided at the end of it that US incursions, including drone strikes, into Pakistan must cease. The American drone strikes in the northwest, in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas have long been unpopular in parliament and with the general public (though in some of the […]
The Koch Brothers and the End of State Universities
The real scandal around the endowment by the Koch brothers of two chairs at Florida State University is that state universities now have to seek such outside money and accept strings. The reason they have to do so is that many state legislatures have chosen not to have state universities any more. At many ‘state […]
Women Protest, Mourn in Liberated Misrata as UK Pledges Aid
Chairman of the Transitional National Council based in Benghazi, Mustafa Abdel Jalil, met Thursday in London with British Prime Minister David Cameron. Abdel Jalil said that the recent defense of the port of Misrata from deadly attacks by Qaddafi brigades was made possible by the arrival of light arms at the port, with which the […]
Stewart Skewers Bushies for claiming Bin Laden Credit
Jon Stewart of the Daily Show makes fun of Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Condi Rice, Doug Feith and other figures from the Bush administration to take credit for the demise of Usama Bin Laden. In fact, of course, they ran off to illegally invade and ruin Iraq and invested hundreds of billions of dollars in […]
Bin Laden was Operational Leader
Kimberly Dozier of the Associated Press got the scoop. USG analysts going through the material captured at Usamah Bin Laden’s residence in Abbotabad described to her some of what they were finding. The biggest surprise was that Bin Laden was still an operational figure. He was in touch, for instance, with the leaders of al-Qaeda […]
FBI admits to Protecting spying Telecoms from Lawsuits
So, the Bush administration was caught with its pants down, spying on thousands of Americans without a warrant, with the complicity of telecom corporations. So to try to get this massive violation of the Fourth Amendment of the US Constitution out of cowboy territory and under some sort of rule of law, Congress in 2008 […]