Gen. Stanley McChrystal is apologizing for remarks he made in a Rolling Stone interview denigrating Vice President Joe Biden and US Ambassador to Afghanistan Karl Eikenberry. McChrystal is said to have asked “Who’s that?” at the mention of Joe Biden’s name, and to have suggested that Amb. Eikenberry leaked memos critical of McChrystal’s planned counter-insurgency […]
Israel Makes Small Change to Gaza Blockade
Brands Lebanese Women’s Aid Mission ‘Hizbullah’
Edmund Sanders of the LAT puts the matter correctly when he says that Israel’s national security government (a subset of key cabinet ministers) took a “small step” Sunday in announcing a further easing of the Israeli blockade of civilian Palestinians in the Gaza strip. The new policy is said to envision the abolition of the […]
US Strike Kills Civilians in Khost,
Bombings Rock Helmand Capital
UN: Roadside Bombings Double
Things are not going well for the Obama administration in Afghanistan, and the only good news for the White House is that almost no one in the United States seems to be paying attention. Supposedly precision strikes by the US air force against the militant Haqqani Network in Khost province in the south of the […]
Twin Oil Disasters: BP and Iraq
Bloody Friday in Iraq Leaves 27 Dead, over 80 Wounded
The wave of violence in Iraq on Friday, wherein guerrillas killed at least 27 and wounded dozens, underlined how fragile the country still is. In many ways, American Iraq resembles BP’s Gulf of Mexico oil gusher. In the cases both of Iraq and of Deepwater Horizon, oil men were trying to get a big reserves […]
Limited Israeli Easing of Gaza Blockade Greeted with Dismay
Despite the breathless flurry of approving statements provoked by the English-language pledge issued by the prime minister of Israel, Binyamin Netanyahu that the blockade of Gaza would be ‘eased,’ in fact , Haaretz reports, the Hebrew text of the communique does not indicate that the cabinet made any such decision, and there has been no […]
Turkey Shelves Israeli Cooperation,
Considers breaking off Ties;
Israel Lobbies in Congress denounce Ankara
Members of the US Congress attacked Turkey on Wednesday for voting against the UN Security Council resolution imposing further sanctions on Iran, and for its heavy criticism of the Israeli blockade of Gaza. Rep. Mike Pence (R-Indiana) said, “There will be a cost if Turkey stays on its present heading of growing closer to Iran […]
Obama Launches Green Equivalent of Moon Mission
President Obama for the first time addressed the nation from the Oval Office on Tuesday evening, on the Gulf of Mexico oil volcano. The address came as scientists revised upward their estimate of how much petroleum is daily gushing into the Gulf, deciding it is between 35,000 and 60,000. Only 18,000 barrels a day is […]
Big Oil’s Predations are not Your Fault
No, the BP oil volcano in the Gulf of Mexico is not your fault, despite what many pundits will tell you. Back in the 1960s when the environmental movement got going, major US corporations responsible for much of the nation’s pollution decided to fight it by paying for television advertising that urged individuals not to […]
Meh story about $1 Trillion in Minerals in Afghanistan
The report that geologists have found $1 trillion in mineral wealth in Afghanistan is less important than it seems.. That Afghanistan has minerals is not in fact news. But none of the sort of research that would be necessary to place a value on them has been done, so no one actually knows what they […]
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