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Tunisian President Zine al-Abidin Bin Ali has fled the country before the advancing crowds pouring in to the capital’s center. A French eye-witness said of the masses thronging Bourguiba Avenue that “it was black with people.” The Speaker of Parliament [first minister] is caretaker leader of the country, though Aljazeera is reporting that there are […]

Number of Murders, United States, 2009: 15,241 Number of Murders by Firearms, US, 2009: 9,146 Number of Murders, Britain, 2008*: 648 (Since Britain’s population is 1/5 that of US, this is equivalent to 3,240 US murders) Number of Murders by[pdf] firearms, Britain, 2008* 39 (equivalent to 195 US murders) *The Home office reported murder statistics […]

Ironically, while Lebanese Prime Minister Saad al-Hariri was meeting with President Obama on Wednesday, his government fell. As one Arab commentator observed, he went into the meeting a prime minister and came back out a civilian. It is a joke of course. Al-Hariri will be caretaker prime minister until a new government is formed, which […]

(courtesy Stacey (twitter.com/flipflops).

Some 24 persons have been killed in clashes between protesters and government security forces in Tunisia. The government has closed schools and universities “indefinitely” as a way of demobilizing youthful protesters. The Arabic press is reporting that Tunisia has called the US ambassador on the mat, and has called back its own ambassador in Washington, […]

Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, and other far right-wing demagogues have been quick to defend themselves from the charge of fostering a climate of poisonous political hatred in the United States, in the aftermath of the shooting of Rep. Gabrielle Gifford and the killing of Federal Judge John Roll, along with the injuring or killing of […]

Sarah Palin’s aides are claiming that the crosshairs marking the targeted Democratic candidates (including Gabrielle Giffords) on her infamous poster (scroll down) were not crosshairs but a ‘surveyor’s symbol.’ But Palin called the symbols ‘bull’s eyes’ in a tweet, so the surveyor symbol business is just b.s.: (Courtesy this Flikr site). Actually, Palin has a […]

Jared Lee Loughner, the alleged assassin of Federal judge John M. Roll and five others and attempted assassin of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-AZ), was clearly mentally unstable. But the political themes of his instability were those of the American far Right. Loughner was acting politically even if he is not all there. He is said […]