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Ohio 9th District, GOP candidate Rick Iott is a re-enactor of the Nazi 5th SS Panzer Division Wiking. Iott told the Atlantic about his admiration for Nazi Germany’s military accomplishments while denying any interest in Nazism per se: “I’ve always been fascinated by the fact that here was a relatively small country that from a […]

Jo Tatchell writes in a guest column for Informed Comment A $27 billion makeover of Saadiyat Island, off the coast of Abu Dhabi, is aimed at turning the UAE capital into a cultural mecca – and a bridge between east and west. But can the conservative capital pull off such a risky move? Saadiyat Island […]

UN FAO: 22 countries with 160 mn. people face protracted food crisis. ‘ Twenty-two countries are facing enormous challenges like repeated food crises and an extremely high prevalence of hunger due to a combination of natural disasters, conflict, and weak institutions. These countries are in what is termed a protracted crisis, FAO said in its […]

My reading of the Rick Sanchez meltdown is that he was implying in his radio interview that Daily Show host Jon Stewart is prejudiced against the working class and against Latinos (apparently Sanchez’ evidence for this charge is that Stewart sometimes made fun of Sanchez). Even though I can’t imagine anyone taking it seriously, I […]

Shorter Mahmoud Abbas: We refuse to negotiate with Israel about territory it is actively stealing from us while we are talking about its future disposition.” ITN has video:

Christine O’Donnell, candidate for senator in Delaware, was clearly a religious seeker in her youth. Bill Maher played a clip last night in which she admitted that she might well have joined the Hindu Krishna Consciousness Society (popularly known as ‘Hare Krishnas’ because of their distinctive chanting in public places), but was put off by […]

The thing that most disturbed me about the altercation between NY gubernatorial candidate Carl Paladino and NY Post reporter Fred Dicker was Paladino’s threat to “take out” Dicker. (For more see this story.) The only person I remember using that diction was George W. Bush, who pledged he would “take out” Saddam. Then he gave […]

Iran jails blogfather Hussein Derakhshan for nearly 20 years for blogging. Derakhshan made a lot of enemies when he started justifying the Ahmadinejad regime in 2008. But I remember the excitement in Iranian circles when he figured out how to use blogger.com (founded in 1999) to blog in Persian and then taught others. Blogging became […]