Uncategorized

(By Ola Claësson) The government’s response to the Gezi protests in June 2013 and its obstruction of a graft probe targeting ministers in December the same year has tarnished the perception of Turkey as an improving democracy. But the foreign media tend to ignore to report the combined seriousness of the developments currently taking place […]

Eastern Europe

Not to Reason Why: A New Crimean “War”?

Juan Cole

(Juan Cole) The Russian-speaking population of the Crimean Peninsula in the Ukraine is upset by the popular movement in the west of the country that has overthrown president Viktor Yanukovych and is said to be forming militias. On some government buildings, Ukrainian flags have been replaced by Russian ones. Sevastopol is an important Black Sea […]

Uncategorized

Palestinian Children Arrested by Israeli Troops Face Abusive Violence

Juan Cole

Three in four Palestinian children detained by the Israeli military in the occupied West Bank last year endured physical violence during arrest and interrogation, according to Defense for Children International Palestine research. Data compiled by DCI-Palestine from 98 affidavits of Palestinian children aged 12 – 17 also showed that night arrests between midnight and 5 […]

Human Rights

False Dawn: The 35th Anniversary of Iranian Revolution

contributors

(By Farhang Jahanpour) The Iranian revolution succeeded exactly 35 years ago this week. After 37 years of rule, Mohammad Reza Shah left Iran on 16 January 1979, never to return. His nemesis, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, who had waged a campaign against him mainly from his exile in Najaf in Iraq for 14 years returned in […]

Uncategorized

20 Banks Funding most Dirty Coal Mining, Climate Disruption, Worldwide

contributors

(By Michael Winship) Turning Up Heat on Banks Funding Fossil Fuels (via Moyers & Company) As environmental writer and activist Bill McKibben tells Bill Moyers on this week’s Moyers & Company about the student movement for colleges and universities to divest themselves of stock from companies that produce or burn oil, gas and coal, The… […]

Human Rights

“In the Seam”: Israel Strangles Palestinian Town

Juan Cole

(By Sarah Leah Whitson, Human Rights Watch) (Jerusalem) – The Israeli military is severely harming livelihoods in a Palestinian village in the West Bank that it plans to turn into an archaeological tourist site. The military should drop the project and lift excessive restrictions that keep residents from building or farming on their land and […]

censorship

Egyptian Junta increasingly sees Journalism as a form of Terrorism, Arrests Journalists

Juan Cole

(Via Globalpost) Why Al Jazeera’s journalists are being targeted in Egypt (via GlobalPost) CAIRO, Egypt — In Egypt, journalists are being accused of terrorism. Twenty Al Jazeera employees, including four foreigners, are to stand trial on charges of joining or assisting a terrorist group, as well as fabricating news to convince readers that… —— […]

Climate Change

How the Media Missed the Story of the Millennium: One Climate Blockbuster after Another

contributors

(By Tom Englehardt) Here’s the scoop: When it comes to climate change, there is no “story,” not in the normal news sense anyway. The fact that 97% of scientists who have weighed in on the issue believe that climate change is a human-caused phenomenon is not a story. That only one of 9,137 peer-reviewed papers […]

Domestic Surveillance

Christie, Clapper and other Officials who should be in Jail instead of Snowden

Juan Cole

(By Juan Cole) The vindictiveness toward Edward Snowden in official Washington has nothing to do with law-breaking and everything to do with the privileges of power. The powerful in Washington may spy on us, but we are not to know about it. Snowden’s sin in their eyes was to level the playing field, to draw […]