Archives for December 2009

Just to let all the Informed Comment readers who use iPhones know that there is now a dedicated app for it. Search ‘Juan Cole’s blog’ in iPhone apps and it comes right up. It lets you favorite posts and share them on Twitter and facebook. It was generated by Motherapp.com, to whom many thanks. – […]

In honor of the approaching season, some evangelical Christian Arab comedy from the Gaza Strip— just as a reminder that not everyone being half-starved by the Israeli blockade there is Hamas. End/ (Not Continued)

From the Realnews network, an intelligent discussion of how lack of US leadership contributed to the failure of the Copenhagen climate conference. Features Adele Morris of Brookings and Kurt Davies of Greenpeace. – Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Al-Sharq al-Awsat [The Middle East] reports in Arabic that 11 Iranian troops occupied a small oil well on the Iraqi side of the border in Maysan province east of Amara, and raised the Iranian flag over it. Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki called the Iranian ambassador on the mat about this action, demanding an explanation and […]

The USG Open Source Center translates Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s speech at Copenhagen on consumerism, hydrocarbon imperialism, massive military budgets, and obscene profit-seeking as the drivers of global climate change. Ahmadinejad earned top grades at Tehran Polytechnic in math and science; why didn’t he stick to what he knew instead of venturing into the history […]

The Associated Press: Pakistan bans minister's travel after graft ruling In summer-fall of 2007, the military dictatorship of Gen Pervez Musharraf was coming unravelled in the face of massive street demonstrations demanding the reinstatement of the Supreme Court Chief Justice, Iftikhar Chaudhry, and later the reversal of his wholesale dismissal of the Supreme Court. The […]

AFP: Babylon's last alcohol seller arrested: family Paul Wolfowitz said that Iraqi Shiites would be better friends for the US than the Saudis because they are ‘secular,’ and Paul Bremer boasted in his memoir of being viceroy of Iraq that he had kept key ministries out of the hands of the Shiite fundamentalists. The AEI […]

The USG Open Source Center rounds up Afghanistan Development News for November. Critics of the war often allege that only economic improvement will settle the country down, but the US corporate media almost never reports real economic developments in Afghanistan, focusing instead on fundamentalist Islam, ‘great men’ and foreign generals as ways of explaining what […]

DAWN.COM | Pakistan | President Zardari under pressure after NRO ruling Pakistan’s Supreme Court declined to extend a martial law ordinance that granted amnesty to high politicians charged with corruption. Chief among those newly liable to prosecution is president Asaf Ali Zardari. He probably cannot be impeached or tried while in office, but his position […]