This looks to me like a sort of north-south global war, with the North inflicting profound damage on the South: Here are carbon dioxide emissions per capita by country, calculated from data at the US Department of Energy’s Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Center (CDIAC): and here is the new Maplecroft estimation of the countries most […]
Archives for October 2010
Suzuki: Our Global Economy is not Sustainable
I had the pleasure of hearing biologist David Suzuki lecture at the Sydney Opera House on Sunday night during my recent short trip to Australia. He drew on his recent slight but meaty book, The Legacy: An Elder’s Vision for Our Sustainable Future. I downloaded it and read it on my iPhone via Kindle app […]
Karzai and the Iranian Slush Pile
The revelation that Afghanistan president Hamid Karzai receives millions in influence peddling payments from Iran is full of ironies. It demonstrates that the US and Iran are de facto allies in Afghanistan (in fact both of them are deeply opposed to the Taliban and their backers among hard line cells of the Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence). […]
Williams supported Imus Firing, Censoring of Rap Music
Given the protests mounted by Juan Williams over his firing from NPR because he said he gets nervous when he sees Muslims, I became interested in how he responded to the firing of shock jock Don Imus by CBS in April, 2007. Imus referred to African-American women basketball players as ‘nappy-headed ho’s.’ Interestingly,Williams did not […]
Renewed Conflict Looms as Israel-Palestine Talks still in Limbo
The Palestinian-Israeli peace talks are still in limbo, as the Israelis refuse to renew a freeze on new theft of and building on Palestinian land, while the Palestinians sensibly continue to refuse direct talks as long as the Israelis will not renew their settlement freeze. (What is the point of negotiating over territory if large […]
Could Wikileaks leave Iraq without a Government?
The wikileaks document dump from the Iraq War may well derail the formation of a government by implicating caretaker prime minister Nuri al-Maliki in running death squads. We are in our seventh month since the March 7 elections, but no new prime minister has been named because no party or coalition has the 163 seats […]
Arab Press: Iraq Wikileaks will Damage US Reputation
Wikileaks’ publication of 400,000 pages of previously secret documents on the Iraq War is roiling Western capitals and Baghdad. Julian Assange maintains that some 15,000 civilian deaths beyond the official US estimates are detailed in these documents. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton condemned the massive leak on grounds that it will endanger US troops. Assange […]
End Federal Tax Subsidies to Fox!
In response to Jim DeMint, Michelle Malkin, Bill O’Reilly, and other wingnuts who are calling for an end of Federal government support for National Public Radio because it fired commentator Juan Williams for hate speech against Muslim-Americans, I am calling for the Federal government to close all those loopholes whereby Rupert Murdoch essentially usurps our […]
Gul: Are Pakistan’s Generals Finally Breaking with Taliban?
Imtiaz Gul asks in a guest column for Informed Comment, “Is Kayani ready for North Waziristan mop-up?” When Pakistan’s army chief General Ashfaq Pervez Kayani begins his talks this week in Washington for the third round of the Strategic Dialogue, the desperate American military establishment is likely to confront him with an ambitious wish-list for […]