Palestinian authorities on Thursday protested the resolution passed by the US congress on Wednesday condemning movement toward a unilateral declaration by Palestinians of a Palestinian state. The congressional resolution was actually fairly weak, showing the tensions between the US and the far rightwing government of Binyamin Netanyahu, since it did call for the establishment of […]
Archives for December 2010
BP Platform Blow-Out was covered up in Azerbaijan: Wikileaks
The Guardian reports from US State Department cables released by Wikileaks that the oil and gas giant, BP, experienced a platform disaster in the Caspian Sea off Azerbaijan in September, 2008, very similar to last summer’s Deep Water Horizon platform explosion. BP was reported to have covered up the details of the catastrophe even from […]
The Costs of War: Afghan Civilian Casualties Spike, says ICRC
An important price of President Obama’s decision to pursue a big new military campaign in Afghanistan under the rubric of ‘counter-insurgency’ has been a spike in civilian casualties, according to the International Committee of the Red Cross. A new ICRC report notes, ‘ As the conflict has intensified and expanded geographically, civilian casualties have once […]
Fox Management Ordered Reporters to Spin Global Warming
Surprise! Management at Fox Cable “News” instructed journalists to spin reporting on climate change by casting doubt on the indisputable fact that the world has warmed over the past 50 years. This according to Media Matters, which got hold of a memo by Bill Sammon, ‘ questioning the “veracity of climate change data” and ordering […]
Domestic Crusaders and Islamophobia in Literature
McSweeney’s is publishing Wajahat Ali’s important Muslim-American play: ‘ The Domestic Crusaders focuses on a day in the life of a modern Muslim Pakistani-American family of six eclectic, unique members, who convene at the family house to celebrate the twenty-first birthday of the youngest child. With a background of 9-11 and the scapegoating of Muslim […]
NIE Questions Progress in Afghanistan
Congress has been briefed on a new National Intelligence estimate on Afghanistan that is said to throw cold water on the idea that the US military has made significant progress in Afghanistan as a result of President Obama’s troop escalation. In a further demonstration that people leak classified documents all the time in Washington–it isn’t […]
Egypt: Israel’s Nukes Destabilizing to Region (Wikileaks)
Whenever any US official says that Iran’s civilian nuclear enrichment program is destabilizing the Middle East by posing a proliferation problem, I wince. A civilian enrichment program is not a proliferation issue, since only the construction of a nuclear warhead would violate the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. The NPT explicitly allows countries to close the fuel […]
Karzai Wishes he had Joined Taliban
Rajiv Chandrasekaran of WaPo gets the scoop. His sources say that at a high level meeting in October, Gen. David Petraeus and Ambassador Karl Eickenberry pressed President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan to reconsider his decision to toss private security firms out of his country. Karzai exploded, called the US one of three enemies faced by […]
Former CIA Official Ray McGovern Defends Assange
Former high-ranking CIA official Ray McGovern denounces smear campaign against Julian Assange of Wikileaks
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