On his indispensable television news magazine, GPS, Fareed Zakaria demolishes Glenn Beck’s mind-numbingly stupid assertion that ten percent of Muslims are terrorists. Zakaria’s courage in standing up to the hate-mongers should not be underestimated, and he is among those few now standing in the way of a Rupert Murdoch plot to foment physical attacks of […]
Archives for December 2010
Enormous Truck Bomb Kills 6 US Troops in Afghanistan as Constitutional Crisis Looms
The NYT reports that the Taliban deployed a massive truck bomb against a joint US-Afghan National Army forward operating base in the Arghandab river valley north of Qandahar, killing 6 US soldiers, injuring a handful of others, and wounding as many as 11 Afghanistan National Army troops. The soldiers who were killed were inside a […]
Visser: Spin-Doctors and the Changing Nature of Imperial Power in Iraq
Reidar Visser writes in a guest column for Informed Comment: Treaties, Acronyms and Spin-Doctors: The Changing Nature of Imperial Power in Iraq In the 1920s, during the early days of the Iraqi monarchy, a major bone of contention between King Faisal I and Britain concerned the definition of their bilateral relations. King Faisal objected strongly […]
Cardinal Ratzinger Moderated Opposition to Turkey Joining Europe on Becoming Pope: Wikileaks
The Guardian reports on wikileaks cables regarding the position of the Catholic Church on Europe’s Christian character and its unease with Turkey joining the EU. (the cable is here.) The problem is that, while the article on this matter is clear and largely accurate, the headline: “Pope wanted Muslim Turkey kept out of EU” is […]
Mubarak: W. Naive, controlled by Subordinates
We now have the full text of the May 19, 2009 cable giving background in preparation for Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak’s visit to President Obama at the White House. This is the one where he said Iraq basically needs strong man rule. But the cable is full of other insights: 1. Mubarak boycotted the Bush […]
Paul Defends Wikileaks: Neocons Don’t Like Losing Grip on Empire
Rep. Ron Paul defends Wikileaks on the House Floor:
Obama Should Let the UN apply Economic Sanctions to Israel
Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and his far rightwing government have slapped President Obama in the face with mail gloves by refusing to extend the freeze on new colonies in the Palestinian West Bank. Palestine Authority president Mahmoud Abbas reaffirmed his refusal to go forward with direct negotiations if Israelis were going to be seizing […]
On Reading the Qur’an: Hazleton
Leslie Hazleton on reading the Qur’an: Hazleton is author of After the Prophet: The Epic Story of the Shia-Sunni Split in Islam
Can ‘Desperate Housewives’ Defeat al-Qaeda in Saudi Arabia? Wikileaks
US consulate confirms what everybody already knows. Jeddah in Saudi Arabia has bipolar disorder. The Red Sea Port wears a sober puritan mien during the day, but at night turns into Party Central. While the US consulate seems to have taken a certain amount of satisfaction in the knowledge that the Saudi middle and upper […]
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