Vice President Joe Biden said Tuesday in Kabul that the US might keep troops in Afghanistan after 2014 if asked to do so by the Afghanistan government. He thus reversed his earlier pledge that the US would be out of that country by that date, “come hell or high water.” He has been under pressure […]
Archives for January 2011
Death Penalty for Blasphemy Rare in Muslim World
Pakistani campaigners against the country’s blasphemy laws are pointing out that out of 54 Muslim-majority countries in the world, at most 5 permit capital punishment for blasphemy. They are Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Iran, the United Arab Emirates, and possibly Afghanistan (the new Afghan constitution incorporates human rights norms that could affect statutes treating blasphemy as […]
Rightwingers feeling Unfairly Blamed
(courtesy Stacey (twitter.com/flipflops).
24 Dead in Tunisia Clashes; US Ambassador Called In
Some 24 persons have been killed in clashes between protesters and government security forces in Tunisia. The government has closed schools and universities “indefinitely” as a way of demobilizing youthful protesters. The Arabic press is reporting that Tunisia has called the US ambassador on the mat, and has called back its own ambassador in Washington, […]
Naw, There’s been no Right Wing Extreme Rhetoric
Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, and other far right-wing demagogues have been quick to defend themselves from the charge of fostering a climate of poisonous political hatred in the United States, in the aftermath of the shooting of Rep. Gabrielle Gifford and the killing of Federal Judge John Roll, along with the injuring or killing of […]
Sarah Never Does Anything Wrong
Sarah Palin’s aides are claiming that the crosshairs marking the targeted Democratic candidates (including Gabrielle Giffords) on her infamous poster (scroll down) were not crosshairs but a ‘surveyor’s symbol.’ But Palin called the symbols ‘bull’s eyes’ in a tweet, so the surveyor symbol business is just b.s.: (Courtesy this Flikr site). Actually, Palin has a […]
Death of Pakistani Secularism Much Exaggerated
There has been a lot of hand-wringing about religious extremism in Pakistan in the wake of the assassination of Punjab governor Salman Taseer. On Sunday the fundamentalist religious parties held a rally some 40,000 strong in the southern port city of Karachi against repealing Pakistan’s blasphemy law, as the Pakistan People’s Party MP Sherry Rahman […]
White Terrorism
Jared Lee Loughner, the alleged assassin of Federal judge John M. Roll and five others and attempted assassin of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-AZ), was clearly mentally unstable. But the political themes of his instability were those of the American far Right. Loughner was acting politically even if he is not all there. He is said […]
DOJ Subpoenas Twitter Account of Wikileaks Volunteer and now Iceland MP
The US Department of Justice has subpoenaed from Twitter the private emails of former Wikileaks activist Birgitt Jonsdottir, now a member of Iceland’s parliament. She tweeted, “USA government wants to know about all my tweets and more since november 1st 2009. Do they realize I am a member of parliament in Iceland?” If Twitter complies […]
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