Norway’s mass murdered Anders Behring Breivik, a right wing white Christian supremacist who has confessed to killing 77 Labor Party youth activists and allegedly wounded 151 others, appeared in open court on Monday. The BBC reports: “One of those who witnessed his shooting spree on Utoeya was 20-year-old Bjoern Ihle from Oslo. “He aimed at […]
Archives for November 2011
Herman Cain Painfully Clueless on Libya
Herman Cain more or less admits that he has no idea what he would have done about the Libyan Revolution and no idea whether his criticisms of Obama on the conduct of the Libya War are well grounded or not. Cain keeps saying he’d have others do an assessment for him, but our experience with […]
GOPers Promise you War on Iran & Torture & Poverty
Saturday’s Republican debate, sponsored by CBS and the National Journal, revealed a Republican field that is promising war on Iran and a revival of the use of torture, as well as horrible relations with the new governments in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya (according to Herman Cain, they have gotten “out of hand,” and he and […]
No, that wasn’t an al-Qaeda Flag over Benghazi
I asked a Libyan scholar about the silly urban legend going around that an “al-Qaeda” flag flew from a government building in Benghazi recently. Here is what he said: ” I looked up the mentioned flag, it appears to be a black flag with the shahada [Muslim profession of faith] in it. A black flag […]
Arab League Sets Syria for Suspension
The Arab League initiated the suspension of Syria’s membership on Saturday, giving Damascus three days to cease shooting down Syrian demonstrators or else the country would be isolated, with AL members withdrawing their ambassadors and Syria losing its voting rights in the body. Aljazeera English has video: This step is the second taken this year […]
Could Electronic Communication Cooperatives Protect Us?
Birgitta Jónsdóttir, a member of parliament in Iceland, has written a column in which she complains that the US Department of Justice asked Twitter to turn over her private account information to the US government, without so much as seeking a warrant. She points out that any similar request for her hard copy land mail […]
Pyramids Partially Closed in face of New Age “Threat”
The Egyptian Antiquities authority partially closed the Pyramids to foreign tourists on Friday, in an attempt to prevent Western New Age groups from holding rituals there. Egypt has been awash in rumors that the “Freemasons” or “the Jews” have designs on the Pyramids. The brouhaha was kicked off because of Friday being 11/11/11, a number […]
The Little Iran Nuclear Report that Couldn’t
A key allegation in the IAEA report on Iranian nuclear activities has fallen apart. Gareth Porter has been able to use interviews and other material to demonstrate that Vyacheslav Danilenko, a Russian scientist referred to without being identified in the report, is not a nuclear weapons expert. His field is nanotechnology (making tiny machines), and […]
Tomgram: Juan Cole, Protesting a Pasha-the-Tiger World
From Tunis to Tel Aviv, Madrid to Oakland, a new generation of youth activists is challenging the neoliberal state that has dominated the world ever since the Cold War ended. The massive popular protests that shook the globe this year have …