Archives for 2012

Alice Ross writes at The Bureau of Investigative Journalism: Offshore oil drilling in the Arctic has long been considered off-limits – but as the New York Times revealed . . ., a sustained and ingenious campaign by Shell has overcome all objections. The campaign to win permission to drill in the Arctic is a masterclass […]

The meeting of the five permanent members of the UN Security Council plus Germany (P5+1) with Iran in Baghdad is apparently producing a lot of detailed proposals for resolving the crisis. Apparently the one place there could be a breakthrough, if not at Baghdad then later this summer, is with regard to Iran’s enrichment of […]

Chris Hellman and Mattea Kramer write at Tomdispatch: Recent months have seen a flurry of headlines about cuts (often called “threats”) to the U.S. defense budget. Last week, lawmakers in the House of Representatives even passed a bill that was meant to spare national security spending from future cuts by reducing school-lunch funding and other […]

Iran has withdrawn its ambassador to neighboring Azerbaijan, in part over Baku’s hosting of the Eurovision pop singing contest, which the ayatollahs consider to be too sexy for their turbans. Eurovision goes back to 1956 and so much predates the “Idol” competitions, but in the US it is the latter that is better known. It […]