Those ratings that castigate Afghanistan and some other poor countries as hopelessly “corrupt” always imply that the United States is not corrupt. VOA reports : While it is true that you don’t typically have to bribe your postman to deliver the mail in the US, in many key ways America’s political and financial practices make […]
Archives for December 2013
Israeli Blockade of 40,000 Gaza Fishermen Briefly Broken by Youth Protesters
About 200 Palestinian youth ctivists briefly broke the Israeli blockade on fishing off Gaza past an arbitrary 6-mile limit on Monday. World Bulletin writes: “”We want to show the world that there are people under occupation who are being starved in Gaza while the world is watching,” Ishraq Mahmoud, spokeswoman of the Palestinian Uprising Youth […]
Can even Colbert make us laugh at America’s tragic growing Wealth Divide?
Stephen Colbert on America’s astonishing wealth divide, which has even the Wall Street Journal worried: Boing Boing gives us the statistics : “#1 The lowest earning 23,303,064 Americans combined make 36 percent less than the highest earning 2,915 Americans do. #2 40 percent of all American workers (39.6 percent to be precise) make less […]
Americans are 5% of World Population, consume 1/4 of its Energy (infographic)
Source: InternationalBusinessGuide.org
G. Willow Wilson on her Ms. Marvel Character as Muslim-American Superhero (BBC)
The BBC interviews G. Willow Wilson, creator of the reboot of the Ms Marvel comic book as a young Muslim-American. Here is the BBC interview: Informed Comment covered this development earlier: “ Umberto Eco argued that Superman, from the character’s inception in the 1940s through about 1970, was a politically conservative figure. The stories were […]
Libya Needs UN Forces, National Reconciliation to Resolve its Crisis (Al Ghwell)
by Hafed Al Ghwell Libya needs to formulate a vision and a plan for what it wants to be in 10 or 20 years. It needs an economic strategy that will re-start the economy and offer jobs On August 31, 2011, few days after the fall of Tripoli to the disorganised and mixed bag of […]
Dr. Strangelove in Afghanistan: an Advice Column for the Praetorian Surveillance State
By Tom Engelhardt Col. Manners Answers Your Questions on the Etiquette of War, Nuclear Threats, and Surveillance By Colonel Manners (with a helping hand from Tom Engelhardt) [Editor’s Note: Many publications have advice columnists, but none has our old friend Colonel Manners (ret.), whose experience in military and surveillance matters is evident from his impressive […]
Feinstein & Rogers justify NSA Spying with Syrian Rebels (Voted to Arm Syrian Rebels)
Senator Diane Feinstein and Rep. Mike Rogers took to the airwaves on Sunday to warn that Americans are less safe than two years ago and that al-Qaeda is growing and spreading and that the US is menaced by bombs that can’t be detected by metal detectors. Call me cynical, but those two have been among […]
Photo of the Day: Palestinian Bedouin outside Jerusalem, 1930
from Elia Photo Service via Mashriq Note that when this picture was taken the British counted roughly a million Palestinians in British Mandate Palestine, scheduled to achieve statehood as Palestine when the British left. The British likely did not count the Bedouins in their statistics and probably under-counted the Palestinians in general. When the picture […]