By Nadia Prupis, staff writer| (Commondreams.org) | – – The U.S. is poised to repeat all the same mistakes in Syria that it made in Iraq after 9/11, says former head of Defense Intelligence Agency The Islamic State (ISIS) formed in the wake of the U.S. invasion of Iraq, said (Ret.) U.S. General Mike Flynn. […]
Archives for December 2015
After 2008 Wall Street Crash, did US White Working Class Drink itself to Death?
Barbara Ehrenreich | ( Tomdispatch.com) | – – The white working class, which usually inspires liberal concern only for its paradoxical, Republican-leaning voting habits, has recently become newsworthy for something else: according to economist Anne Case and Angus Deaton, the winner of the latest Nobel Prize in economics, its members in the 45- to 54-year-old age group […]
Don’t wait for Gov’ts in Paris to fix Climate Change: We can do it Ourselves
James Dyke | (The Conversation) | – – It’s now almost certain that 2015 will be the warmest year ever recorded. However, rather than reduce green house gas emissions – something that has to happen quite urgently in order to avoid crashing through the safety barrier of 2℃ warming – we continue to pump more […]
The End of Press Freedom in Turkey?
By Joris Leverink | (Inter Press Service) | – – ANKARA, Turkey (IPS) – Days after the 1 November general elections in Turkey, Beyza Kural, a reporter with the independent press agency Bianet, rushed to Istanbul University to cover a stand-off between protesting students and the police. At the scene, Kural was harassed and manhandled […]
Putin: Turkey was protecting ISIL oil Smuggling; Russia urges Assad-Kurdish Alliance
By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – Russian President Vladimir Putin said Monday in Paris that his government had intelligence that the reason Turkey shot down a Russian fighter jet last week was to protect oil smuggling from Daesh (ISIS, ISIL) through Turkey. Putin said, “”We have every reason to think that the […]
Snowden restores 4th Amendment: NSA halts mass Warrantless spying on your Telephone Records
By David Greene and Nadia Kayyali | ( Electronic Frontier Foundation) | – – The NSA’s collection en masse of the call detail records of millions of ordinary Americans ended quietly at midnight November 29. The bulk collection was phased out after a 180-day transition period provided for in the USA FREEDOM Act. The USA […]
ISIL/ Daesh exults at our loss of Liberties: “8 Men caused a nationwide state of emergency”
by Charles Kurzman | ISLAMiCommentary Two years ago, al-Qaeda’s Iraqi franchise took Raqqa, Syria, from al-Qaeda’s Syrian franchise, and was promptly kicked out of al-Qaeda. Within the year, the rulers of Raqqa proclaimed themselves “the Islamic State” and embarked on a global campaign to spread their so-called caliphate throughout the world. The group’s attacks this […]
Shooting of pro-Kurdish Human Rights Lawyer Deepens Turkey’s Political Crisis
GlobalVoices.org | – – On November 28, Tahir Elçi, one of Turkey's most prominent pro-Kurdish lawyers, was holding a press conference close to the very same minaret he referenced in his tweet above, explaining that the people of Turkey's Kurdish-populated East were tired of conflict and recurrent government military operations in the region. Moments after […]
Two Israelis Found Guilty of Burning Alive Palestinian Teen
By IMEMC | – – The Jerusalem District Court, on Monday, convicted two of the three people accused in the murder of Muhammad Abu Khdeir. On July 2, 2014, Abu Khdeir, 16, was murdered by tree Israeli men in the neighborhood of Shuafat, in occupied East Jerusalem close to his home. He was driven to […]