By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – The Russian side of the story, presented in the Syrian press, is that an al-Qaeda-linked group in Idlib, a northwestern province of Syria, used a shoulder-mounted missile launcher to shoot down a Russian fighter jet. The pilot ejected and landed, but then was attacked by ground […]
Archives for February 2018
Young US Jews Write 700 Letters of Solidarity to Ahed Tamimi
TeleSur | – – Two left-wing groups in the U.S. organized the letters campaign and protests marking the the 17th birthday of the imprised Palestinian teen. More than 700 Jewish young people from the U.S. wrote letters of solidarity to Ahed Tamimi, the iconic Palestinian 17-year-old who was arrested by Israeli authorities last month and […]
Huge Military Budgets Make Us Broke, Not Safe
By Miriam Pemberton | (Otherwords.org) | – – Backing down from nuclear war would make us a lot safer than piling more money into the Pentagon. We’re all tense. Hearing about our fellow citizens in Hawaii scrambling around, looking for a place to hide from a nuclear bomb, will do that to you. So will […]
The Nunes Memo, Spirit Cooking and Pizzagate
By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – The confident pronouncements by pundits and politicians that the Nunes memo is a dud, dead on arrival, neglect to consider the main tactic of the Republican right wing for some time now. It is a conspiracy theory, and conspiracy theories carried Trump to the White House […]
Clashes between Saudi forces, armed gangs in Yemen
Middle East Monitor | – – Violent clashes broke out Thursday in Al-Mahrah governorate between Saudi Arabia’s forces and unidentified armed smugglers, Aden Tomorrow reported. Sixteen armed smugglers entered the governorate in four vehicles when an encounter with Saudi forces led to exchange of gun fire. There was no clear indication on casualties, but one […]
Alt-Right Trolls Try to Tank ‘Black Panther’ Score on Rotten Tomatoes
TeleSur | – – Facebook seems to have deleted the racist, sexist group’s page while the popular movie-ranking site announced its plan as hate speech. An alt-right group is trying to tank the ratings for “Black Panther” movie on Rotten Tomatoes website as the movie continues to receive glowing reviews from critics after its premier […]
11 billion pieces of plastic bring disease threat to coral reefs
By Joleah Lamb | (The Conversation) | – – There are more than 11 billion pieces of plastic debris on coral reefs across the Asia-Pacific, according to our new research, which also found that contact with plastic can make corals more than 20 times more susceptible to disease. In our study, published today in Science, […]
Spying on the Wrong People: The Hypocrisy of the Nunes Memo & FISA
By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – The frenzy over the Nunes memo, likely to be released later today by the Trump administration, contains a profound hypocrisy at its core, one that points to the rot at the core of the American government. The Republican conspiracy theory promoted by Nunes is that the […]
The Great Trump Bubble
Nomi Prins | ( Tomdispatch.com) | – – There’s been lots of fire and fury around Washington lately, including a brief government shutdown. In Donald Trump’s White House, you can hardly keep up with the ongoing brouhahas from North Korea to Robert Mueller’s Russian investigation, while it already feels like ages since the celebratory mood […]