Asia

JibJab’s 2013 Year in Review (To the tune of “Give my Regards to Broadway!”)

Coleridge, Kubla Khan (Poem of the Day)

(By Samuel Taylor Coleridge) Kubla Khan Or, a vision in a dream. A Fragment. In Xanadu did Kubla Khan A stately pleasure-dome decree: Where Alph, the sacred river, ran Through caverns measureless to man Down to a sunless sea. So twice five miles of fertile ground With walls and towers were girdled round; And there […]

Afghanistan

FDL Book Salon on Andrew Bacevich, Breach of Trust: How Americans Failed Their Soldiers and Their Country

Juan Cole

Hosting Book Salon at Firedoglake: FDL Book Salon Welcomes Andrew J. Bacevich, Breach of Trust: How Americans Failed Their Soldiers and Their Country Author: Juan Cole Sunday, December 22, 2013 12:15 pm Pacific time Welcome Andrew J. Bacevich (Boston University) (DemocracyNow!) and Host Juan Cole (JuanCole.com / Informed Comment) (Twitter) Breach of Trust: How Americans […]

Drones

How many American Weddings would have to get hit by Drones before they were Banned?

contributors

(By Tom Engelhardt) The headline — “Bride and Boom!” — was spectacular, if you think killing people in distant lands is a blast and a half. Of course, you have to imagine that smirk line in giant black letters with a monstrous exclamation point covering most of the bottom third of the front page of […]

Afghanistan

American Public: Invasion of Afghanistan a Mistake, Speed up Withdrawal

contributors

(By Sarah Lazare) More than twelve years after the initial invasion, U.S. public opinion of the so-called Good War in Afghanistan appears to be souring. A clear majority of people in the U.S. say the 2001 decision to attack Afghanistan as a response to the events of September 11th was a mistake and that the […]

Featured

India Flap derives from America’s Gulag Practices and Far-Right Supreme Court

Juan Cole

(By Juan Cole) The militarization of American police and humiliating practices of routine strip and cavity searches are the real culprits in the current diplomatic dispute between the United States and India. Police not only arrested the Indian deputy consul, Devyani Khobragade, who claims diplomatic immunity, on a minor visa and domestic labor charge, they […]

Human Rights

Indian Gays Shocked by Supreme Court Ruling upholding Colonial Sodomy Laws

csstester

(By Boris Dittrich) The day after International Human Rights Day, India’s Supreme Court published its ruling on whether the country’s sodomy law, which had been overturned by the Delhi High Court and then appealed, was unconstitutional. I’ve been a lawyer, a judge and a member of parliament in the Netherlands and each of those roles […]

Drones

Sec. Hagel threatens to cut $1.6 bn Pakistan aid b/c Drone Protests Blocking NATO Convoys

Juan Cole

by Sarah Lazare U.S. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel threatened Pakistani [leaders] on Monday with cutting off up to $1.6 billion in aid if the country's mass protests against U.S. drone strikes continue, Pentagon officials said, according to The New York Times. The warning came after nonviolent blockades in protest of U.S. drone strikes in Pakistan […]

Afghanistan

Are British Spies Complicit in US Drone Strikes? Court of Appeals Takes Case

csstester

by Jack Serle An unprecedented attempt to discover if British officials are complicit in the CIA drone campaign in Pakistan reached the Court of Appeal this week. The case is brought by Noor Khan, a Pakistani tribesman whose father was among over 40 civilians killed in a March 2011 drone strike. Khan’s lawyers are attempting […]