By Gyanendra Pandey New Delhi Through the President’s address to Parliament on June 9, 2014, the newly elected Indian Government has officially outlined its short and longer-term agenda. The emphasis, as expected, is on faster economic growth. Questions of welfare and security for the poor and disadvantaged are, however, very superficially addressed. This has to […]
Uneasy Caliphate: Inside Hawija in Iraq
By Shalaw Mohammed | Hawija NIQASH visited Hawija, a large northern Iraqi town near Kirkuk, which is currently controlled by Sunni Muslim extremists and local tribes. The town is dominated by ISIS’ black flags and ISIS’ rules. And on the way into town, everybody gets a free Koran. The area south of the Iraqi city […]
Blackwater: Nice State Dept. you have here, shame if Anything happened to It
State Department official documented in memo that mercenary threatened him just weeks before Nisour Square massacre By Jon Queally As the trial continues against Blackwater mercenaries accused of a bloody massacre that took place in Iraq in 2007 and left seventeen civilians dead, new documents reveal that just weeks prior to that incident a State […]
Katrina to arch-Neocon Bill Kristol: Be Accountable, Enlist in the Iraqi Army
“Katrina vanden Heuvel [editor of The Nation] and Bill Kristol tussled over Iraq on ABC’s This Week today when vanden Heuvel lumped in Kristol with the Iraq “architects of catastrophe” and suggested he enlist in the Iraqi army if he’s so serious about fixing the region. Vanden Heuvel said there should be some accountability for […]
Barzani: Kurdish Rule To Stay In Kirkuk
Via RFE/RL Iraqi Kurdish leader Masud Barzani has said that there is no going back on autonomous Kurdish rule in the oil-rich city of Kirkuk and other northern towns that Kurdish fighters are now defending against Sunni Islamist militants. Speaking at a press conference on June 27 with British Foreign Secretary William Hague in the […]
The Fate of Dissenters in Al-Sisi’s Egypt: The New “Disappeared”
By Jihad Abaza As Abdel Fattah el-Sissi assumes his new role as Egypt’s president, enforced disappearances are on the rise in the Middle East’s most populous country, according to a recent press release by Amnesty International. Dozens of civilians have been kidnapped by police in plainclothes and detained at military camps since the 2011 uprising, […]
20% of Britain’s Electricity is now from Renewables Despite Tory Hostility
By Joshua S Hill New figures published by the UK Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) show that 19.4% of the UK’s electricity mix for the first quarter of 2014 was generated from renewable sources — up from 12.4% for the same period a year ago. Furthermore, the DECC note that both hydro and […]
UN to Detroit: Denial of Water to Thousands 'Violates Human Rights'
By Sarah Lazare Experts slam city's aggressive drive to disconnect water from residents who are unable to pay United Nations experts declared Wednesday that the city of Detroit's shut-off of water to thousands of residents who are unable to pay their bills "constitutes a violation of the human right to water" and may be discriminatory […]
A Subtle Alchemy: US Finds it easier to Occupy Abroad than to Withdraw
By Alan McPherson In 2003, former secretary of defense Donald Rumsfeld infamously foresaw victory in Afghanistan and Iraq as demanding a “long, hard slog” and listed a multitude of unanswered questions. Over a decade later, as President Obama (slowly) fulfills his promise to pull all US troops from Afghanistan, a different set of questions emerges. […]