Earlier this week, we wrote about the accusations that the CIA was spying on Senate staffers on the Senate Intelligence Committee as they were working on a massive $40 million 6,300 pages report condemning the CIA’s torture program. The DOJ is apparently…
India’s Elections: Religious Nationalism and the Future of Democracy
(via The Economist) Elections in India: Carnival of democracy (via The Economist) LET the contest begin. On March 5th India’s electoral commission, at last, set the dates for the largest democratic exercise on Earth. By mid-May, India should have a new government. From April 7th until May 12th, across nine different phases of voting… […]
Censorship: Turkish PM, President tangle over Bruited ban on Facebook, Youtube
(By Juan Cole) President Abdullah Gul has rejected a suggestion by Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan that Turkey might ban Facebook and Twitter. Nearly half of Turkey’s 77 million people use Facebook at least once a month and the country ranks 15th in the world for Facebook use. Turkey had banned Youtube 2008-2010. The good news […]
Israel West Bank Squatter population grows over 4%
Israel’s settler population in the occupied West Bank increased by 4.2 percent in 2013, interior ministry figures show, as US-backed peace talks with the Palestinians falter over the settlement issue. The number of settlers living in the West Bank rose…
US Drone Kills 5 Allied Afghan Troops, mistaking them for Taliban
A NATO air strike in eastern Afghanistan accidentally killed five Afghan soldiers on Thursday, officials said, the latest incident likely to worsen already fraught relations between Kabul and the US-led coalition. NATO offered its condolences over the…
US Hypocrisy on Crimean secession move: Washington Supported Break-up of Sudan, Yugoslavia, Iraq
(By Juan Cole) Russia has arranged for its supporters in the Crimean state parliament to vote to secede from Ukraine and join Russia, and has announced that there will be a popular referendum on the issue in the semi-autonomous province, which has been part of Ukraine since the 1950s and went with Ukraine when that […]
The Tea Party Just Turned Five — Is it Winning its War on Workers and Minorities?
Some date the advent of the tea party to 2007, when then-presidential candidate Ron Paul held a “tax day tea party” fundraiser to fill his campaign coffers. But the broader movement began five years ago last week — shortly after Barack Obama was…
Rachel Maddow: CIA spying on Congress ‘is death of the Republic stuff’
A dispute between the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and the Senate Intelligence Committee may have spilled into dangerous territory, MSNBC host Rachel Maddow said on Wednesday, following a New York Times report that agency operatives gained access…
Ukraine Crisis Shows Urgency of Green Energy: Russian Nat’l Gas Blackmail
(By Juan Cole) Hawks are complaining that Europe has been insufficiently belligerent in its response to Russian moves in the Crimea, blaming the declining military budgets in most European countries. But this focus on military hardware is misleading, since there was never any prospect of a conventional military confrontation with the Russian Federation, given that […]
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