On Tuesday, someone set up a Soviet-vintage 107 mortar launcher in a car outside the five-star Corinthia hotel in Libya’s capital, Tripoli, and lobbed a mortar from it, apparently by remote control. The launch caused the car to catch on fire. The mortar shell hit a residential apartment building and put a hole in the […]
Pakistan: 20% of US Drone Victims are Civilians, 12% are Children (Woods)
Exclusive: Leaked Pakistani report confirms high civilian death toll in CIA drone strikes Chris Woods writes at the Bureau of Investigative Journalism: A secret document obtained by the Bureau reveals for the first time the Pakistan government’s internal assessment of dozens of drone strikes, and shows scores of civilian casualties. The United States has consistently […]
Are Extremist Buddhists in Burma attacking Helpless Muslims? (Walton)
(Author title: “Matthew Walton: A Primer on the Roots of Buddhist/Muslim Conflict in Myanmar, and A Way Forward” ) Matthew J. Walton writes at ISLAMiCommentary Recently Myanmar has been in the news for more than just its surprising political reforms and nascent transition from military rule. Violent attacks—mostly by Buddhists against Muslims—have occurred in cities […]
Dear Royal Baby: We Americans apologize for our Revolution; please be our Absolute Monarch
Dear Royal Baby: You had an ancestor named King George III that we Americans said a lot of nasty things about, and we’d like to apologize to you, since you seem like a nice baby and anyway, we’ve gotten over our dissatisfaction with your Highness’s family. We wonder if you’d like to take back over […]
Can Christianity Survive in the New Iraq? (Teule)
Larry McGill writes at ISLAMiCommentary Herman Teule There are sizeable Christian minorities in several Middle Eastern countries with Muslim majorities, but the numbers of Christians may be diminishing. This Spring, Duke’s Department of Religion in conjunction with the Duke Islamic Studies Center invited Herman Teule, Professor of Eastern Christianity at Radboud University in the Netherlands, […]
Chris Hedges: “We have shifted, I think, from a democratic state to… corporate totalitarianism.”
Chris Hedges interviewed on The Real News : Excerpt of the transcript: “JAY: But, see, that’s what I’m concerned about as a citizen, I mean, whatever the journalist hat is supposed to be here, which is–. I was at dinner the other night with some people having somewhat similar conversation, why isn’t there a mass […]
Bye, Bye Florida: Scientists find the last time it was this hot, Seas rose 65 feet
A study published in Nature Geoscience by researchers, from Imperial College London and their academic partners shows that 5-3 million years ago in the Pliocene, the last time it was as hot as it is going to be in this century, antarctic ice shelf melting caused a sea level rise of as much as 20 […]
Indiana: “How do we get rid of” Zinn’s ‘A People’s History of the United States?’
In a disturbing development, the Associated Press has revealed emails in which former Indiana governor Mitch Daniels advocated banning the use of Howard Zinn’s text, “A People’s History of the United States” in the state’s educational systems. What’s troublesome is not dislike of a book but that Daniels seems to have been willing to misuse […]
Syria: Attack on Sayyida Zainab Provokes Sunni-Shiite Tensions in Lebanon, Iraq, Pakistan
The rocket attack on the Shrine of Sayyida Zaynab in the suburbs of Damascus on Friday has intensified the sectarian overtones of the Syrian civil war and exacerbated Sunni-Shiite tension in Iraq and elsewhere. Shrapnel killed the venerated caretaker of the shrine. ( Sayyida Zaynab [d. 682 AD] was the granddaughter of the Prophet Muhammad). […]