Jack Serle writes at the Bureau of Investigative Journalism Pitch Interactive have visualised every CIA drone strike and every casualty in Pakistan. A new interactive graphic, which uses the Bureau’s drone data, has brought a fresh perspective to the CIA’s nine-year drone campaign in Pakistan. A team of developers has pulled together every known drone […]
Viral Video on America’s Incredibly Skewed distribution of Wealth
A fascinating video on America’s incredibly skewed wealth distribution, with the top 1% owning 40% and the bottom 40% almost nothing: and it’s getting worse over time! h/t WaPo’s Ezra Klein
Guantanamo Hunger Strike: Attorney: “Shocked at Conditions,” “Animal Cages”
Russia Today reports on the hunger strikes among Guantanamo prisoners, 166 of whom are said still to be living in small “animal cages” and to lack any hope of ever coming to trial. They are “condemned, dead men who just happen to breathe” according to one attorney. This, despite the fact that the vast majority […]
Palestinians Alarmed at Obama’s New Christian Zionism, Failure to Push for Settlement Freeze
Aljazeera English reports on Obama’s failures and successes on his recent Mideast trip. Below, I quote translations from the Palestinian press showing for the most part extreme dismay by Obama’s courting of Israel and his surrender to the Israeli Right on the issue of new settlements on the Palestinian West Bank. Although Obama did mildly […]
Air Power is horribly Expensive and Inefficient, and Drones are no Different (Astore)
William J. Astore writes at Tomdispatch.com: Today’s unmanned aerial vehicles, most famously Predator and Reaper drones, have been celebrated as the culmination of the longtime dreams of airpower enthusiasts, offering the possibility of victory through quick, clean, and selective destruction. Those drones, so the (very old) story goes, assure the U.S. military of command of […]
The Top other thing Netanyahu Needs to Apologize For: The Gaza Blockade
The one diplomatic success of President Obama’s mainly pro forma visit to Israel and Jordan was Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s pro forma apology to Turkey’s Tayyip Erdogan for killing 8 Turkish nationals and 1 American citizen of Turkish heritage aboard the Mavi Marmara aid ship trying to succor the Palestinians of Gaza in 2010. The […]
Global Warming is making the Arid Middle East Even Drier, threatening Water Wars
Middle East is getting drier because of climate change, impelling people to replace lost rain water with underground fossil or aquifer water that cannot be replaced. From 2003-2009, enough of this aquifer water was permanently drained off to meet the needs of 100 million people. Some Middle East specialists are afraid that wars over water […]
Iraq 10 Years Later: The Bitter Days Continue because Policy didn’t put People First (Al-Sheemary)
Banen Al-Sheemary ( @balsheem), a young Iraqi-American woman and activist, writes in a guest column for Informed Comment Ten years today, I remember sitting in front of the television and watching the sky turn bright yellow because of the massive blasts. Silent, I turned away from the screen to see my parents’ reaction. Absolute silence. […]
Will the CIA’s Black Sites and Subcontracting of Tortue Come out with Public Indictment? (Currier)
Cora Currier writes at ProPublica: Federal prosecutors in Brooklyn unsealed an indictment Wednesday charging Ibrahim Suleiman Adnan Adam Harun with six terrorism-related counts. The announcement that Harun is in U.S. custody in New York may also shed light on a small part one of the most secretive aspects of U.S. counterterrorism operations during the Bush administration: […]
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