Mirrored from DemocracyNow! Accused U.S. Army whistleblower Bradley Manning has offered to submit a partial guilty plea on charges of leaking classified documents to WikiLeaks in return for the government agreeing to pursue lesser charges. Manning’s attorney David Coombs says he is prepared to plead guilty to some of the charges, but not the entire […]
Tracking down Mubarak’s Ill-Gotten Gains (Loveluck)
Louisa Loveluck writes at the Bureau of Investigative Journalism In Egypt’s Tahrir Square, the vast fortune of Hosni Mubarak and his inner circle was also a focal point of resentment. Previous estimates of the Mubarak family wealth placed the figure at between $40bn and $70bn. A report by The National last week, looked at official […]
On Malala Day, Pakistani Girls chant “I am Malala”
Pakistan, and people around the world, commemorated yesterday as “Malala Day”, in honor of Malala Yusufzai, who was shot in the head by a Taliban militant for demanding the right of girls’ education. UN special envoy Gordon Brown submitted a petition to Pakistani President Asaf Ali Zardari with nearly a million signatures from around the […]
Companies are Mining your Facebook/ Twitter Info… and Selling it (Beckett)
Lois Beckett writes at ProPublica Yesterday, we got a rare look at how information on your public social media profiles—including Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn—is being harvested and resold by large consumer data companies. Responding to a congressional query, nine data companies provided answers to a detailed set of questions about what kinds of information they […]
Real Petraeus Issue was Evaluation of Afghanistan
Maybe it is because I was brought up in part in Europe, but I just cannot understand American puritanism’s obsession with public officials’ private lives. I can’t see that most private issues affect the quality of public service, and I don’t think people’s private lives are any of our business, nor become our business because […]
Can Afghan Troops Hold the Line as US Withdraws, and Will US Seek to Stay in Central Asia?
Aljazeera English does what so few US networks are bothering to do: It sends a correspondent to cover the take-over of forward operating bases in Afghanistan by the Afghanistan National Army from US forces, who plan to leave in late 2014. The report and the Afghan commander in Helmand are frank about the challenges of […]
Karl Rove’s Math that mades Republicans Feel Better until Reality Set In (Daily Show Video)
Jon Stewart skewers the fantasyland in which Fox Cable Mews guests seem to live in, in which Mitt Romney was headed for a landslide despite all the polling that showed otherwise. He has special fun with Megyn Kelly’s question to Karl Rove: “Is this just math you do to make yourself feel better as a […]
Karl Rove’s Regret (Jamiol Cartoon)
From Jamiol’s World
America’s Coming Space Wars (McCoy)
Alfred W. McCoy writes at Tomdispatch.com Beyond Bayonets and Battleships Space Warfare and the Future of U.S. Global Power It’s 2025 and an American “triple canopy” of advanced surveillance and armed drones fills the heavens from the lower- to the exo-atmosphere. A wonder of the modern age, it can deliver its weaponry anywhere on the […]