An enormous crowd of tens of thousands, the biggest this week, gathered in Tahrir Square in downtown Cairo on Friday, especially as the torrid sun set. These protesters are mostly fundamentalist Muslims, supporters of the Muslim Brotherhood, though some left and liberal youth groups joined them. They favor candidate Muhammad Mursi in the presidential race, […]
Drone Questions for Americans (Jamiol Cartoon)
Courtesy Paul Jamiol & check out his book, Jamiol’s World
How far to respect Public Opinion (Bertrand Russell Poster)
Error message Fahrenheit 451 for Censorship?
The Guardian reports that a new internet error message may be created to indicate that a site has been censored. It has been suggested that it be called ‘451’ in honor of the late Ray Bradbury’s novel about book-burning, Fahrenheit 451. So I thought what it might look like:
Solar Plane flies from Spain to Morocco, then into Morocco’s rugged Interior
The solar-powered Solar Impulse airplane built by a Swiss concern, having flown successfully from Madrid to Rabat, has just completed a flight over the Moroccan countryside that included having to get above the Atlas mountains: This video on the earlier Europe-to-Africa passage shows the plane in flight: I like flying, but am aware that the […]
Brotherhood, Salafis, Camp out at Tahrir amid Thosands
On Thursday, protesters heeded the call of the Muslim Brotherhood to fill Tahrir Square with tens of thousands of protesters, as they continued to reject the martial law amendments to the constitution issued by the military last weekend. In a new development, major leaders of the Muslim Right are setting up tents in the square […]
UN Official: CIA Drone Strikes on Rescuers a War Crime (Serle)
Jack Serle writes at the Bureau of Investigative Journalism: The UN’s expert on extrajudicial killings has described a tactic used by the CIA and first exposed by a Bureau investigation as ‘a war crime’. Earlier this year the Bureau and the Sunday Times revealed the CIA was deliberately targeting rescuers and funeral-goers in its Pakistan […]
Omar Khayyam (153) “they do not even reckon them as human”
The elite and lofty crowd who hold exalted office are disgusted at the life of grief and bother that they suffer. But when they consider the ones who, unlike them, are not the prisoners of high ambition– the amazing thing is that they do not even reckon them as human. Translated by Juan Cole from […]
Campbell: Israeli PM Sharon Threatened Bush with Nuking Iraq (Mearsheimber & Walt vindicated)
Alastair Campbell’s serialized memoirs contain a bombshell that is largely being ignored in the Western press, the revelation that in conversations with President George W. Bush in late 2002, then Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon threatened to nuke Baghdad if Saddam Hussein hit Israel with rockets again. (Campbell was then British Prime Minister Tony Blair’s […]