Human Rights

Jazz guitar legend John McLaughlin plays for Palestine (via AFP) The Palestinian territories are rarely a destination for jazz musicians let alone stars of an art form that is more at home in big cities such as New York and Chicago. Which makes the performance of jazz guitar legend John McLaughlin before a packed… […]

Human Rights

Military Occupation as Bullying: The Palestinian Struggle for Dignity in Hebron

Juan Cole

(By Johannes A. Makar) Eyewitness Hebron: Follow young Badr in his city of bullies This February, after crossing the Taba-Eliat border from Egypt, less than 36 hours before the deplorable bomb attack there, I arrived in Jerusalem. After spending a couple of days in the city, I hopped on the bus to Hebron from the […]

Bangladesh

Save Bangladesh & you Save the World: Give Green Energy aid to Developing Nations of Global South

Juan Cole

(By Paul Rogers) Recent examples of short-term climate disruption have done much to bring the overall issue of climate change up the political agenda. In responding to what will be one of the key challenges of the next decades – well beyond the 15-year lifetime of the post-2015 global development goals currently under discussion – […]

Human Rights

Made Homeless by Israel, defiant Bedouin vow to stay in Jordan Valley

Juan Cole

Homeless but defiant, Bedouin to stay in Jordan Valley (via AFP) Two weeks after their fragile tin shacks were destroyed by Israeli bulldozers, Atiya Bani Minna and his family are still sleeping under the stars, struggling to resume some semblance of normal life. For this 50-year-old Bedouin shepherd, it is the third… ——- Related […]

Economy

Tunisia has made strides in Democratic Transition: Can it get the Economy Right?

Juan Cole

(By Francis Ghilès) Tunisians have reasons for optimism. For any regular visitor to Tunis, the change of atmosphere in the capital in the first months of 2014 – compared even to autumn 2013, and certainly to 2012 – is striking. The underlying reason for the change is the adoption of a new constitution in January […]

Central Intelligence Agency

Torture is from Mars? CIA’s Hayden Says Sen. Feinstein Too “Emotional” To Judge CIA Torture

Juan Cole

Former CIA, NSA Boss Says Senator Feinstein Is Too Emotional To Judge CIA Torture Fairly (via Techdirt) We’ve written about former NSA and CIA boss Michael Hayden plenty of times around here, and the guy is practically a caricature of what you’d expect him to be. He defends the intelligence community at all costs, and […]

Republican Party

Pelosi: “Cheney Proud of ordering CIA Torture”; Sen A. King: ‘Waterboard Cheney!’

Juan Cole

Dick Cheney has defended torture techniques so many times that a frustrated U.S. senator has finally offered to waterboard the former vice president. “The accusations are not true,” Cheney told college television station ATV last week. “Some people…

Constitution

America’s Post-9/11 Dystopia: No-Fly Lists, Secret Gov’t Databases and Guilty even if Proven Innocent

Juan Cole

(By Peter van Buren) Rahinah Ibrahim is a slight Malaysian woman who attended Stanford University on a U.S. student visa, majoring in architecture. She was not a political person. Despite this, as part of a post-9/11 sweep directed against Muslims, she was investigated by the FBI. In 2004, while she was still in the U.S. […]

CIA

State Department Official Freaks Out That Declassifying CIA Torture Report Might Make The World Angry

Juan Cole

While the Senate Intelligence Committee voted to declassify its $40 million, 6,300 page report detailing the CIA’s torture regime — including the facts that it went beyond what was authorized, produced no useful intelligence and then the CIA lied about…