al-Qaeda

The anger and embarrassment visible in the interviews given on Friday by the uncle and the aunt of Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the alleged Boston Marathon bombers, are entirely understandable. But I see clues here to family dynamics that may be important in understanding what happened. In Ivan Turgenev’s 1862, novel, “Fathers and Sons,” the […]

Afghanistan

Report: Highest US Officials Responsible for Use of Torture (Plus Daily Show Video)

Juan Cole

The political reality of the United States in the world is that of blowback. Blowback is a term of art in the intelligence community for what happens when a covert operation goes bad and comes back to bite you on the ass. The US spent the 1980s encouraging Muslim radicals to engage in ‘freedom fighting’ […]

al-Qaeda

Guantanamo Hunger Strike: Attorney: “Shocked at Conditions,” “Animal Cages”

Juan Cole

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 […]

al-Qaeda

By the Numbers: US Drone Strikes on Pakistan “Illegal”

Juan Cole

The Guardian reports that Ben Emmerson, the UN’s special rapporteur on counter-terrorism and human rights, says that the Pakistani government has given no tacit consent to US drone strikes according to a search of government records. Therefore, he concludes, the strikes are likely illegal in international law. US drone strikes according to Pakistan government statistics: […]

al-Qaeda

How the British Gov’t Stripped Alleged Militants of Citizenship before they were Droned to Death (Woods & Ross)

Juan Cole

Chris Woods and Alice K Ross write at the Bureau of Investigative Journalism The government has secretly ramped up a controversial programme that strips people of their British citizenship on national security grounds – two of whom have been subsequently killed by US drone attacks. An investigation by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism and published […]

al-Qaeda

Why there Were no CIA Torture Black Sites in Latin America (Grandin)

Juan Cole

Greg Grandin writes at Tomdispatch.com: The map tells the story. To illustrate a damning new report, “Globalizing Torture: CIA Secret Detentions and Extraordinary Rendition,” recently published by the Open Society Institute, the Washington Post put together an equally damning graphic: it’s soaked in red, as if with blood, showing that in the years after 9/11, […]

al-Qaeda

Top Five Objections to the White House’s Drone Killing Memo

Juan Cole

NBC’s Michael Isikoff has revealed the text of a white paper composed for Congress by the Department of Justice that sheds light on the legal arguments made by Eric Holder in justifying the killing by drone strike of Americans abroad, who are suspected of belonging to al-Qaeda. That the memo did not even require that […]

al-Qaeda

Paranoia Strikes Deep: A Cowering America still Haunted by Bin Laden’s Ghost (Engelhardt)

Juan Cole

Tom Engelhardt writes at Tomdispatch.com Consider Inauguration Day, more than two weeks gone and already part of our distant past. In its wake, President Obama was hailed (or reviled) for his “liberal” second inaugural address. On that day everything from his invocation of women’s rights (“Seneca Falls”), the civil rights movement (“Selma”), and the gay rights movement (“Stonewall”) to […]

Africa

Ansar Dine and How Climate Change Contributed to the Algeria-Mali Crisis

Juan Cole

The destabilization of Mali and southern Algeria is a complex political and social process that does not have only one cause. But a changing ecology forced by climate change is a major contributor to the region’s problems. This region is part of a Saharan and sub-Saharan band across Africa called the Sahel. I have traveled […]