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IC Global Affairs Some of us are launching a group blog, Informed Comment: Global Affairs. Iran expert Farideh Farhi weighs in today on the gasoline station protests in Iran and their real meaning. Many thanks to her for an incisive posting! The problem with keeping up a successful blog is that one has to do […]

Giuliani Laughs at Habeas Corpus Habeas Corpus is the right of a prisoner to petition a court to release him on grounds of wrongful imprisonment. It is a constitutional right. The Bush administration has attempted to abolish it with regard to certain classes of prisoner. In the Republican presidential debate in May, Ron Paul argued […]

Glasgow Airport Incident Apparent car bombing attack at Glasgow Airport. The two drivers appear to have been arrested. The eyewitness description suggests rank amateurs with no training. They didn’t actually get close enough to do much damage, and their behavior suggests that something went very wrong– what with one of them on fire and trying […]

Bomb Defused in London As I write, London police are using a robot to investigate a parked car near Buckingham Palace. The operation comes hours after a car was discovered packed with explosives and ready to detonate outside a nightclub in Picadilly Circus. The proper response of Americans to these events? Book a vacation in […]

Save Small Political Magazines I just got this from David Corn: ‘ Postal regulators have accepted a scheme designed in part by lobbyists for the Time Warner media conglomerate. In short, mailing costs for mega-magazines like Time Warner’s own Time, People and Sports Illustrated will go up only slightly or decrease. But smaller publications like […]

Lobe on Neocons and Public Diplomacy Boston Review on Iran Veteran journalist and neocon watcher, Jim Lobe points out that as the Neoconservatives have lost direct political power, they have emerged in key positions in public diplomacy– especially Radio Farda (‘Radio Marti’ for Iran) and al-Hurra (the US-owned Arabic satellite tv channel that is struggling […]

Ahmadinejad: “I am not anti-Semitic” Palestinians should Decide on Two-State Solution Dennis Kucinich and Ron Paul continue to show themselves among the few in Congress with any integrity and backbone. They declined to go along with a resolution charging Iranian President Mahmud Ahmadinejad with incitement to genocide, given his alleged call for Israel to be […]

Sunday Reading For analysis of the situation in Palestine this past week, few observers are cannier than Helena Cobban at Just World News. And from the liberal Israeli side, Daniel Levy on ‘Plan B.’ True or false? Syria is an economic basket case, with no prospects of moving away from a bloated, inefficient state socialist […]

Cole’s Advice to Hillary on Iraq Reply to Edwards on the South Lite The Chicago Sun Times has a run down of what the Democratic presidential candidates recently said, some of it Iraq-oriented. Actually, I would argue that everything in this election is tinged by Iraq. The article, like many others, notes that at Hillary […]