This is the real Iraq: What the U.S. has been calling the success of a “surge”, many Iraqis see as evidence of catastrophe. Where U.S. forces point to peace and calm, local Iraqis find an eerie silence.… And when U.S. forces speak of a reduction in violence, many Iraqis simply do not know what they…
Showing all posts in June 2019
Searching for stroke victims
The power of the internet giant is getting way out of hand: Google’s efforts to engulf the world’s medical records will begin in Cleveland. Today, the search engine cum world power announced a joint project with the Cleveland Clinic, an 87-year-old not-for-profit medical center, that will see between 1,500 and 10,000 of the center’s patients…
Fidel’s contradictions
Tony Karon, Rootless Cosmopolitan, February 20: There’s been predictably little interesting discussion in the United States of Fidel Castro’s retirement as Cuba’s commandante en jefe, maximo etc. That’s because in the U.S. political mainstream, Cuba policy has for a generation been grotesquely disfigured by a collective kow-towing — yes, collective, it was that craven Mr.…
Sex on the public purse
From prostitutes to Super bowl tickets, a federal probe reveals how contractors in Iraq cheated the US.
Rejecting tyranny
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is trying to force his people in a direction a majority reject. Iason Athanasiadis explains: Before the crackdown, the event was little more than a bothersome national institution. For a few weeks every late spring, the grim-faced guardians of public mores would venture out in their olive-green uniforms, black official chadors,…
Don’t post those full frontal shots
China continues its eradication program of the internet: News from the Ministry of Public Security is that 13 Chinese ministries have been taking a joint action since last month to regulate online order, with the emphasis being given to the cleaning out of such content as candid snapshots, nude pictures and “unhealthy” adult literature. During…
The power of Israel
How much longer must we deny Israel’s unhealthy grip over Western governments? The full extent of government anxiety about the state of British-Israel relations can be exposed for the first time today in a secret document seen by the Guardian. The document reveals how the Foreign Office successfully fought to keep secret any mention of…
Why discourse matters
Leading Jewish blogger Phil Weiss kindly adds to the international debate started by my recent article in Haaretz: …Where is Loewenstein’s argument appearing? In Haaretz, of course. Israel can hear these opinions. They are marginalized in my country, as the voices of Arabists, terrorist-sympathizers, appeasers. We are all morally inscribed and reinscribed in the Shoah…
Never going home
According to Col. Morris Davis, former chief prosecutor for Guantánamo’s military commissions, the process has been manipulated by Administration appointees in an attempt to foreclose the possibility of acquittal. Welcome to American justice, Bush administration style.
