Month

Archives: December 2012

Dubai New Year’s Fireworks Display, 2013

Fireworks at the iconic Burj Khalifa in Dubai for 2013: Dubai is back. Its economy grew 3.2 percent in 2012, owing in part to good economic growth among its two major trade…

Dear Neocons: Iraqis still don’t feel liberated: Iraq’s Sunni Arab Spring

Demonstrations and rallies began being held in the largely Sunni Arab province of al-Anbar and spread to Samarra (Salahuddin) and Nineva in Iraq on December 26. Sometimes crowds flew the flag of…

Dave Eggers’ Hologram for the King: Favorite Novel of 2012

Dave Eggers' novel, Hologram for the King, was the best novel I read in 2012. The book centers on an American telecom company hoping to make a sale in Saudi Arabia, which…

Rape in India, and the Low Status of Women

The unnamed Indian woman who was gang-raped on a bus in New Delhi and had to be sent to Singapore for medical treatment has died and her body has been cremated back…

Best Green Energy Responses to Climate Crisis: IC’s 2012 Amun-Ra Award

I have created an annual Amun-Ra award for heroic green energy responses to our global climate crisis. Climate change is by far the most urgent of the threats to human existence that…

Top 10 Ways the Middle East Changed, 2012

1. The end of any potential 'two state solution' to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Israel's far right wing Likud government, headed by Binyamin Netanyahu, built or committed to build thousands of new family…

Schwarzkopf (RIP) and How the United States got Bogged Down in the Middle East

Gen. Norman H. Schwarzkopf is dead at 78. He died of pneumonia. Schwarzkopf was among the military leaders who repositioned the United States as a Middle Eastern hegemon. The US had interests…

FBI Violated Constitution by Branding Peaceful Occupy Wall Street as Terrorist threat

Second Amendment fundamentalists push for open carrying of firearms in public, and armed gun nuts even attended one of President Obama's rallies in Arizona. That was apparently just all right with the…

The Afghan Sk8ter Girrls of Kabul (Video) – (Female Literacy has Tripled in Afghanistan)

Skateistan is a skateboard NGO in Kabul, which maintains a facility for skateboarding and gets as many as 300 youth to attend as spectators at competitions. The organization maintains that 40% of…

Syria’s Head of Military Police Defects, as Death Toll in Revolution Climbs to 45,000

Maj. Gen. Abdul Aziz Jasim al-Shalal, head of Syria's military police, defected late Tuesday to Turkey, joining the revolutionaries against the regime. He announced his defection in a YouTube video, saying that…

Egypt: Women Cut their Hair in Tahrir Square to Protest Fundamentalist Constitution

Dozens of progressive Egyptian women cut their hair in Tahrir Square on Tuesday to protest the passage of Egypt's new, fundamentalist constitution. The protesters chanted, "A woman's crown is her liberation!" Mona…

New Fundamentalist Constitution Approved, Heralds turn to Egyptian Theocracy

The Egyptian electoral commission on Tuesday signed off on the constitutional referendum, declaring that the country's guiding legal framework had received a little over 63 percent of the vote. (It only got…

Christmas 2012: The Flowering of Middle Eastern Christianity and the Challenges it Faces

There are more Middle Eastern Christians than ever before, and they are poised between emergence as a new political force in a democratizing region and the dangers to them of fundamentalism and…

Cairo Symphony Orchestra: “Santa Claus is Coming to Town”

Cairo Celebration Choir & Cairo Symphony Orchestra: "Santa Claus is Coming to Town"

Christmas in Bethlehem has special Significance for Palestinians

Euronews reports on Christmas in Bethlehem and the Palestinians: Some 15,000 pilgrims are in the city and, despite fears raised by the Gaza fighting, hotels are fully booked.

200 Dead, Many Children, in Syrian aerial bombing of Halfaya

Opposition forces said that Syrian fighter jets bombed the town of Halfaya near Hama on Sunday. The bombs struck a crowd standing in line to buy bread, and some 200 victims are…

Muslims of Liberated Saraqeb, Syria, put up Christmas Tree for Local Christians

Muslims of Syrian town of Saraqeb put up Christmas tree for local Christians. The young man who is being interviewed stresses the unity of all Syrians, whether Muslim, Christian, Druze, etc. The…

Egypt’s Controversial Fundamentalist Constitution Meets Low Turnout

Egyptians went to the polls again Saturday in the second round of the constitutional referendum. The provinces or governorates that voted in this round were disproportionately rural, and early returns suggested a…

Abraham Lincoln on the Purpose of Government (Or He Wouldn’t be in GOP Today)

From Abraham Lincoln: Complete Works, Comprising His Speeches, Letters ..., Volume 1, p. 92: “If we except the light and the air of heaven, no good thing has been or can be…

Top Ten Ways NRA Stole Christmas this Year

The tone deaf and horrifyingly self-serving speech given by Wayne LaPierre of the National Rifle Association on Friday cast a pall over our holiday season. At a time of national mourning and…

The Real War on Christmas: GOP Rejection of Tax Rise on Rich could End Tax-Break for Charitable Giving

Many worthy institutions in the United States, from universities and cancer research centers to soup kitchens, art galleries and public radio, are supported by donations from private citizens. One of the motivations…

Fundamentalist Constitution Provokes Street Clashes in Alexandria, 77 Wounded

As Egyptians in 17 governorates head to the polls on Saturday in the second round of the controversial referendum on the new constitution, tension still simmers in the country's second-largest city, Alexandria,…

Dear GOP: Please don’t Cut Children’s Food Stamps: Our Rich aren’t Overtaxed

The irrational GOP insistence on bankrupting our government by insisting on exempting the rich from taxes has reached the point where they just kicked 300,000 poor children off food stamps to give…

Top Five Things we should be doing to avoid the end of the Earth instead of defaming the Mayans

The silly hysteria over the world ending December 21, based on a misinterpretation of a Mayan text, should have passed by now, or maybe someone will keep it going until midnight. What…

Sheldon Adelson’s $155 Million Candidate Buying Spree (Meyer)

Theodoric Meyer writes at ProPublica: Sheldon Adelson, the billionaire casino magnate and emblem of the Citizens United-era of campaign finance, spent gobs of money on the 2012 elections — more money than…

The Coming Conflict between the US and Israel (Chernus)

Ira Chernus writes at Tomdispatch.com Are the U.S. and Israel Heading for a Showdown? No One Thinks So, But It Just Might Happen Here’s the question no one is asking as 2012…

UN Security Council Condemns Further Israeli Squatting on Palestinian Land, with Rogue State US Vetoing

The US acted again as the rogue state at the United Nations Security Council on Wednesday, with the other 14 members issuing statements condemning Israeli plans for vast further theft of Palestinian…

Human Rights Abuses in Pakistan’s Tribal Belt: Amnesty Int’l Report (Ross)

Alice K. Ross writes at the Bureau of Investigative Journalism: Last week Amnesty International highlighted just how troubled this tribal region is, charting human rights abuses by both the Pakistani army and…

Why our Hair is not on Fire about Cutting Emissions, and what to do about it (Giesen)

Tom Giesen writes in a guest column for Informed Comment: Multiple reasons why global warming mitigation will fail Greenhouse gas emissions are still increasing. The yearly increases look like this: • 1990s…

Benghazi’s Deep Throat fingers Islamist Leaders for Attacks as State Dept Criticized on Consular Security

The report saying that security was inadequate at the compound that the US had adopted as its ad hoc consulate in Benghazi, Libya, dominates today's headlines. That conclusion is obvious. The "consulate"…

ALEC, NRA Lobby the American Deep State on Behalf of Semi-Automatic Weapons Sales (Democracy Now)

Democracy Now! reports on how the gun lobby, the NRA, is outspending the gun control advocates by 10 to 1 on Capitol Hill. And Lisa Graves explains that ALEC isn't just trying…

TSA Commission will Look at Health Effects of Backscatter X-Ray Scanners (Grabell)

Michael Grabell writes at ProPublica Following months of congressional pressure, the Transportation Security Administration has agreed to contract with the National Academy of Sciences to study the health effects of the agency's…

Deaths by Firearms across the World – America among the Worst

and from this site:

American Torture, America’s Soul (van Buren)

Peter van Buren writes at Tomdispatch.com An All-American Nightmare Why Zero Dark Thirty Won’t Settle the Torture Question or Purge Torture From the American System If you look backward you see a…

7 Ways States have Undermined Gun Control Laws (Lee)

Suevon Lee writes at ProPublica: Friday's deadly rampage at a Connecticut elementary school marked the 13th mass shooting in the United States this year. Among the 11 deadliest shootings in U.S. history,…

As Jews, with our own Painful History of Oppression… [South African Jewish Statement on Palestinians]

I got this by email and thought it worth sharing. It further makes the point, signalled by Peter Beinart and others, that the Likud, Israel Beitenu and Shas and similar parties in…

How America is Filling up itself and the World With Guns

The American obsession with guns and violence is not unique, but it is distinctive. The US ranks 12th in the world for rate of firearm-related deaths. El Salvador, Colombia, Swaziland, Brazil, South…

What Happens in Langley Doesn’t Stay in Langley Anymore: How our Spies Came out of the Shadows (Engelhardt)

Tom Engelhardt writes at Tomdispatch.com: Weren’t those the greatest of days if you were in the American spy game? Governments went down in Guatemala and Iran thanks to you. In distant Indonesia,…

Let’s also Remember the 176 children Killed by US Drones

The US government continues to rain drones down on the tribal belt of Pakistan. While the Washington narrative is that these drones are precision machines that only kill terrorists, this story is…

Top Ten Threats to the Legitimacy of Egypt’s new Constitution

Early returns from the Egyptian provinces that voted in a two-stage referendum on Saturday suggest that the draft constitution garnered some 56% of the vote. It was rejected in the capital, Cairo,…

European Human Rights Court finds CIA Guilty of Torture

For the first time, the European Court of Human Rights has found the US Central Intelligence Agency guilty of torturing and sodomizing an innocent man. German national Khalid El-Masry (of Lebanese ancestry)…

Firearms used in 300,000 crimes a year in US (Poster)

reprint edn. Some 300,000 violent crimes are committed each year in the US with the aid of a firearm.. One of the arguments for not banning the sale of military weapons to…

Semi-Automatic firearms are Military Weapons: Lets at least Limit the Magazines

One of the two guns the Connecticut shooter used to murder 20 children and 6 adults was a Glock semi-automatic. This datum is not surprising. The Glock is among the more popular…

NASA: Portrait of a Polluted Atmosphere

From NASA: portrait of global aerosols (particulate matter in the atmosphere, including pollution): Note that the image is a simulation created with high-powered software to make the aerosols we (and sometimes nature)…

Questions I ask myself about Connecticut School Shooting

I ask myself, "Why?" Why do US cable news networks intensively cover these mass shootings, making it the only story for a day or two and prying into every detail of them,…

39 Murders by Gun Annually in Britain; 9,000 in US

Reprint edn. Number of Murders, United States, 2009: 15,241 Number of Murders by Firearms, US, 2009: 9,146 Number of Murders, Britain, 2008*: 648 (Since Britain's population is 1/5 that of US, this…

Top Ten GOP Myths about Libya that Sank Susan Rice

The charge against US Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice was led by a handful of Republican senators and congressmen, and based on the alleged deficiencies of her account of the…

Why HSBC “money-laundering” is Mostly about US Bullying Foreign Policy

The "money-laundering" scandal about British bank HSBC is a mixed picture. On the one hand, bank officials laundered money for Mexican drug cartels, allegedly knowingly, which only pond scum would do. Still,…

Will Egyptian Left & Liberals Urge a “No” vote on Constitution or Boycott?

The left, liberal and centrist parties grouped in the National Salvation Front have decided to campaign for a "no" vote on the constitution in the two-part referendum that begins on Saturday, rather…

Hostess Executives Dipped into Employees’ Pension Funds

Executives of Hostess, the maker of "Twinkies," have admitted that they did not put the money paid into workers' pension plans into a separate account. Rather, they basically stole the money and…

Michigan Republicans propose anti-Sharia law to Discriminate against Muslim Americans

Michigan State legislator David Agema has introduced an anti-sharia bill that attempts to ban the implementation of 'foreign law' in the US that would contradict constitutional rights. Agema openly says he wants…

America’s Afghanistan Odyssey: When will Enough be Enough? (Stevenson)

Jack Stevenson writes in a guest column for Informed Comment: The US has been involved, covertly or openly, in military actions in Afghanistan since 1979, with no end in sight. Nor, after…

Israel’s Apartheid Deepens (Cole at Truthdig)

My essay on the aftermath of the Gaza conflict is out in Truthdig; it is entitled "Israel’s Apartheid Deepens, Along With Its Global Isolation" Excerpt: "Building a new, large settlement in the…

Jeff Halper: Permanent Matrix of Control being Laid over Palestinian Territory (ICAHD Video)

Part 1 of Jeff Halper's recent talk in London for the Israeli Committee against House Demolition, which says that 28,000 Palestinian homes have by now been razed by the Israeli state: Here…

Obama Recognizes Syrian Opposition as Government, as Fighters advance in Aleppo, Damascus

President Obama announced on Tuesday that the US now formally recognizes the Syrian opposition as the legitimate government of Syria: US Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta said Tuesday that there were no…

Michigan Workers now have Right to “Work for Less” (Granholm Video)

Jennifer Granholm explains that Michigan's new "right to work" law actually is a "right to work for less," resulting in thousands of dollars a year less income for the average worker and…

In Memoriam: Ravi Shankar teaches George Harrison to Play Sitar

Ravi Shankar, the great sitar player who deeply influenced the American popular music of the 1960s and after, was among the figures who got me interested in India and led to my…

America’s Achipelago of Garrisons abroad costs $1 Trillion a Decade (Vine)

David Vine writes at Tomdispatch.com : “Are you monitoring the construction?” asked the middle-aged man on a bike accompanied by his dog. “Ah, sì,” I replied in my barely passable Italian. “Bene,”…

Polling tries to make Republicans look like conspiracy nuts (Colbert Report Video)

The Colbert Report criticizes opinion pollsters for results that seem to make members of the US Republican Party look like conspiracy theorist nut cases. Or... does it? The Colbert Report Get More:…

South Damascus a Battlefield, as Bodies Pile up, and Bread Crisis in Capital Worsens

The forces seeking to overthrow the Baath government of Syrian president Bashar al-Assad have made further advances both in the north in Aleppo and its surroundings, and in the suburbs of the…

Bangladeshis have Sinking Feeling about Do-Nothing Doha Climate Conference (Video)

Bangladesh, among the countries most threatened by climate change, is deeply disappointed by the do-nothing COP18 climate conference that just wrapped up in Doha, Qatar. The country is very low-lying, and rising…

The Green-Khaki Alliance: Morsi Deploys the Military for Referendum

Faced with the prospect of substantial public resistance to his scheduling of a referendum on a Muslim Brotherhood-tinged constitution on December 15, Egyptian President Muhammad Morsi has turned to the military. (The…

Bye, Bye Alexandria: A 1-Meter Sea Rise is Certain

COP18, the Climate Change Conference held in Doha, Qatar, is a dismal failure, with the United States and Russia being the chief villains. The failure of the world's leaders to have their…

On the Real Reason John Boehner can’t Compromise on Obama Budget (Saturday Night Live Spoof)

From Saturday Night Live a comedic press conference starring Barack Obama and John Boehner, with Obama playing the elder brother trying to protect a victim of Tea Party bullying:

Climate Change 101: Separate Fact from Fiction (Video Narrated by Bill Nye the Science Guy)

For all those still confused by the BP, Exxon-Mobil, American Enterprise Institute, Koch Brothers, Heritage Foundation, etc. stupid noise trying to muddy the waters on how Big Oil and Big Coal are…

Greenpeace’s Naidoo: Doha Climate Conference Failed: The Youth Must Mobilize (Videos)

Greenpeace: Doha climate conference a failure, youth have been sold down the river. Executive Director Kumi Naidoo says that the youth must organize to avoid a "four degree world," i.e. one 7…

Egypt’s Morsi Backs down Slightly, but Opposition to Campaign against his Referendum

Egyptian President Muhammad Morsi late on Saturday abruptly announced that his controversial November 22 constitutional decree had been abrogated. He no longer holds himself above the law or above judicial review. The…

Egypt’s Morsi Backs down Slightly, but Opposition Campaigns against his Referendum

This posting is now here [click]

Psy of “Gangnam Style” attacked Bush’s Iraq War, not America

Korean pop star Psy (Park Jae-sang ) is apologizing for performances in 2004 in which he condemned the Iraq War. At one point he sang another songwriter's lyrics about US soldiers killing…

Egypt: Crowds at Presidential Palace Break through Barbed Wire, President offers Dialogue

On Saturday morning, the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood held a news conference in which its leader, Muhammad Badie, insisted that the so-called opposition in Egypt is nothing more than criminals and saboteurs and…

Senate Wraps up Investigation of CIA Rights Abuses but You’ll Likely Never See it (Currier)

Cora Currier writes at ProPublica A Senate committee is close to putting the final stamp on a massive report on the CIA's detention, interrogation and rendition of terror suspects. Senator Dianne Feinstein,…

Syria Rebels make Advances as Hillary Clinton calls for ‘a Concerted Push’ for Democratic Transition (Videos)

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton called for a 'concerted push' on Friday to begin a political transition in Syria. She said that the transition must eventuate in a unified, democratic Syria.…

Egypt; New Demos; Obama Expresses Alarm; and al-Azhar Clerics condemn Constitution

US President Barack Obama called Egyptian President Muhammad Morsi on Thursday to express his anxiety about the violence that broke out on Wednesday in front of the presidential palace in Cairo's Heliopolis…

Another thing Utah Could learn from Kenya: Olkaria IV Geothermal Plant to be largest in World

Utah did not vote for President Obama, whose father hailed from Kenya. But that state has something else to learn from the east African country. Scientists have found a massive geothermal hotspot…

America is officially a Center-Left Country (Young Turks)

On how America is a center-left country, and the younger voters are more left wing than their elders. Cenk Uygur of Current TV's "Young Turks" explains: On former wedge issues such as…

President Obama needs to get us Out of Iran, too– not Just Iraq (Escobar)

Pepe Escobar writes at Tomdispatch.com: Let’s start with the obvious but important: on entering the Oval Office in January 2009, President Obama inherited a seemingly impregnable three-decade-long “Wall of Mistrust” in Iran-U.S.…

Egypt: Faction Fighting in the Streets Threatens Stability, leaves 5 dead, 450 wounded

Egypt has descended into faction-fighting in the streets that left some 5 dead and 450 wounded on Wednesday, as President Muhammad Morsi prepared to make a major address to the nation on…

Avoiding the Nightmarish “Four Degree World” of 2060: We must Act Now (Giesen)

Tom Giesen writes in a guest column for Informed Comment: Global warming's disasters once seemed far off and science-fictional. It is now becoming clear to the scientific community that, to the contrary,…

Egypt: 100,000 Demonstrators Deliver “Final Warning,” chase President Morsi from Palace

On Tuesday, another big wave of protests was held against the policies of President Muhammad Morsi of the Muslim Brotherhood, with rallies in in the public squares of most of Egypt's major…

As Rebels close in on Damascus, Obama warns he’ll Intervene if Chemicals are Used

President Obama warned Syria on Tuesday not to deploy its stockpile of chemical weapons against the rebels. What are apparently Israeli intelligence sources are said to have told the US and Europe…

First, Kill all the Fossil Fuel Subsidies (Plus, a Democracy Now! Video)

Not only is the world not moving to green energy fast enough to avoid very severe future effects of climate change, its nations are still massively subsidizing the poisonous hydrocarbons that are…

Rupert Murdoch, in midst of Hacking Scandal, tried to entice Petraeus with Presidency: WaPo

Bob Woodward of the Washington Post has another scoop, on former CIA director David Petraeus and possibly from David Petraeus. It reveals that the head of Fox News, on orders from yellow…

Petraeus gave Afghanistan away to NeoCon Think Tanks (Elliott)

Justin Elliott writes at ProPublica Amid the media frenzy over former CIA director David Petraeus' extramarital affair, we were struck by a quick reference in a Washington Post story about Petraeus' time…

How the UN’s ITU could take over and destroy Internet freedoms this December (Video)

How the UN's International Telecommunications Union may take over governance of the internet and threaten freedom of expression: The ITU, by the way, held its 2005 conference on internet freedom in the…

Egypt Breaking News: Justices will Oversee Constitutional Referendum, Other Judges announce Strike (Democracy Now! Video)

Democracy Now! interviews Sharif Abdel Kouddous on the decision of the Egyptian judges to go on strike against the decrees of fundamentalist president Muhammad Morsi. Plus: BREAKING NEWS: The most senior Egyptian…