Iraqis seeking relief from the summer heat have become easy targets for insurgents. Swimmers were again targeted today, as well as Iraqis taking evening breaks at cafes. At least 30 were killed and 42 more were wounded.
It’s hard even to know how to take it in. I mean, what’s really happening? An employee of a private contractor working for the National Security Agency makes off with unknown numbers of files about America’s developing global security state on a thumb drive and four laptop computers, and jumps the nearest plane to Hong …
Continue reading “Can Edward Snowden Be Deterred?”
Both the Muslim Brotherhood and its liberal opponents are using U.S. policy toward Egypt as a whipping boy to rally support for their respective causes during the current turmoil in that country. Liberal demonstrations have claimed that the Obama administration had supported the Brotherhood and its former President Mohamed Morsi. Yet the Brotherhood has claimed …
Continue reading “The United States Should Quit Meddling in Egypt”
Edward Snowden’s flight to freedom is being watched the world over as a contest of wills between one very determined person and the mightiest empire in world history: so far, Snowden is winning. His personal victory, however, may be short-lived, as he runs up against what may be an insuperable wall: Vladimir Putin’s Russia. Blocked …
Continue reading “Snowden’s Russian Sojourn: A Moral Failure?”
At least 16 people were killed and 25 wounded in the latest Iraq attacks.
As Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu resumed his threats to attack Iranian nuclear facilities, 29 former senior U.S. experts and foreign diplomats urged President Barack Obama to show greater flexibility in anticipated negotiations following the inauguration of President-elect Hassan Rouhani. “While it will take time to secure an agreement to resolve all concerns, diplomacy will …
Continue reading “Israel Resumes Threats Against Iran as Experts Urge Patience”
There are belittling moments in writing when one realizes that a story she’s penned has become perversely innocuous – maybe even meaningless – as it’s dwarfed by much more powerful revelations that were just around the corner waiting to explode. Even worse, it’s a tough kick when a writer feels she has been duped or …
Continue reading “A Mea Culpa of Sorts”
At least 22 Iraqis were killed and 65 more were wounded in the latest violence.
On the website of the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services there is a list of rights belonging to all Americans. Chief among them: Freedom to express yourself. Abdiwali Warsame must have taken them literally. Two days after he became a U.S. citizen, he created a rollicking news and opinion website covering his native Somalia. It …
Continue reading “Obama’s Expanding Surveillance Universe”
Why didn’t Edward Snowden agree to be jailed, abused, silenced, and quite possibly tortured? This is what Melissa Harris-Perry wants to know. Harris-Perry is one of MSNBC’s minor weekend anchors, a professor currently at Tulane University who started out retailing her academic pretensions as a sometime guest on the Rachel Maddow and Chris Hayes shows: …
Continue reading “The Prisoner” 
