Jeremy Scahill discusses his new front page story for The Nation.
Author: alannahpriestley
Alex Salmond on Scottish Independence
David Frost speaks to Alex Salmond on Scottish Independence and Paul Krugman on the private debt crisis.
Many Scots now want to leave the UK, but will it be enough to win a referendum on independence in 2014? Sir David Frost speaks to the man who has led the movement for independence, Scotland’s first minister, Alex Salmond.
Nothing to Lose
From K’naan’s new EP, More Beautiful than Silence, featuring Nas.
Heart & Mind-O-Matic
From the great, Pulitzer-Prize winning political cartoonist Mark Fiore.
Learn all about the US drone program in Pakistan and other lucky countries across the globe! See how fortunate one young villager is to have the US looking out for him and fighting extremism. Never mind the attacks on funerals and rescuers. A Mark Fiore political animation.
Jaffa – The Orange’s Clockwork
This film shows how Jaffa started out as a Palestinian place name before becoming an Israeli brand name and how the orange harvest shifted from being a joint undertaking into a symbol used by both parties in the conflict.
Atrocities sans Frontieres
Glenn Greenwald on Obama’s lawless presidency.
America’s Lawless Empire: The Constitutional Crimes of Bush and Obama
Ralph Nader ’58 and Bruce Fein ’72 visited Harvard Law School for a talk sponsored by the HLS Forum and the Harvard Law Record. At the event, “America’s Lawless Empire: The Constitutional Crimes of Bush and Obama,” both men discussed what they called lawless, violent practices by the White House and its agencies that have become institutionalized by both political parties.
Cold, Cold Heart
by Kathy Kelly
It’s Valentine’s Day, and opening the little cartoon on the Google page brings up a sentimental animation with Tony Bennett singing “why can’t I free your doubtful mind and melt your cold, cold heart.”
Here in Dubai, where I’m awaiting a visa to visit Afghanistan, the weather is already warm and humid. But my bags are packed with sweaters because Kabul is still reeling from the coldest winter on record. Two weeks ago, eight children under age five froze to death there in one of the sprawling refugee camps inhabited by so many who have fled from the battles in other provinces. Since January 15, at least 23 children under 5 have frozen to death in the camps.
And just over a week ago, eight young shepherds, all but one under 14 years of age, lit a fire for warmth on the snowy Afghan mountainside in Kapisa Province where they were helping support their families by grazing sheep. French troops saw the fire, and acted on faulty information, and the boys were all killed in two successive NATO airstrikes. The usual denunciations from local authorities, and Western apologies, followed. (Trend News, February 10, 2012).
Counter-terrorism?
Our friend Paul Woodward of the indispensable War in Context asks some pertinent questions about the attacks on Israeli diplomats in India and Georgia:
Have we reached a quite predictable moment where counter-terrorism needs redefining? In other words, that when car bombings initiated by one state-sponsor of terrorism provoke a counter-attack of the same kind, that we should call such an attack an act of counter-terrorism?
Only last week there was confirmation from U.S. government officials that Israel is a state-sponsor of terrorism, having trained and deployed Iranian dissidents to conduct car bombings killing civilians in Iran. By internationally accepted definitions of terrorism and state-sponsored terrorism, there’s no question these were acts of terrorism and Israel’s role in instigating them makes it a state-sponsor of terrorism.
Now it would appear that Israel is reaping the reward for its own actions as Israeli diplomats have been targeted in India and Georgia. The attack in Delhi appears to have involved the use of the same method favored by Mossad — a magnetic bomb attached to the Israelis’ car by a passing motorcyclist.
Syrian People’s Army
Some members of the Syrian army are beginning to do what their service oath mandates: to protect the Syrian people.
One of the soldiers, Fayez al-Abdullah, spoke to Al Jazeera earlier:
P U L S E 