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“You better keep ’em far away from the water supply.”

  A few months ago, just walking too close to the Military Prosecution Complex in Cairo’s district of Nasr City could have landed you in jail.  But on May 31, the area surrounding the complex was the stage for a demonstration in solidarity with OnTV’s presenter Reem Maged, socialist activist and blogger Hossam El Hamalawy, […]

The Case-Shiller 20-City index fell by 0.8 percent in March.  This represents somewhat of a slowing from the prior six months in which the rate of monthly decline averaged more than 1.0 percent.  Nonetheless, the drop pushed the index to a new post-bubble low.  In nominal terms, the March number is 0.8 percent below the […]

Which is the tyrant? say you.  Well, ’tis he That has the vine-leaf strewn among his hair And will deliver countries to the care Of courtesans — but I am vague, you see. Abu al-‘Ala’ al-Ma’arri (973-1057), born in Ma’arra in what is today Syria, was a poet and philosopher.  This poem is from The […]

  Syrian opposition groups will be meeting for three days in Antalya, Turkey in a conference organised by the Egypt-based National Organisation of Human Rights (NOHR).  The conference, set to begin on Tuesday, 31 May, is to ‘support the revolt in Syria and claims of the Syrian people,’ said Ammar Qurabi, NOHR president.  The conference […]

The movement of citizens that has occupied Puerta del Sol and other plazas in diverse cities of Spain since the 15th of May has brought back political debate to the streets and put the role of political parties into question.  Should the movement now take down its encampments and look for other formulas to channel […]

  NBC recently aired a show called America’s Next Great Restaurant.  Contestants, each of whom hoped to open a restaurant chain, were put through a series of tests to see whose idea had the best chance for success.  A panel of judges eliminated one person at the end of each program, until the last one […]

A sword of Damocles, we are told, is hanging over Greece.  Even the Greek EU commissioner says that Greeks must accept that their country will be run, nay micromanaged, by a committee of foreign creditors, or else Greece will be kicked out of the eurozone. This threat is found upon a flagrant lie.  Greece cannot […]

The curiosum of a ‘red regime’ with a knack to get re-elected term after term for over more than three decades within the ambit of a full-fledged multi-party democracy has finally disappeared.  The Left Front, led by the Communist Party of India (Marxist), has not merely lost the poll in West Bengal, it has been […]

Painful events have been continuing in Syria for nearly two months, since the emergence of a protest movement raising legitimate local and general demands among people in the governorate of Daraa. This movement threw light on the presence of major problems in the political life in Syria: the continuation of the state of emergency, the absence of laws governing political activity, and so on.

  Excerpt: This guide is not a road map or instruction manual.  It’s a match struck in the dark, a homemade multi-tool to help you carve out your own path through the ruins of the present, warmed by the stories and strategies of those who took Bertolt Brecht’s words to heart: “Art is not a […]

We have developed planes invisible to radars . . .. . . and victims invisible to justice. Eneko Las Heras, born in Caracas in 1963, is a cartoonist based in Spain.  The cartoon above was first published on his blog . . . Y sin embargo se mueve on 30 May 2011.  Translation by Yoshie […]

Last year, we took the Washington Post‘s Joby Warrick to task for stories he published that relied “almost entirely on unnamed U.S. officials and a known terrorist organization” to advance “Iraq-redux” claims that the Islamic Republic is seeking to build nuclear weapons.  Now, Warrick published a front-page story in the Washington Post — a story […]

On a television channel on counting day, the panellists discussing the assembly election results were asked to offer advice to the Left, which had lost both the large states it ruled, one of them quite massively, on how it should reform itself for a future resurrection.  The overwhelming opinion among them was that it should […]

  Mere days after the Egyptian Military Council received a cash payment of $4 billion from Saudi Arabia, the Egyptian government uncovered an Iranian spy in Egypt.  It is widely known in the Arab world that countries that receive cash payments from Saudi Arabia usually uncover Iranian plots days after the arrival of the cash. […]

Earlier this month all eyes were on Reserve Bank Governor Duvvuri Subbarao.  Every statement of his was read as signalling whether he would raise interest rates and by how much he would do so this time.  With the economy having bounced back and GDP growth approaching previous peaks, the presumption was that the focus of […]

  Greenwashing Apartheid: The Jewish National Fund’s Environmental Cover Up.  JNF eBook (Volume 4).  May 15, 2011. The 63-year old State of Israel has had overwhelming success at hiding its true intentions and purposes, effectively whitewashing actions which, if properly understood, would be extremely disturbing to most people.  Thus the passage of laws discriminating on […]

Terry Everton is a cartoonist.  Visit his blog Working Stiff Review at .  See, also, Terry Everton, “Retirement Is for Pussies” (MRZine, 24 May 2011).  Cf. “Civilian Labor Force Participation Rates by Age, Sex, Race, and Ethnicity” (Bureau of Labor Statistics, 8 December 2010). | Print

The answer seems to be “yes.”  After all, the New York Times told readers that The companies estimate that the boom [from new shale oil drilling] will create more than two million new jobs, directly or indirectly, and bring tens of billions of dollars to the states where the fields are located, which include traditional […]

Former Honduran President Zelaya’s return home today has important implications for the Western Hemisphere that, we can predict, will be widely overlooked.  Zelaya was ousted from the presidency when he was kidnapped at gunpoint by the military on June 28, 2009.  Although no hard evidence has yet emerged that the U.S. government was directly involved […]