The “Truthies” and sectarians who protested in downtown Manhattan continue to fetishize 9-11 as much as the patriots they loathe. For both the patriots and the protesters, it is all about the USA—while the Muslim world is finally moving on.
Israel’s Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman has broached supporting recognition by the US Senate of the Armenian genocide as part of a diplomatic offensive against Turkey, the Hebrew-language daily Yedioth Ahronoth reported.
Xenophobes and Christian fundamentalists are behind the anti-sharia measures now passed or pending in more than a dozen states—but secular progressives resist efforts to impose sharia on the unwilling in the Muslim world. Can we avoid confusion?
NTC forces claim to be closing in on Moammar Qaddafi at a location in the Libyan desert—but Pepe Escobar on Asia Times warns that “the real war starts now,” predicting a new insurgency as the NTC fractures.
Human Rights Watch reports that Abdel Hakim Belhaj—recently an “al-Qaeda-linked terrorist” and now a military commander of Libya’s NATO-backed rebels—was actually “renditioned” by the CIA from Malaysia to Libya back in 2004.
France and the NTC deny claims in the Paris daily LibĂ©ration that they have signed a secret deal granting French companies exclusive access to 35% of Libya’s oil reserves. Qaddafi meanwhile charges imperialist designs on deep Saharan fossil aquifers.
AlJazeera claims to have uncovered documents in the ransacked offices of Qaddafi’s intelligence chief implicating US officials—including Rep. Dennis Kucinich—in secretly aiding the strongman, in violation of stated policy.
Abdelhakim Belhaj, recently appointed to Tripoli’s rebel military council, was a founder of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, an anti-Qaddafi cell designated by the US State Department as a terrorist organization with links to al-Qaeda
The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) has called for a federal investigation and Senate hearings into an Associated Press report asserting that the CIA helped the New York Police Department in spying on the city’s Musilm communities.
Juan Cole was a hero of the left when he slapped down mainstream media jive on the Iraq war just a few short years ago. But now he takes on idiot-left jive on Libya—which has at times deteriorated into shameless cheerleading for Qaddafi.
BP is denying blogosphere reports that the company has contracted 40 vessels to contain a new “oil sheen” near the site of last year’s Deepwater Horizon disaster—but the denials are full of “wiggle words” and obfuscation.
The Economist sees “Anarchy in the UK” in the riots that have spread from London to Birmingham and Liverpool, as Trinidadian writer Darcus Howe tells the BBC the riots are “an insurrection of the people,” similar to what “is happening in Syria.”
