Greater Middle East
ISIS burns cannabis, snorts coke?
As ISIS burns the cannabis fields of northern Syria, Kurdish fighters at Kobani claim that ISIS forces besieging the town are snorting cocaine to keep their spirits up.
Author: Bill Weinberg
The Andes
Venezuela to nuke New York… Not!
Once again, a nuclear scientist is caught on tape agreeing to sell secrets to a foreign government. Except Venezuela wasn't involved at all—the whole things is an FBI scam.
Europe
Mineral struggle in new Kosova violence
Street-fighting in Kosova's capital Pristina was portrayed as more Serb-Albanian "ethnic hatred," but it came as workers occuiped the Trepca mining complex to resist privatization.
Europe
Greece: populist bloc with xenophobes
Syriza needs anti-austerity partners for its economic program, but its alliance with the anti-immigrant Independent Greeks further mainstreams very dangerous politics.
Europe
UN meeting on anti-Semitism… Oy vey
The UN hearings on anti-Semitism will certainly enflame anti-Semitism—affording Israel the opportunity for propaganda exploitation, and for Jew-haters to exploit the backlash.
Greater Middle East
Yemen’s Houthi rebels: Iran’s proxies?
Claims that the Houthi uprising in Yemen is an Iranian plot ignore that the Houthis' brand of Shia is heretical to Iran's ayatollahs—and that Yemen's Shi'ites have real grievances.
Europe
#JeSuisCharlie hypocrisy goes off the charts
Under the hashtag #JeSuisCharlie, an attack on free speech is being used to justify further attacks on free speech… in the paradoxical name of protecting free speech.
Iraq
US media betray Kobani defenders
US media accounts of gains against ISIS at Kobani play up the role of US air-strikes and depreciate that of Kurdish fighters—or even deny the success at Kobani entirely.
Europe
Europe: destroying freedom to save it
At thier meeting in Paris to condemn the attack on Charlie Hebdo, European Union government ministers issued a statement calling for further restrictions on the Internet.
Europe
#JeSuisCharlie, #JeSuisMusulman: contradiction?
The dueling hashtags #JeSuisCharlie (I am Charlie) and #JeSuisMusulman (I am Muslim) reveal a pathological dichotomy: we can defend free speech and oppose Islamophobia.
Planet Watch
Behind oil slump: shale boom or geopolitics?
Experts tell us the North American shale oil boom is responsible for low prices despite Middle East unrest. But the price slump serves Western aims of weakening Russia and Iran.
Inner Asia
Facebook enforces censorship of Tibetan struggle
Facebook's deletion of a post by Tibetan writer Tsering Woeser comes just after Mark Zuckerberg met in Beijing with China's minister for Internet censorship Lu Wei.