Why the US won’t leave Afghanistan

Surge, bribe and run? Or surge, bribe and stay? How US military bases and the energy war play out in Afghanistan. Among multiple layers of deception and newspeak, the official Washington spin on the strategic quagmire in Afghanistan simply does not hold. No more than “50-75 ‘al-Qaeda types’ in Afghanistan”, […]

Picture of the day: Cactus Bee, Arizona

A cactus bee (Diadasia sp.) pollinates a barrel cactus in Tucson, Arizona. Source: National Geographic “He is Allah, the Creator, the Maker, the Fashioner. His are the most beautiful names. All that is in the heavens and the earth glorifies Him, and He is the Mighty, the Wise.” (Al Quran 59:25) […]

Gold Advances to Record on Debt Crisis

Gold climbed to a record in Londonand New York as concern about Europe’s debt crisis spurred demand for the metal as a protection of wealth. Bullion rose to an all-time high in British pounds. Ireland joined Portugal and Greece yesterday as the third euro-area nation to have its credit rating […]

Al-Qaida plotting internet jihad

LONDON: Al-Qaida is plotting a jihad on the internet against Britain and the West, and has launched teams to target key computer systems, officials said. Terrorists have even tried to invade Facebook in their “campaign of electronic warfare”, The Sun reported. The Google Earth and Street View applications are being […]

Big in Berlin

Thomas Meyer/OstkreuzThe interior of Murkudis’s concept store is minimalist but expansive. It’s not as though anyone in Berlin really needed proof, last week, that the city’s once-hip central Mitte neighborhood had officially jumped the shark — two years’ worth of boutique hotel and Mavi-store openings, plus skyrocketing rents and a […]

In Defense of Antidepressants

  IN terms of perception, these are hard times for antidepressants. A number of articles have suggested that the drugs are no more effective than placebos. Last month brought an especially high-profile debunking. In an essay in The New York Review of Books, Marcia Angell, former editor in chief of […]

US targets Iran – via Iraq

The United States says that Iranian-backed Shi’ite militias were responsible for the deaths of 15 US servicemen in Iraq in June – a two-year high. Reviving Washington’s friction with Tehran over Iraq may have more to do with deteriorating relations over Iran’s nuclear program than with uncertainty over US troop […]

Taliban deliver hammer blow to NATO

The assassination on Tuesday of Ahmad Wali Karzai, President Hamid Karzai’s half-brother, smashes to bits the notion that the North Atlantic Treaty Organization is winning the war in Afghanistan. The Taliban are now rid of the major pro-Washington actor not only in Kandahar province but in the whole south of […]

Pakistan bristles at failed label

Pakistan may be taking a deleterious turn, especially as the United States plans to pull out of Afghanistan by 2012 and threatens to withdraw military aid from the country, but its media has reacted indignantly to claims that put it on the same scale as the poorest African countries. Foreign […]