Tomorrow, Egyptians will go to the polls on day three of their two-day presidential election, because in the Glorious Sisi Era, the numbers 2 and 3 are interchangeable. The coronation election of President-for-life Sisi was expected to right Egypt's ship of state after the troubles of the past three years or so, setting Egypt back … Continue reading Egypt: when low voter turnout is probably OK

I'm always a little surprised to read about something Michael Kinsley wrote, in a "oh, yeah, that guy" kind of way. When I was a kid I remember Kinsley as being the archetype of the public liberal, especially since he was on Crossfire (I was a weird kid, OK?), but I couldn't tell you the … Continue reading Michael Kinsley, and other things that are incompatible with the term “liberal”

Nuclear waste drums are exploding in New Mexico because somebody decided to switch Los Alamos's brand of kitty litter: In February, a 55-gallon drum of radioactive waste burst open inside America's only nuclear dump, in New Mexico. Now investigators believe the cause may have been a pet store purchase gone bad. "It was the wrong … Continue reading The search for an organic nuclear waste disposal method continues

This is a couple of days old, but I penned a response to a speech given about a week ago in Kiev by neocon (or neocon fellow traveler, at any rate) Leon Wieseltier, literary editor of Even The Liberal New Republic. Wieseltier has never met a military action that he wasn't happy to send other … Continue reading Leon Wieseltier gives Ukraine a rewrite, at LobeLog

A couple of weeks ago, a few 20-somethings in Iran got it in their heads to record a YouTube video with six of them dancing to Pharrell Williams's "Happy." The video went moderately viral and got about 160,000 views before it was made private a few days ago. Why was it made private, you ask? … Continue reading How to suppress a viral video, the Iranian way, at LobeLog

I'm normally a lot quicker on the uptake with these things, so I feel bad that I'm only just acknowledging the massive and devastating flooding that has hit Bosnia-Herzegovina and Serbia over the past several days. It's the worst flooding the region has suffered in at least 120 years, leaving 40 dead and tens of … Continue reading Where to donate for Balkans relief

A couple of weeks ago I wrote a piece for LobeLog on Russia's move to expand its presence in Asian energy markets and overall to boost its economic engagement with China. Yesterday that plan got a major boost when Gazprom and the Chinese government reached an agreement that was literally years in the making, setting … Continue reading Russia’s Asian pivot gets a big boost

In a world where "fact-checking" has somehow become a subset of "journalism" rather than, you know, the whole point, I can certainly see the need for something like PolitiFact to exist. That's why it would be nice if the folks who run PolitiFact didn't keep making good arguments as to why there's simply no point … Continue reading PolitiFact once again makes a case for its own uselessness (UPDATED)

When it was recently reported that Iranian and P5+1 negotiators are still not really even in the same ballpark when it comes to Iran's uranium enrichment capacity, I wrote about where the two sides were coming from on the issue. Then I linked to a piece in Arms Control Now that assessed how much enrichment … Continue reading Here’s why Iran wants to maximize its enrichment capacity