Being tied for 26th place on Forbes' "World Billionaires List" seems like not such a bad thing to me. Maybe it's the "not knowing where my next paycheck is coming from" talking, but seems to me you could live pretty comfortably even being the guy who doesn't quite make the cut into the top 100 … Continue reading you get a cookie! part 8 of ???: prince al-waleed bin talal

Turkey: The Erdoğan government offered one of those "sorry, not sorry" kinds of apologies over police brutality against protesters this week, with Deputy Prime Minister Bulent Arinc apologizing for injuries to "legitimate protesters" (no weasel words there), which apparently excludes "rioters." Although it's unclear how Erdoğan's government is parsing the difference between "legitimate protesters" and … Continue reading this week in oppressive government violence: june 9, 2013

Late last week, Marc Lynch at Foreign Policy wrote an interesting piece about Yusuf al-Qaradhawi, a highly influential Sunni theologian/pundit from Egypt, and his open call for a Sunni jihad against Bashar al-Assad and Hizbullah (which he has cleverly renamed hizb al-shaytan, or "Party of Satan") in Syria. Qaradhawi has the backing of the Muslim … Continue reading Ratcheting up the rhetoric on Syria

This is how you get it done: In 2011, as Bryant’s career as a drone operator neared its end, he said his commander presented him with what amounted to a scorecard. It showed that he had participated in missions that contributed to the deaths of 1,626 people. “I would’ve been happy if they never even … Continue reading #winning hearts and minds

Woody Allen on proxies: ANTON LEBEDOKOV: Shall we say pistols at dawn? BORIS GRUSHENKO: Well, we can say it. I don't know what it means, but we can say it. ANTON: You have insulted the honor of Countess Alexandrovna! BORIS: Why? I let her finish first? ANTON: Her seconds will call on you. BORIS: Seconds? … Continue reading proximity fuze (qusayr, syria, and the potential for a new fitna)

Richard Cohen still has a prestigious and presumably high-paying job telling people what to think on the Washington Post editorial page, despite the fact that he once wrote that Colin Powell's Iraq farce at the UN "had to prove to anyone that Iraq not only hasn't accounted for its weapons of mass destruction but without … Continue reading Did you know that “Richard Cohen” is an anagram for “chance horrid”?

Turkey: Large protests against the government of Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan continued into a second day in cities all across the nation. The protests, which began as a relatively minor episode of civil disobedience in Istanbul to protest the bulldozing and redevelopment of one of that city's few green spaces, Gezi Park, have grown considerably … Continue reading this week in oppressive government violence

Apparently there were major, nationwide protests today in Turkey against the government of PM Tayyip Erdogan and his ruling Justice and Development Party. The protests began in Istanbul as a reaction to government plans to develop considerable portions of that city's already scarce green space by bulldozing Gezi Park and running a third major bridge … Continue reading What’s in a (bridge) name?

Hands are being wrung in consternation because MSNBC finished in fourth place in the cable news ratings wars in May, repeating their April performance, behind not only the sitcom-masking-as-news-operation that is CNN, but also behind CNN's mentally unhinged cousin, Headline News (Fox is obviously first always because Amercia). Another month of big crime and disaster … Continue reading we’ve got other things to do

Evan Soltas has a very important question to ask all of us out there in the internets, namely: "If austerity is so bad, why is the economy doing so well?" Now this is a very serious question, because all this time long-hairs and the like have been warning that cutting back government spending and raising … Continue reading if the economy is doing so well, why does the economy suck so bad?