“The White House was insistent … that President Obama acted ‘promptly’ to try to rescue American hostage Luke Somers from al Qaeda in Yemen, approving the risky special operations mission two days after receiving a military plan – but possibly well after Somers had already been moved” …
… “Al-Qaida’s branch in Yemen threatened an American hostage who was the target of a rescue attempt by U.S. special forces last month, warning Washington in a video released Thursday not to try again, and giving it three days to meet unspecified demands”:
- Yemen’s Al-Qaida Threatens US Hostage in New Video (AP / abc News)
“Bahraini pro-democracy activist Zainab al-Khawaja has been sentenced to three years in prison for tearing up a picture of King Hamad”:
“[T]he picture across Iraq overall was a stalemate, with government forces regaining some territory but Islamic State imposing itself more forcefully at its core”:
“Egypt’s courts pride themselves on what they claim is their independence from political interference and commitment to evenhandedness. But over the past year, they have reasserted themselves as fierce protectors of state power, and as tools for muzzling dissenters” …
- From Egyptian Judges: Conspiracy Theories, Mass Death Sentences, and Freedom for Mubarak (Christian Science Monitor)
… while the prosecutor’s office brands as a “fabrication” a leaked tape recording of officials planning “a strong case against Morsi” in which “a senior military legal adviser … recommends retroactively reclassifying the military facility as a civilian site so that Morsi’s lawyers couldn’t challenge the legality of his detention”:
- Egyptian Authorities Investigate Leaked Recording (AP / abc News)
I admit it! It’s true! Observant Muslims don’t drink alcohol. But I still don’t see how that excuses legally forcing pub owners to pay rent-seeking big corporations twice the wholesale price for their poison:
- Tory Peer Blames Muslims for Decline of Pub Industry (Independent)
“Four Pakistani Taliban commanders told Reuters drone strikes and tension with tribesmen had forced them to move from small Afghan towns to mountainous border areas”:
“Oxford historian Faisal Devji writes … [that] Jinnah ‘seems to have possessed more books on the problems of European Jewry than on any Muslim people or country….’ Jinnah was not particularly religious and envisioned a Pakistani nation that, while defined by Islam, was not necessarily governed by its laws”:
- The Pakistani Origins of the Israeli State (Washington Post)
Ghani assures diplomats that everything will be different this time. “History will not be repeated. We have overcome the past”, and from David Cameron’s reply that “we are with you every step of the way,” they seem to have bought it:
- Allies Promise to Support Afghanistan Beyond War (AP / Denver Post)
“The Pentagon resembles nothing so much as some kind of gigantic socialist enterprise, run according to its own principles, shielded from market discipline and accountable to no one…. By any normal yardstick, the Pentagon’s performance — its output compared with its input — would surely be deemed a failure”:
- Can Ashton Carter Rein in a Pentagon Out of Control? (Washington Post)
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