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More thoughts on Cole’s uneducated gut

Glenn Greenwald is one of several “progressive” (USA-ian for “Social-Democratic”) commentators who have been debating Juan Cole on his tempestuous “Open Letter to the Left”.   Greenwald’s “Question of Juan Cole” takes what Cole says seriously, and applies serious criticism to…

A Cairo Revolution

Marching in Imbaba, Cairo, originally uploaded by RamyRaoof. One overlooked media revelations from the Arab Revolutions of 2011 is the amount of material released with reusable copyright. Ramy Raoof in Cairo is releasing his work with a CC Attribution license,…

Leaking a President out of Power

CIV_2010_result

The Cote d’Ivoire presidential elections drama, after decades of civil war and chicanery, has proven in its final act to be, well, dramatic. Even wire reports are saying that the vote totals are confirmed, with Alassane Ouattara (representing both the…

Nice to CC

Image by Tomathon via Flickr In reading about the worrying and hopefully shortlived chaos attending the results of the Cote d’Ivoire elections, I was pleasantly surprised to see a photo of mine used for Radio France International’s article on Ivorian…

What the World Bank Means by Democracy

World Bank Logo

Foreign entities such as the World Bank push for continuity of authoritarian central governments with the imprimatur of newly elected heads of state. This has obvious advantages for Africa’s leaders. It does not, though, look much like democracy. And we cannot be surprised when the outcomes are not very democratic.

Open Letter to the BBC

Image via Wikipedia To the editors of the BBC, Your appalling “Muslim Brotherhood expands westward” by Magdi Abdelhadi  seems entirely based on two writers who have no academic qualifications or credibility and one of whom has a long history of…