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Looking For Cocaine Terrorists: The 2009 US Drugs Sting in Mali.

This story originally appeared in Maghreb Politics Review on December 21, 2009, as “US Arrests Malians in Terror Drugs ‘Link'”. The claim that Al-Qaeda, Hezbollah, and the FARC are part of a worldwide drugs for terror conspiracy remains active in American press and government, and remains a fantasy that meets the internal needs of the US, while ignoring real issues, like those that precipitated the unexpected collapse of the Malian state in 2012.

On Western analysts and the Mali Conflict, April 2012

An excerpt from a letter written in 2012. “Two histories are now being written, each a litany of crimes and humiliations suffered, neither accepted as even having occurred by the other. …if privileged western analysts — however innocently — repeat propaganda of one side as ‘the background’ to this conflict, they help determine the outcome.”

Hurricane Sandy on Staten Island

Front Street, Stapleton

My photos from New Brighton, Tompkinsville, St. George, Clifton, Stapleton on the morning after Sandy. The South Shore of Staten Island — far from me — had extensive housing in the storm surge zone, and reports from there are describing devastation and death on a much greater scale than here.

Update on Jay Lehr: His price is pretty low.

Jay Lehr, Television Expert

You may remember Jay Lehr from an earlier comment on his use by CNN and other reputable news organization as a nuclear safety expert. Now a leak from within The Heartland Institute — the craven industry backed advertising agency for which Lehr is “Science Director” — has revealed all sorts of nasty details.

Death and Career in the “Dark” Sahara: The Sad Fate of Jeremy Keenan

Lonely at the top

People who don’t know much about northern Mali would be very poorly served by reading Keenan’s increasingly odd writing. Keenan used to be a scholar of some note. But his increasingly unhinged supposition that their hidden hands are behind all that is bad in the west-central Saharan region is simply unsupportable. Why it remains unchallenged is the mystery.