City of Brass

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Afghanistan’s trillion dollar curse: lithium

posted by Aziz Poonawalla

The New York Times reports that a small team of American geologists and military personnel have discovered vast reserves of precious metals and minerals in Afghanistan, which profoundly transforms the destiny of this battered nation overnight: The previously unknown deposits [...]

Groundhog Day, Daniel Pipes, and Bombing Iran

posted by Aziz Poonawalla

Ah, it must be Groundhog Day. In the movie, Bill Murray wakes up every day to the same day, where everything happens over and over again. In real life, conservatives argue for bombing Iran as if the Iraq war or [...]

Shariahland

posted by Aziz Poonawalla

The problem with Afghanistan is that it isn’t like any war we’ve fought before, not even counter-insurgencies. It’s fundamentally an attempt to deny a haven for Islamic violent extremists (IVEs) to create a model society – “Sharialand”, for want of [...]

Abdullah runs off; Karzai certified

posted by Aziz Poonawalla

Afghanistan residential challenger Abdullah Abdullah decided (correctly) over the weekend that the planned run-off election between him and incumbent President Karzai would be subject to the same abuses and lack of transparency as the original election, and thus withdrew his [...]

Previous Posts

American barbarism, civilization, and decadence (and Star Trek)
I came across a lengthy excerpt online from the book, "The Next Hundred Years: A Forecast for the 21st Century" by George Friedman and found it quite insightful. I say this as someone who probably is indeed an American barbarian by the definition of the passage; I do believe that there do exist u

posted 3:11:36pm May. 15, 2013 | read full post »

Bishnu Shrestha and the 40 thieves (and one khukuri)
This is a khukuri, a curved Nepalese-style blade issued as standard equipment to members of the Gurkha, which are famed Nepali units of the Indian Army (and the British Army of India before Independence): [caption id="attachment_1982" align="aligncenter" width="600"] khukuri knife of the Gurkha[/

posted 9:56:17am May. 08, 2013 | read full post »

Muslims in Bradford, UK rally to save synagogue
This is one of those great stories that often gets overlooked by the mainstream press and deliberately ignored by the Islamophobes: With only just over thirty members and an extravagant Grade II listed Moorish building, the tiny Jewish community of Bradford have for many years been in despair abo

posted 11:47:45am May. 04, 2013 | read full post »

Obama still wants to close Guantanamo #Gitmo
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=vy-fsgXR4jw From today's press conference: 8:15 AM PT: Bill Plante of CBS asks about the Guantanamo hunger strike. Obama says he still wants to close it. "It's not necessary to keep America safe. It's expensive. It's inefficient. It hu

posted 11:44:18am Apr. 30, 2013 | read full post »

open-source, lone wolf terrorism: different ideologies, shared methodologies
To summarize what is known at this time, the main suspects for the Boston marathon bombing are two brothers who immigrated from Chechnya to America years ago and have gro

posted 1:34:11pm Apr. 19, 2013 | read full post »


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