Aletho News's blog

Last week, EFF was dismayed to learn that Ethiopian journalist and blogger Eskinder Nega had been sentenced to eighteen years in prison under a sweeping and overbroad Anti-Terrorism Proclamation. More than one hundred other Ethiopians, including nine journalists, have been sentenced under the vague law. In December 2011, two Swedish journalists were convicted on charges of supporting terrorism.

Three Chinese warships from the People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) docked in Haifa Aug. 13 for a five-day visit here as guests of the Israel Navy.

The Group Managing Director of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), Mr. Andrew Yakubu, has said China had become the alternative market for Nigeria’s crude oil, following dwindling imports by the United States, which was the major buyer of Nigeria’s crude oil. [...]

Nigeria’s crude oil export to the United States, which was over one million barrels per day (bpd) in December 2009, had declined to 352,000bpd, representing a loss of about 70% [...]

In his paper, Hubbert estimated that the “ultimate potential reserve of 150 billion barrels of crude oil for both the land and offshore areas of the United States.”  Hubbert’s estimate was based on the crude oil “initially present which are producible by methods now in use.”  Using the 150 billion barrel estimate he predicted US Peak Oil occurring in 1965. But to be cautious, he also used a slightly higher figure of 200 billion barrels which produced a peak in oil production around 1970—the figure that Hubbert advocates like to use to demonstrate that Hubbert was prophetic in his predictions.  However, by 2006 the Department of Energy estimated that domestic oil resources still in the ground (in-place) total 1,124 billion barrels.  Of this large in-place resource, 400 billon barrels is estimated to be technically recoverable with current technology. ...

Israel using the Gaza Strip as an experimental theatre of war to test its anti-missile shield and other military capabilities

"US v Reynolds has come to be a landmark case that is used by the government when it claims that documents cannot be turned over to the courts because of national security. Yet this very case is now proven, in my mind, to be based on a lie that did injury to 3 widows and 5 little children"

Boycott From Within has posted a letter to jazz musician McCoy Tyner, encouraging him to respect the Palestinian call for boycott and cancel his upcoming gig in Petach Tikva on 10 March.

... The paramilitaries who displaced the community, the palm-oil cultivators Daabon and Aportes San Isidro responsible for the environmental degradation and continued occupation of the land are not the subjects of judicial investigations.  It is the dispossessed and displaced campesinos who are under investigation...

Maidhc O'Cathail question whether Anti-war.com is the best place to look for anti-war news and analysis.

Connections between the US and UK National Security apparatus and the appearance of the anthropogenic global warming (AGW) theory beginning after the accident at Three Mile Island.

Wood-to-ethanol factory in southeastern Georgia that sucked up $65 million in federal and state tax dollars was sold Tuesday for pennies on the dollar to another bio-fuel maker... owned by Vinod Khosla, the entrepreneur who also secured the government loans to the original bankrupt firm.

Dollar for dollar, military products are there as insurance and to the extent you could put those dollars into other areas, maybe education and job training, maybe into transportation, that is going to have a good economic effect.

As with religion, it is presided over by a caste of spectacularly unattractive people pretending to an obscure form of knowledge that promises to make the seas retreat and the winds abate...

“I was sleeping in my house and I heard people shouting in the street. I went out and saw a settler point his M-16 [machine gun] at my son.”

A guide for useful Hasbara idiots

Then-Goldman Sachs CEO Hank Paulson was, after all, chairman of the Nature Conservancy...

Early today FOIA.org released a zip file of 5,000 additional emails similar to those released two years ago in November 2009 and coined Climategate...

Biofuel Death Squads

THE LAWS OF [JINSA] KINGS

The obligation to destroy the seven nations living in the Land of Canaan

The prohibition against allowing any one of them to remain alive

The obligation to destroy the descendents of Amalek

The obligation to remember what Amalek did

The State Department which promotes and sponsors Dean Obeidallah as a comedian is now also promoting a Palestinian-American rapper and radio show host...

... Exactly how the United States benefits from making Israel’s enemies its own is not clear...

Obama For America and Obama Victory Fund 2012 Volunteer Fundraisers

"... you will escalate. You don’t want to run away from that word, you want to run towards it ..."

Yet another glimpse into the massive Jewish ethnic infrastructure, the infrastructure that undergirds the power of the Israel Lobby. A column by Justin Logan in The National Interest (“Memo to Leslie Gelb: The neocons never left“) points out that neocons are alive and well, dominating the foreign policy of the Republican Party.

The official site of the so-called "Syrian Revolution" offer sincere condolences for the death of Prince Sultan. This site represents the Ikhwan-liberal leadership of the so-called revolution. Read the comments in praise of Sultan.

Tip of the Hat to Angry Arab News Service

Science says so.

By failing to expose the source of the Iraq war deception, the Iranian leader is providing cover for those now seeking to induce America to go to war with Iran.

Quote of the Week

Al Gore purchased a $9 million mansion in the luxurious hills of Montecito, California, recently, and with the exception of the Los Angeles Times and Fox News, America’s media couldn’t care less.

The cold period in the Arctic lasted more than 30 days longer in 2011 than in any previously studied Arctic winter