Reforming France’s Education System: Sarkozy at Work

Bob Zaslavsky writes in The Sunday Paper:
Newly elected President Sarkozy recently announced plans to reform French education, beginning at the top with the French public university system, especially France’s venerable flagship college, the Sorbonne.
The Sorbonne, founded in 1257, is located in the famed Quartier Latin, in the fifth arrondissement. It is the core of the [...]

US Missile Defence in Europe: Letter from Noam Chomsky to Jan Tamáš

(31.5.2007) The installation of a missile defense system in Eastern Europe is, virtually, a declaration of war. Simply imagine how the US would react if Russia or China or Iran or in fact any foreign power dared even to think about placing a missile defense system at or near the borders of the US, let [...]

The CIA’s Torture Teachers

Mark Benjamin writes in Salon:
There is growing evidence of high-level coordination between the Central Intelligence Agency and the U.S. military in developing abusive interrogation techniques used on terrorist suspects. After the Sept. 11 attacks, both turned to a small cadre of psychologists linked to the military’s secretive Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape program to “reverse-engineer” [...]

Ex-Marine Josh Rushing on his Journey from Military Mouthpiece to Al Jazeera Correspondent

Below is a section from a transcript of an interview with Josh Rushing, posted on Democracy Now!
AMY GOODMAN: Four years ago, our first guest today helped sell the Iraq war to the American public. Armed with talking points from the Bush administration, Josh Rushing served as a Marine spokesperson at CENTCOM in Doha as the [...]

Careful What You Wish For, China May Grant It

Julian Delasantellis writes in Asia Times:
In Greek mythology, one of the most effective methods the gods used to punish impudent and hubristic humans was to grant them their most fervent desires.
Inevitably, the weak and feckless mortals would find that getting everything they ever desired would lead to their total ruination, as befell King Midas [...]

Pakistan’s ‘Night of the Generals’

Fatima Shahnaz writes in Radiance Viewsweekly:
The crisis pitting the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Pakistan (CJP), Iftikhar Chowdhry, suspended by President Parvez Musharraf on March 9 has opened up deep-rooted systemic flaws that sporadically erupt throughout the nation’s turbulent sixty-year old history. Often locked in the impasse between military dictatorships and Islamists (called [...]

Europeans Skeptical about Blair as Mideast Envoy

Below is an excerpt from Spiegel:
It might seem like a basic principle of diplomacy to let your allies know before you nominate someone to represent them. However this appears to not have been the case with the Bush administration’s reported backing of Tony Blair to be the Middle East Quartet’s special envoy for Palestinian governance.
According [...]

News in Brief: 25 June 2007

A brief list of news for the day:
Documents show Fatah leader, Dahlan, was working with Al Qaeda with the idea of blaming trouble on Hamas. “Hamas has turned over to the Egyptian authorities substantial parts of the intelligence information that fell into its hands when it overran the headquarters of Fatah-controlled security headquarters in Gaza.” [...]