Source: The Nation

Syrians fleeing the fighting at home have found themselves targeted amid Egypt’s political upheaval.

Abu Shihab recalls when armed police officers in full riot gear barged into his cramped apartment and led him away in handcuffs, along with a dozen other Syrian refugees. “They were dressed like they were ready for a war,” he says. He stands in the sun-washed courtyard of Masaken Othman, a cluster of cracked reddish-brown residential buildings rising from the dust in Cairo’s desert outskirts. Trash and car tires float in fetid green water seeping from a drainpipe onto the sand. read more

Source: The Guardian Unlimited

The story of Aaron Alexis is still obscure. But effects of an over-taxed US military are painfully visible among 2 million veterans.

While details are gradually emerging, there is much we don’t know about the navy yard shooter Aaron Alexis. Yet, the shooting rampage of the navy veteran who retained a contractor’s pass to the navy yard in Washington DC has a context: a stressed and over-extended US military, exhausted by more than a decade of “war on terror” tours of duty, and a huge population of veterans who bear the mental and physical scars of their service and often struggle to reintegrate. read more

Source: Earth Island Journal

Canadian author Naomi Klein is so well known for her blade-sharp commentary that it’s easy to forget that she is, above all, a first-rate reporter. I got a glimpse into her priorities as I was working on this interview. Klein told me she was worried that some of the things she had said would make it hard for her to land an interview with a president of the one of the Big Green groups (read below and you’ll see why). She was more interested in nabbing the story than being the story; her reporting trumped any opinion-making. read more