On Friday, a farmer in Turkey's Snliurfa province noticed a large metal monolith in a field near Göbekli Tepe, home to the world's oldest megaliths. This was the first mystery monolith discovery of the year. The new monument had the following inscription in the Turki Goktuk alphabet: "Look at the sky, you will see the moon." — Read the rest
The recent work of artist Zehra Doğan is made from coffee, tea, cigarette ash, turmeric, bleach, menstrual blood, and tomato paste, whatever she could find in her Turkish prison cell where she was serving almost three years for her journalism and a painting she did that the Turkish government didn't take kindly to. — Read the rest
Authorities didn't find it funny and Candemir now faces up to two years in prison. He was briefly placed under house arrest and, while his case is pending, remains subject to a foreign travel ban.
Quite the scoop at CNN.com from Carl Bernstein, yes, the Watergate reporter Carl Bernstein, with a 109-word one sentence lede. One wonders why none of the president's ex-men bothered to do anything about their revelation that Trump is unfit for office, beyond cashing in with speaking engagements and books.
President Donald Trump thinks this photo, of House Leader Nancy Pelosi berating him over his abandonment of America's Kurdish allies, will make her look bad. The BBC quotes Republican "leaders" as saying Pelosi—apparently one of two women at the table and five in the room—was behaving in an "unbecoming" manner. — Read the rest
Donald Trump, nominally the President of the United States of America, recently withdrew U.S. troops from Kurdish-held lands and greenlit a Turkish invasion of same, at Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan's request. As soon as the humiliations of this outcome became clear to Trump, we now learn, he began sending threats to Erdoğan instead. — Read the rest
Viktor Orban and his far-right, xenophobic, conspiratorial Fidesz party have led Hungary through a string of catastrophes, from its handling of Middle Eastern migrants to its ouster of the internationally famous Central European University to the passage of a slave labor bill that allowed employers to require hundreds of hours of mandatory overtime that needn't be paid for for years to the creation of a parallel system of partisan "administrative courts" to investigate government corruption and electoral fraud.
Mr. Trump's decision goes against the recommendations of top officials in the Pentagon and the State Department who have sought to keep a small troop presence in northeast Syria to continue operations against the Islamic State, or ISIS, and to act as a critical counterweight to Iran and Russia.
A Turkish court has sentenced journalist Pelin Ünker to 13 months' imprisonment for her participation in reporting the Panama Papers, a massive leak of documents from the tax-evasion enablers Mossack-Fonseca.
Donald Trump's disgraced former national security advisor Gen. Michael Flynn went to court today to be sentenced for lying to the FBI about his contacts with Sergei Kislyak, the former Russian ambassador to the United States.
Flynn's sentencing will be delayed, to give him time to finish fully cooperating with federal prosecutors. — Read the rest
Last week, Viktor Orban's authoritarian government rammed through a pair of massively unpopular laws: the "slave labor" law (employers can require up to 400 hours/year of overtime, and take up to three years to pay for it); and a law creating a parallel system of "administrative courts" dealing with "government issues" like voter fraud, overseen by political appointees from within Orban's regime.
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo today said the United States will revoke entry visas for the Saudi men accused of torturing and assassinating Washington Post contributing journalist Jamal Khashoggi at the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul, Turkey.
A new report from the Institute For the Future on "state-sponsored trolling" documents the rise and rise of government-backed troll armies who terrorize journalists and opposition figures with seemingly endless waves of individuals who bombard their targets with vile vitriol, from racial slurs to rape threats.
Brent Longborough did me the enormous favor of translating my latest Locus column, Zuck's Empire of Oily Rags, into Portuguese, and sent it to me to publish.
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When Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan visited Washington DC last year, he brought along his gang of goons who beat protesters so brutally that nine were hospitalized. US prosecutors dropped charges against against 11 of the 15 men accused of the bloody assault. — Read the rest
