“We are trying to be provocative in the best use of that term.” –Jon Rubin, Conflict Kitchen co-director
GREAT story we just posted about Conflict Kitchen, a Pittsburgh restaurant that only serves food from countries in conflict with the USA. Check this out, a great concept, and some great quotes.
“Reaction’s been great,” Rubin says when asked the obvious. “There’s never been this kind of food in Pittsburgh, and we didn’t know whether people would be into that. But people are starving for food and diversity.”
Such an amazing idea.
6.3-magnitude earthquake strikes near Iran’s nuclear power plant
Details: http://nbcnews.to/12EVAid
Worth keeping an eye on today.
Obama, Netanyahu address Iran, Syria threats
(Photo: Larry Downing / Reuters)
During a wide-ranging press conference in Jerusalem, President Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu discussed Middle East conflicts and a potential two-state solution.
“Whatever time is left, there’s not a lot of time.” — Netanyahu on figuring out a solution to the nuclear-enrichment issue in Iran, in direct response to Obama’s comment that “there is still time” to find a diplomatic solution.
![theatlantic:
Google Reader’s Demise Is Awful for Iranians, Who Use It to Avoid Censorship
RSS readers take raw feeds of data—headline, text, timestamp, etc.—and display that information in a stripped-down interface along with many other feeds, which is what makes them so efficient. (Here is the RSS feed for Quartz.) Less obvious is how many RSS readers, including Google’s, serve as anti-censorship tools for people living under oppressive regimes. That’s because it’s actually Google’s servers, located in the U.S. or another country with uncensored internet, that accesses each feed. So a web user in Iran just needs access to google.com/reader in order to read websites that would otherwise be blocked.
Read more. [Image: AP]
This week in corporate decisions that are rankling nuisances to some, while far more dire to others.](http://25.media.tumblr.com/76e78283d9b830f56eacca637200f385/tumblr_mjo2gxTmQM1qcokc4o1_500.jpg)
Google Reader’s Demise Is Awful for Iranians, Who Use It to Avoid Censorship
RSS readers take raw feeds of data—headline, text, timestamp, etc.—and display that information in a stripped-down interface along with many other feeds, which is what makes them so efficient. (Here is the RSS feed for Quartz.) Less obvious is how many RSS readers, including Google’s, serve as anti-censorship tools for people living under oppressive regimes. That’s because it’s actually Google’s servers, located in the U.S. or another country with uncensored internet, that accesses each feed. So a web user in Iran just needs access to google.com/reader in order to read websites that would otherwise be blocked.
Read more. [Image: AP]
This week in corporate decisions that are rankling nuisances to some, while far more dire to others.
One of the reasons we are in this business is to challenge ourselves. And I really connected to Maziar’s story. It’s a personal story but one with universal appeal about what it means to be free.Jon Stewart • Discussing his plans to leave “The Daily Show” over the summer to direct a serious film, “Rosewater,” based on the life story of journalist Maziar Bahari, who was captured and imprisoned in Iran in 2009. Bahari, who has shown up on “The Daily Show” multiple times since his release, was accused of espionage by Iranian officials based on an interview he did with the show’s Jason Jones. Stewart will be away for twelve weeks, eight of which will be hosted by John Oliver, and the other four correspond with the show’s traditional summer break.
The Iranian embassy in Lebanon said the dead man, Hessam Khoshnevis, was in charge of Tehran’s reconstruction assistance in Lebanon. It said he was killed by “armed terrorist groups”, a label used by the Syrian government to describe Assad’s foes, on the road to Lebanon as he returned from Damascus.
A Syrian opposition commander said the attack was carried out by rebel fighters near the Syrian town of Zabadani close to the Lebanese border.
Iran has strongly backed Assad during the uprising in which the United Nations says nearly 70,000 people have been killed. In September Iran’s Revolutionary Guards commander-in-chief said the force was providing non-military support in Syria and may get involved militarily if there is foreign intervention.
Iran’s state-run media claims Khoshnevis was only passing through Syria, not stationed there as some believe, on his way to a civil engineering position in Lebanon where he was allegedly aiding in national reconstruction efforts. Iran is currently blaming the “Zionist enemy” for the death of Khoshnevis’ on Tuesday; however, there has yet to be an individual or group of Syrian rebels to claim credit for the attack. Regardless, the death is almost sure to complicate regional politics, with Iran having previously offered military support to President Bashar al-Assad should any foreign nation attempt to intervene in the country’s approximately two-year-old civil war.
Iran’s Art Bureau is planning to produce a film presenting its own version of the events depicted in Ben Affleck’s Argo, which tells the story of a 1980 CIA operation to extract six fugitive American diplomatic personnel out of revolutionary Iran.
Iran’s Mehr News Agency quoted the film’s director, Ataollah Salmanian, as saying on Thursday that the film, entitled The General Staff, would be “an appropriate response to the ahistoric film Argo.”
I, for one, am very anxious to see the Iranian response movie. I presume it can’t possibly be anything other than excellent.
This will be an interesting one to keep an eye on.
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Since 2007, former FBI agent Bob Levinson has remained missing, but despite a video informing people of the danger he faces making the rounds in late 2011, little has been done to help him. So his family has taken another step, releasing photos of Levinson supposedly taken in Guantanamo, according to the signs Levinson’s holding — but more likely taken in an Iranian prison. His family received the photos 18 months ago, but held off on their release, only putting them out now because his plight wasn’t receiving enough attention.
US denies Iranian drone capture report
NBC News, Reuters: The U.S. Navy says it had not lost any drones over the Persian Gulf recently after Iran claimed to have captured one in its airspace.
The semi-official Fars and the state-run IRNA news agencies reported that a U.S. ScanEagle drone was gathering information over Gulf waters and had entered Iranian airspace.
Photo: Insitu’s ScanEagle (Jim Watson / AFP - Getty Images, file)
Iran has captured an American drone before, around this time last year.
That’s incredible… These are the most crippling sanctions in the history of sanctions, period.Joe Biden, defending his administration’s stance on sanctions against Iran. Paul Ryan accused the administration of lacking any credibility on preventing Iran’s nuclear program, which elicited a broad grin from Biden and the above rejoinder. The debate has been pointed and hot so far, as Biden is striking the polar opposite mood of President Obama’s listless performance last week.
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