Summary: Rafid Ahmed Alwan al-Janabi, an Iraqi defector who fled Iraq in 1995 and went by the codename “Curveball,” has publicly admitted for the first time that he made up stories about mobile bioweapons trucks and secret factories to try to bring down Saddam Hussein’s regime. … One-year retrospective: One year ago today, on February 15, 2010, Aubrey Immelman reported that the incendiary rhetoric of demagogues like Glenn Beck or Michele Bachmann is powerful because it slips through the cracks in our acculturated human rationality, with its biological substrates in the fontal cortex, to hit a lower nerve in the subcortical brain regions of the limbic system, the seat of emotion.

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Summary: A total of 46 students and nine teachers were treated in a Kabul, Afghanistan, hospital after what an official at the education ministry described as “an apparent poisoning” attack by “the enemies of women’s education.” However, the pattern of the reported illness bears the hallmark of a group psychological reaction known as mass hysteria. … One-year retrospective: One year ago today, on August 27, 2009, Aubrey Immelman reported that Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) announced a joint town hall forum with Rep. Ron Paul as her guest. He also reported a summer of setbacks for the U.S. and its allies in Afghanistan, with rising casualties, a divisive election, and growing public doubt about the war.

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Summary: Pointing to U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann, Michael White of the British newspaper The Guardian says what troubles him about the U.S. today is that “public reaction to the Obama presidency is irrational, emotional, and ignorant.” Excerpts with sidebars, links, graphics, and video added. … Eric Roper reports in the Minneapolis Star Tribune’s Hot Dish Politics blog (Nov. 28, 2009) that MSNBC’s Ed Schultz devoted more than a quarter of his Wednesday, Nov. 25, 2009 show to Rep. Michele Bachmann. … One-year retrospective: One year ago today, on November 30, 2008, Aubrey Immelman reported that the fallout from a three-day terrorist rampage that killed nearly 200 people in Mumbai threatened to unravel India’s improving ties with Pakistan and prompted the resignation of India’s security minister.

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Summary: U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann is making headlines in the British press, where she is touted as “a Republican congresswoman from Minnesota who is being hailed as a new and increasingly powerful voice in American politics.” Excerpts from an article by Paul Harris, New York-based correspondent for The Observer and The Guardian, supplemented with annotated critique. … One-year retrospective: One year ago today, on November 16, 2008, I reported that racial incidents around the country referring to President-elect Barack Obama are shattering the postelection illusion of racial progress and harmony, highlighting the stubborn racism that remains in America. There have been “hundreds” of incidents since the election, many more than usual, said Mark Potok, director of the Intelligence Project at the Southern Poverty Law Center, which monitors hate crimes.

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Summary: British foreign secretary David Miliband says the phrase “war on terror” — though capturing the urgency of the situation immediately following the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001 — is ultimately “misleading and mistaken,” because it gives the impression of a unified, transnational enemy embodied in the figure of Osama bin Laden and al-Qaida.

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