Americans need to Answer: When Will Palestinians get their Fourth of July?
By Juan Cole Americans are commemorating the Fourth of July today, the anniversary of the Declaration…
By Juan Cole Americans are commemorating the Fourth of July today, the anniversary of the Declaration…
By Juan Cole Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair has agreed to advise the government of…
By Juan Cole Today is the anniversary of the overthrow of Muhammad Morsi in Egypt, one…
By Cory Doctorow via Boing Boing In a shocking story on the German site Tagesschau (Google translate), Lena Kampf, Jacob Appelbaum and John Goetz report on the rules used by the NSA…
By Jo Marchant It’s seven in the morning on the beach in Santa Monica, California. The low sun glints off the waves and the clouds are still golden from the dawn. The…
[For more of Rumi see 53 Secrets from the Tavern of Love: Poems from the Rubiayat of Mevlana Rumi -ed. ] By Aisha Abdelhamid Rumi: “Behind The Beauty Of The Moon Is…
By Noam Chomsky via Tomdispatch The question of how foreign policy is determined is a crucial one in world affairs. In these comments, I can only provide a few hints as to…
By Josh Stearns According to the Supreme Court, police need a warrant to search the cellphones of people they arrest. The unanimous decision, which was handed down this week, is being heralded…
By Mindy Fischer On Monday the Supreme Court handed down its ruling on the Hobby Lobby case. They ruled in a 5-4 decision that corporations who have religious objections to birth control…
State Department official documented in memo that mercenary threatened him just weeks before Nisour Square massacre By Jon Queally As the trial continues against Blackwater mercenaries accused of a bloody massacre that…
“Katrina vanden Heuvel [editor of The Nation] and Bill Kristol tussled over Iraq on ABC’s This Week today when vanden Heuvel lumped in Kristol with the Iraq “architects of catastrophe” and suggested…
By Juan Cole New York Times public editor Margaret Sullivan did a quick study and found that critics of the paper of record over its preference for Iraq War hawks as sources…
By Joshua S Hill New figures published by the UK Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) show that 19.4% of the UK’s electricity mix for the first quarter of 2014 was…
By Sarah Lazare Experts slam city's aggressive drive to disconnect water from residents who are unable to pay United Nations experts declared Wednesday that the city of Detroit's shut-off of water to…
By Alan McPherson In 2003, former secretary of defense Donald Rumsfeld infamously foresaw victory in Afghanistan and Iraq as demanding a “long, hard slog” and listed a multitude of unanswered questions. Over…
During recent interview with David Gregory, Pres. Bill Clinton laughed off Dick Cheney’s suggestion that President Obama is to blame for the strife in Iraq, placing the blame directly at the feet…
By Peter Van Buren Here’s a bit of history from another America: the Bill of Rights was designed to protect the people from their government. If the First Amendment’s right to speak out publicly…
Via Gas2 The FAA doesn’t think much of Jeff Bezos’ idea to deliver packages to Amazon.com customers using drones. Yesterday the agency issued a proposed ruling that defines such deliveries as part…
By Samuel Warde According to Russell Brand, “fanatical” Fox News is “more dangerous than Isis.” His comments were made in response to a particularly disturbing rant by Fox News host Jeanine Pirro…
It’s not often that a FOXNews host takes a Tea Party “darling” like Michelle Bachmann to task for her Obama-Derangement-Syndrome, but that’s exactly what happened earlier today when Neil Cavuto got into…
Via Electronic Frontier Foundation Justices Rule Changing Technology Demands Limits for Police but Requires Permission from TV Broadcasters San Francisco – The U.S. Supreme Court issued two big rulings in important technology…
By Sandy Dechert Chris Matthews, host of MSNBC’s Hardball, met more than his match last Thursday when he took on lively freshman Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts. Looked as if Matthews got…
Jon Stewart of the Daily Show: “The militant group ISIS quickly gains control of much of Iraq, giving Dick Cheney an opportunity to place blame for the crisis on everyone but himself.”…
Foreign Policy
Inside the Mosul of the ‘Islamic State’: Manhunts, Salafi Coercion and Fired Christians
Niqash | Special Correspondent | Mosul | It has been several weeks since Sunni Muslim extremists took over the northern Iraqi city of Mosul. Locals continue to adapt to their new circumstances;…
Algerian Soccer/ Football and the Black Box of French History
By Francis Ghilès Senior Research Fellow, CIDOB When Algeria qualified for the knockout stage of the World Cup by winning against Russia, the Algerian press celebrated their team’s qualification as the greatest…
A World War in Iraq? Iran, Russia, Syria, US Scramble against ‘Islamic State’
By Paul Rogers An unlikely alliance of four states is coalescing to oppose the ISIS advance in Iraq. But the group may not wait to be challenged. The recharged war in Iraq…
Americans need to Answer: When Will Palestinians get their Fourth of July?
By Juan Cole Americans are commemorating the Fourth of July today, the anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. The grievances that the four million inhabitants of British North America had in 1776…
As Israeli Vigilantes pursue revenge killing of Palestinian Children, Troops Go on Unlawful Rampage
Via Human Rights Watch (Jerusalem) – Israel’s military operations in the West Bank following the abduction and killing of three Israeli teenagers have amounted to collective punishment. The military operations included unlawful…
As Hundreds of US Troops are Sent to Iraq, Fears of Mission Creep
By Lauren McCauley Lawmakers and anti-war groups raise flags about additional troop deployments and calls for executive "flexibility" As the number of American troops sent to Iraq nearly doubled on Monday and…
Can Tony Blair Mess up Egypt even Worse?
By Juan Cole Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair has agreed to advise the government of Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi. Blair maintains that he will not be paid to do so,…
Juan’s Interviews re: “The New Arabs,” Majority Report, The World, Daily Beast
By Juan Cole Today is the anniversary of the overthrow of Muhammad Morsi in Egypt, one year ago. I have a detailed account of this event and of the movement that led…
US Viceroy Paul Bremer’s Neoliberal Fatwas at Root of Iraq Crisis
By Ali Al-Jaberi The roots of the most recent crisis in Iraq can be traced to the US-led invasion of 2003 and western meddling in Syria. At stake, is the neoliberal blueprint…
Israel’s search for missing settlers shines light on depth of the West Bank’s occupation
By: Ola al-Tamimi Ramallah – What does the occupied West Bank look like 47 years into the occupation? The Palestinian state was about to be announced but negotiations failed again. The two…
Syrian Opposition: Baghdadi “Caliphate” lame attempt to take Spotlight off his Crime Spree
By Juan Cole Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi’s proclamation of himself as “caliph” is rather like the Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan declaring himself the Holy Roman emperor. A small criminal/ terrorist…
Ruling Hindu Tea Party wants to “Develop” India for its 1%
By Gyanendra Pandey New Delhi Through the President’s address to Parliament on June 9, 2014, the newly elected Indian Government has officially outlined its short and longer-term agenda. The emphasis, as expected,…
Uneasy Caliphate: Inside Hawija in Iraq
By Shalaw Mohammed | Hawija NIQASH visited Hawija, a large northern Iraqi town near Kirkuk, which is currently controlled by Sunni Muslim extremists and local tribes. The town is dominated by ISIS’…
In the Deaths of 3 Israeli Teens, Likud Policies are also Implicated
By Juan Cole The kidnapping and killing of three Israeli squatter youth whose parents usurped Palestinian land has produced a paroxysm of hatred and calls for reprisals in Israel. Whoever is responsible…
False Dilemma: The Mideast doesn’t have to choose between Dictatorship & Caliphate
By Hazem Saghieh The crisis around Iraq-Syria reflects the weight of a past that is no longer relevant to the region’s peoples, says Hazem Saghieh. Some observers are looking at Iraq and…
What the Arab Youth Movements have Wrought: Don’t Count them Out Yet
By Juan Cole via Tomdispatch.com Three and a half years ago, the world was riveted by the massive crowds of youths mobilizing in Cairo’s Tahrir Square to demand an end to Egypt’s…
Photo of the Day: Egyptian Youth Demanded end to Military Trials for Civilians
By Juan Cole Now On the June 30 anniversary of the determined masses gathered in their millions at Tahrir Square and in city centers throughout Egypt, demanding a recall election for then…
The Debacle of the Caliphates: Why al-Baghdadi’s Grandiosity doesn’t Matter
By Juan Cole Ibrahim al-Badri, a run-of-the-mill Sunni Iraqi cleric, gained a degree from the University of Baghdad at a time when pedagogy there had collapsed because of the Saddam Hussein dictatorship…
Barzani: Kurdish Rule To Stay In Kirkuk
Via RFE/RL Iraqi Kurdish leader Masud Barzani has said that there is no going back on autonomous Kurdish rule in the oil-rich city of Kirkuk and other northern towns that Kurdish fighters…
The Fate of Dissenters in Al-Sisi’s Egypt: The New “Disappeared”
By Jihad Abaza As Abdel Fattah el-Sissi assumes his new role as Egypt’s president, enforced disappearances are on the rise in the Middle East’s most populous country, according to a recent press…