Persons portraying themselves as angry Iranian students occupied the yard and foyer of the British embassy in Tehran on Tuesday, as well as a smaller facility where six embassy employees appear briefly to have been taken hostage. The militant students (or possibly members of the Basij paramilitary) were protesting increased British financial sanctions on Iran, […]
Archives for November 2011
Letter on Bahrain to Secretary Clinton
The Project on Middle Esst Democracy has written a letter to Secretary of State Clinton on the Bahrain crisis, which I co-signed. It asks the US take seriously the findings of severe human rights violations on the part of the regime, and to pressure it to take concrete steps to end them. The letter anticipated […]
Democratic Developments in the Arab Upheavals
The Arab upheavals of 2011 have been very different from one another across countries, but have in common a language of parliamentary democracy as the ultimate ideal (albeit one that sounds more like the old West German Social Democratic Party ideal than like the Neoliberal parliamentary regimes of the US and its close allies). Democracy […]
Assassinating Dreams in Egypt: Amr
Ahmed Amr writes in a guest op-ed for Informed Comment: Nostalgia for more innocent times is a comforting refuge when hope is scarce. last week, as we inhaled a toxic dose of tear gas in Tahrir Square, we were all gasping for a resurrection of the spirit of the January uprising that led to the […]
Did the Muslim Brotherhood Threaten to Kill “All Jews”?
The Muslim Brotherhood and other religious parties in Egypt (including the Salafis and the Gama’a al-Islamiya) held a rally at al-Husayn Square in Cairo last Friday to which a few thousand people came. The big rally was at Tahrir Square in downtown Cairo and was dominated by secular forces. This is an Arabic news article […]
Empire by the Numbers
Number of Pakistani troops killed at checkpoint Saturday by a US helicopter raid from Afghanistan: 25 Number of NATO supply trucks allowed to cross from Pakistan to Afghanistan Saturday: 0 Number of Afghan children killed near Qandahar Wednesday by a US air strike: 6 Percentage of Pakistanis [pdf] who want US troops out of Afghanistan: […]
Anti-Liberal Netanyahu Slams Arab Spring as Anti-Liberal
Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu said yesterday that he had been right to oppose the forced resignation of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak last February and categorized the uprisings in the Arab world as “anti-Western, anti-liberal, anti-Israeli and anti-democratic wave.” He gave the “uncertainty” in the region as yet another excuse for the Likud Party to […]
Beeman: Letter from Iran
This is the second in a series of letters written this week from Iran by University of Minnesota Professor William Beeman. Since Americans hear so little directly from that country in their media, I thought it was worth sharing, and Bill kindly agreed to let me do so.. — Juan . Dear Friends… Two other […]
Top Ten Things Americans can be Thankful for 2011
News is too often defined as bad news. At a time when many Americans are unemployed or under-employed, or have lost their homes or seen their value plummet, it is hard to be too sunny. But the US does have a lot of good news stories to celebrate, despite the adversity we are currently facing, […]
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