Cornell University’s Middle East & Islamic Studies Collection includes a directory of hundreds of links to resources about all aspects, time periods, and areas of the Middle East. Some of the pages are about the physical collection of documents and resources at Cornell’s library, but most simply feature dozens of links to online documents and resources, arranged by category.

I can’t do a collection like that justice in a short introduction. Suffice it to say, if you’re looking to research the Middle East and/or Islamic culture, you could do a lot worse than to start here:

Middle East & Islamic Studies Collection

CNN has a summary of the main action points if the recent U.N. Securinty Council resolution on Syria. Generally it insists that Syria cooperate fully with the U.N. investigation team that is looking into the killing of Lebanon’s Prime Minister Rafik Hariri (and 20+ others, via car bombing) this past February.

Here’s more, courtesy of CNN/Reuters:

We’re storing a copy of a PDF version of the entire Resolution 1636 here at PNAC.info. It can also be found at its original location on the Security Council’s 2005 resolutions page.

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In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.

Professors Jennifer Jackson and Steve Macek at North Central College in Naperville, Illinois have a course this semester titled “Debating Empire”. The reason we knew about it is that they included PNAC.info among the reference links for that course. The reason I’m telling you is that they have also compiled a hefty page of links to essays, articles, and other research materials relating to the subject of the United States and empire. There are writings from Rudyard Kipling and Mark Twain, a speech from Martin Luther King, Jr., and essays from folks as far ranging in viewpoint as Arundhati Roy and Charles Krauthammer. There looks to be a few dozen resources and documents. I’m sure many of them will end up with their own entries here at PNAC.info in due time, but for now, you can just dig in yourself.

Reference Materials for “Debating Empire”

Note: It certainly appears at first glance that the folks who set up that page are coming from a particular side of the debate, and I assume that, on the whole, the resources there lean toward the anti-empire side of the debate. I just wanted to make it clear that we’re aware the page is not fully objective (and probably left-leaning), but I’m including it anyway because the documents on the page can speak for themselves, and I can tell just at a glance that many of them will have much useful to say on this topic.

This is only tangentially related to our purposes here, but we do intend to add historical research materials here when they are relevant to the issues at hand. U.S. History is obviously relevant, and this page has the most comprehensive collection of original texts from U.S. history that I have ever seen. It’s quite astounding, actually, how many items they have linked to there. It appears to be every major presidential address, plus every major law and treaty, plus every state’s constitution, plus every major political essay, and so on. And I mean “and so on.” Going back to the year 1400, no less.

Check it out:
Documents for the Study of American History

The PNAC’s “Rebuilding America’s Defenses” position paper can be found in PDF form at the PNAC site, or here at our site:

http://pnac.info/RebuildingAmericasDefenses.pdf

This is an extremely thorough chronicle of all the major events that have affected the world oil market from 1970-2002. It’s from the U.S. Department of Energy’s web site, and it’s super-extensive, detailing events on a month-by-month (and often day-by-day) basis. It has a chart of the price of oil over the 32-year time period, with the 64 most important events marked on the chart. The data behind the chart is available for download as well, and there’s even a page for the most recent months’ events. It currently goes up to February 28.

This isn’t about the PNAC directly, just background info for the bigger picture. U.S. involvement in the Middle East oil trade is a major part of the chronicle.

World Oil Market and Oil Price Chronologies: 1970 - 2002

This article in Mother Jones provides a good answer to claims that “it’s not about the oil”. It’s an in-depth look at how it’s been about the oil since the energy crisis in the 70’s. Though I don’t think the article directly references the PNAC, it’s talking about the same people. It’s a deeper look at one piece of the PNAC’s global puzzle.

Mother Jones: The Thirty-Year Itch

Excerpt:

“Controlling Iraq is about oil as power, rather than oil as fuel,” says Michael Klare, professor of peace and world security studies at Hampshire College and author of Resource Wars. “Control over the Persian Gulf translates into control over Europe, Japan, and China. It’s having our hand on the spigot.”

Full story…

Also check out their interactive map, which displays the oil reserves in the Middle East, as well as U.S. base deployments there.

Mother Jones: Oil and Arms — An In-Depth Look