by Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – Yes, Trump’s gratuitous Twitter insult to newswoman Mika Brzezinski was horrible. But US cable news and even a lot of print news are falling down on the job by focusing on these clashes of personality that Trump provokes. In contrast, corporate news is not doing a […]
Archives for June 2017
Freeing Fayza: A Journey to War-Torn Iraq to Rescue a Yazidi ISIL Slave Girl
By: Brian Glyn Williams and Christopher Natola | (Informed Comment) | – – It began with an electrifying text message from a Yazidi member of a network dedicated to freeing Yazidis (an ancient people from Northern Iraq who adhere to a faith rooted in old Iranian religion and influenced by Sufi mysticism). The message was […]
Demand-Side Slavery, Libyan Instability and European Crime Networks
Neil Thompson | (Informed Comment) | – – After several years in which refugees and migration have featured heavily in the Western media narrative, a disturbing correlation between human trafficking and conflict zones is well established. But new studies indicate that conflicts do not just cause human trafficking as refugees seek to flee warzones; wars […]
Back to Quagmire: Beware endless US Troop Escalations in Afghanistan
By Danny Sjursen | ( Tomdispatch.com) | – – We walked in a single file. Not because it was tactically sound. It wasn’t — at least according to standard infantry doctrine. Patrolling southern Afghanistan in column formation limited maneuverability, made it difficult to mass fire, and exposed us to enfilading machine-gun bursts. Still, in 2011, […]
Syria: Russians alarmed, Washington Befuddled, by White House threats
By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – The unusual statement from the “White House” on Monday saying that there were indications that the Syrian regime was preparing to use poison gas has provoked much head-scratching both inside the Trump administration and around the world. Why would the “White House” say this? Is it […]
Turkey abandons High Tech Future by Banning Teaching of Evolution
By James Williams | (The Conversation) | – – In the US there have been many attempts to expunge evolution from the school curriculm or demand that creationism – the idea that all life was uniquely created by God – is given equal treatment in science textbooks. While all these have failed, the government in […]
Trump May Already Be Blundering into the Next Middle East War
By Jim Lobe & Giulia McDonnell Nieto Del Rio | ( FPIF) | First published in Lobelog | – – The possibilities for catastrophic miscalculation are skyrocketing in the Middle East, and this administration is proving singularly prone to miscalculation. The Washington elite is waking up to the increasingly real possibility that the Trump administration […]
How Saudi blackmailed the UN to avoid Yemen War Human Rights Slam
By Thalif Deen | (Inter Press Service) | – – UNITED NATIONS (IPS) – When Saudi Arabia – which has been spearheading a coalition of Arab states in a devastating war against Yemen since 2015 – was accused of bombing civilians, and particularly children caught up in the conflict, the government in Riyadh threatened to […]
Why it Matters that the World thinks US under Trump is Laughingstock
By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – Pew Research Center has found that the confidence of the world public in the US willingness to do the right thing has plummeted in just the few months Trump has been at our helm. Last fall, 62 percent of people throughout the world said they trusted […]
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