By Pierre Krähenbühl via EurActiv Commissioner General of the United United Nations Relief and Works Agency Pierre Krähenbühl writes on the unsustainability of the Palestine refugee crisis on World Refugee Day (20 June). 120 children were recently allowed out of Yarmouk, the Palestinian refugee camp in Damascus, to sit public exams. The 14-year-olds emerged from […]
Flashback: All the Ways the Neocons were Wrong about Iraq
via Bernie Sanders US Senator Dick Cheney “Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction. There is no doubt he is amassing them to use against our friends, against our allies, and against us.” (Source) “I think things have gotten so bad inside Iraq, from the standpoint of […]
How US Hawks Created an Arc of Instability in the Middle East
By Tom Engelhardt via Tomdispatch As Iraq was unraveling last week and the possible outlines of the first jihadist state in modern history were coming into view, I remembered this nugget from the summer of 2002. At the time, journalist Ron Suskind had a meeting with “a senior advisor” to President George W. Bush (later […]
Is Iraq Actually Falling Apart? What Social Science Surveys Show
By Mansoor Moaddel Several nationally representative surveys carried out in Iraq between 2004 and 2013 provide important facts about Iraqi orientations toward secular politics, basis of identity, Americans, and Iranians. These facts have serious implications for the territorial integrity of Iraq, support for an Islamic government, and the U.S. policy toward the country. These surveys […]
Pakistan Needs Regional and Global Alliances to Fight the Extremists
By Muqtedar Khan Pakistan on Sunday launched another military operation — Zarb-e-Azb — against the extremists in Waziristan. The name of the operation means sharp and cutting or surgical. This is not the first such operation and perhaps will not be the last of its kind. But if this one is executed well, it may […]
Israeli Occupation Army harasses Palestinians on Pretext of Missing Settler Youth
Palestinian families bear brunt as Israel hunts teens (via AFP) It was the sound of the front door being kicked in that woke the Izrayqat family early Wednesday as Israeli troops barged into their home in Taffuh village near Hebron. Even the four children were sleeping because school had ended and the summer holidays… […]
It’s come to this: Fox News brings on NFL’s Terry Bradshaw for Benghazi analysis
Fox News on Wednesday continued its multi-year obsession with the terrorist attack in Benghazi by inviting NFL football analyst and former quarterback Terry Bradshaw to weigh in. Out Numbered host Andrea Tantaros began the segment by highlighting a…
Iraq is more like N. Ireland than Lebanon, Reconciliation is Possible
By Jocelyne Cesari The attack of The Islamic State of Iraq and al Sham (ISIS) on Mossul and its march on Baghdad has taken the international community by surprise and raised the possibility of another US intervention in Iraq, with the hope it could prevent the downfall of the country into a sectarian war. Such […]
Torture: What’s Race Got to do with It?
By Rebecca Gordon June is Torture Awareness Month, so this seems like a good time to consider some difficult aspects of torture people in the United States might need to be aware of. Sadly, this country has a long history of involvement with torture, both in its military adventures abroad and within its borders. A […]