By Alex Shams and Salam Muharam (Ma’an News Agency) The alleyways of the Old City of Hebron leading away from the famed Ibrahimi mosque — where the biblical patriarch Abraham and his family are buried — are almost always eerily quiet. In some directions the covered alleys are blocked off by tin barriers covered in […]
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Bush Admin. Spent Billions on an Iraqi Army with 50,000 “ghost” Soldiers
By Juan Cole | — Iraqi Prime Minister Haydar al-Abadi announced to his parliament on Sunday that inspectors had uncovered 50,000 non-existent soldiers in four divisions of the Iraqi Army. Their pay was presumably being diverted to the officers in the division. This ziggurat of corruption was one reason the army collapsed on June 9, […]
Cairo Erupts as Mubarak, Adly Declared Innocent in Deaths of Protesters
By Juan Cole | — An Egyptian court on Saturday found found deposed dictator Hosni Mubarak and his former interior minister Habib Adly not guilty (or rather just dropped the charges) the killing of nearly 900 young protesters by police in January-February 2011. Downtown Cairo and some provincial towns erupted in protests. Indeed, these were […]
Oil Price Fall: Saudi Arabia targets US Shale Oil, Iran, Iraq, Russia
By Juan Cole It is clear that among the major losers in the fall in the price of Brent crude petroleum from $115 a barrel last summer to about $75 a barrel today are Russia, Iraq and Iran. Petroleum sales are 50% of Russia’s income, and are also central for Iran and Iraq. But the […]
Iran Leader Khamenei: We are not Opposed to Nuclear Talks, Will Accept Just Deal
By Juan Cole | — Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the clerical Leader of Iran, told an assemblage of volunteer paramilitary (Basij) forces on Thursday that he is not opposed to nuclear talks with the P5 +1 and would accept a just and reasonable deal. I said that a breakdown in the talks, which have been extended […]
Thanksgiving was always about Climate and Adaptation: Let’s Make it Green Again
By Juan Cole | — The popular story about Thanksgiving is an environmental parable that we would do well to remember today. It was a harvest festival in 1621, participated in by the 50 (out of 100) survivors at Plymouth Plantation and 90 Native Americans. Some of these latter, such as Squanto, had shared with […]
Race inequality between US Whites and African-Americans by the Numbers (Again)
By Juan Cole | — With regard to employment, African-Americans got hit harder by the Bush Depression than did whites, and jobs have not come back for them at nearly the same rate: This vast difference between Euro-American and African-American rates of employment holds true regardless of educational level; college-educated African-Americans are also twice as […]
As SecDef Hagel Exits, an Iraq Daesh/ISIL Scorecard
By Juan Cole | — Mosul rose up in alliance with Daesh /ISIL against the government of Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki on June 9 of this year, sparking a crisis in Obama administration foreign policy. Obama had been open to keeping some troops in Iraq, but the Iraqi parliament did not want that, and […]
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