The Syrian opposition continued to hang on in the northern commercial center of Aleppo on Thursday, and even launched a daring new raid. Rebels used a tank they captured to attack the Menagh air force base near Aleppo. They are attempting to forestall its use by the regime to launch helicopter gunship and jet attacks […]
Sanity and Insanity in American Politics (Bachmann, Sessions, Romney, and Chicken)
Sanity: Former US officials and academics (including me) call on the Congressional leadership to remove dangerous conspiracy theorist Michele Bachmann from the House Intelligence Committee. Bachmann has not only embarrassed herself and Congress by saying that the federal government is riddled with “Muslim Brotherhood moles,” but her crackpot ideas have hurt US diplomacy in Egypt. […]
“Algerian Tuareg” (Painting by Youcef Ben Mahammed)
Youcef Ben Mahammed. “Algerian Tuareg.” Youcef Ben Mahammed (b. Oran, 1973) is a Tunisian-Algerian artist based in Montreal.
The Collapse of the Climate Change Contrarians and the End of Coal
It is not proper to speak of “climate skeptics,” since all scientists (including we social scientists) are skeptical of all data and theories every day, all the time, and are willing to change our position if enough information and analysis emerges to challenge the old paradigms. But beyond just skeptics, there are always in any […]
Mission Failure: Afghanistan (Engelhardt)
Tom Engelhardt writes at Tomdispatch.com Mission Failure: Afghanistan:A Message Written in Blood That No One Wants to Hear By Tom Engelhardt Imagine for a moment that almost once a week for the last six months somebody somewhere in this country had burst, well-armed, into a movie theater showing a superhero film and fired into the […]
Dear Mr. Romney: Palestinians are Poor Because You Stole from them and Kept them Stateless
Mitt Romney, a privileged white man worth a quarter of a billion dollars who has sheltered his money from taxes in Bermuda, the Cayman Islands and Switzerland, and who never misses a square meal, stooped to a new obscene low in blaming the victim on Monday by slamming the Palestinians for not being richer. Palestinian […]
Can You Pass the Hezbollah Quiz? (Rudolph)
CAN YOU PASS THE HEZBOLLAH QUIZ? By Jeffrey Rudolph Hezbollah, a Lebanese Shia Islamic organization, has evolved over the last three decades from a guerilla movement to the most influential political and military power in Lebanon. Given that Hezbollah is a crucial part of the Iran-led “Axis of Resistance”, it is not surprising that the […]
Looking out from the Misrata War Memorial Museum, Libya (Photo)
Photograph by Juan Cole, late May 2012. View from the Misrata War Memorial Museum, looking across the street. The Misrata revolutionaries raided Qaddafi’s compound in Tripoli and confiscated the famous sculpture of a fist grasping a US fighter jet, erected after President Ronald Reagan bombed Tripoli and Benghazi in 1986. The Qaddafi memorial falsely claimed […]
“Now the King loved science and geometry…” (Chagall Lithograph from Arabian Nights)
Marc Chagall, “Now the King loved science and geometry…” Color lithograph 14 1/2 x 11 inches 1948 “Four Tales from the Arabian Nights,” Plate 10. Marc Chagall (1887-1985) was a Russian-French modern artist of Jewish heritage. He synthesized movements such as Expressionism, Cubism and Fauvism. Unlike many European Jewish modernist artists, he explored explicitly Jewish […]
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