Middle East

Mustafa Habib | Baghdad | (Niqash.org) The hostility between the US and Iraq’s Shiite militias seems to have slowed. One leading militia member even went to the US. Is this the beginning of a new, happier relationship and closer battle field cooperation? Last week Captain Amir al-Saadi, whose unit is based in the Habbaniyah camp […]

Apartheid

Expelled for Life: A Palestinian Family’s Struggle to Stay on Their Land

contributors

By Jen Marlowe | (Tomdispatch.com) Nasser Nawaj’ah held Laith’s hand as, beside me, they walked down the dirt and pebble path of Old Susya. Nasser is 33 years old, his son six. Nasser’s jaw was set and every few moments he glanced over his shoulder to see if anyone was approaching. Until Laith piped up […]

Apartheid

Since 1967: 95,000 Palestinian Children Incarcerated by Israel

contributors

By IMEMC News | – – A human rights group submitted, on Wednesday, a report to UN about Israeli torture and mistreatment of Palestinian children. Military Court Watch (MCW) lodged the submission with the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture and other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, annexing over 300 pages of evidence relating […]

Featured

Has ISIL/ Daesh killed 50,000 in one Year? Iraq’s Horrors by the Numbers

Juan Cole

By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – The Human Rights Commission of Iraq, a body attached to the Iraqi parliament, issued statistics on Wednesday for the one-year impact of Daesh (ISIL, ISIS) on that country. Some of the numbers have to be taken with a grain of salt, but others are likely about […]

Human Rights

A Year after the Fall of Mosul, Yazidi Kurdish Survivors of ISIL Massacres Struggle On

contributors

VICE News | (Video Report) | – – “A year after the Islamic State’s lightning conquest of Iraq’s second-largest city of Mosul, the poorly-trained and equipped Kurdish peshmerga forces are the international coalition’s only reliable boots on the ground in northern Iraq. The Pentagon’s hopes of recapturing the city by spring 2015 have been dashed […]

Iran

Saudi Arabia Fixated on Iran When Sunni Extremists Are Real Threat

contributors

By Russ Wellen | ( Foreign Policy in Focus) | – – “Saudi Arabia’s perceived need to keep Iran at bay is distracting it from the danger that the Islamic State poses to its regime. Walking with U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry is Saudi Arabian Crown Prince Mohammed bin Nayef, who is intent on […]

Arab Spring

ISIL and the Middle East Generational Shift (with Juan Cole)

Juan Cole

Elliot Hill | (The LipTV Video) | – – “With ISIS rampaging through Syria and Iraq, and a generational shift in politics and religion happening across the Middle East, we dissect some of the political changes happening in the region with author Juan Cole. The dual advance of secularism and violent fundamentalism, islamophobia in the […]

Barack Obama

Modest Increase in Iraq Training Mission shows Obama still Uninterested & Maybe he’s Right

Juan Cole

By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – The Obama administration got itself some headlines on Wednesday morning by pledging to send a few hundred more military trainers to Iraq and to create a new base in al-Anbar Province. But there is less to this announcement than meets the eye. The US has some 3000 […]

Apartheid

It isn’t Israel that is being “delegitimized” but the Occupation of Palestine

contributors

By: John V. Whitbeck | (Ma’an News Agency) | – – June 5 marked the 48th anniversary of the “preemptive” attack on Egypt with which Israel launched the fateful “Six-Day War” that permitted the Zionist movement to complete its conquest of historical Palestine. As the “State of Palestine” (the legal designation for the 22 percent […]