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The Monreal Mirror carries an interview with me by Samer Elatrash, in honor of the holding of the Middle East Studies Association (MESA) Conference in Montreal. MESA has over 2700 members among teachers and researchers at colleges and universities, mainly in North America. Elatrash writes: ‘ . . . The biggest problem facing Middle East […]

A new poll shows that 81% of Turks favor invading northern Iraq, up from 46% in July. ‘ The number of people saying Turkey should conduct a cross-border military operation against militants of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) stood at 81 percent, up sharply from 46 percent in the last poll in July.’ . […]

Everyone reads the NYT and WaPo, so I thought it might be interesting to see how some other newspapers covered the Democratic debate. The San Francisco Chronicle’s Carla Marinucci awards the Las Vegas debate to Hillary Clinton. Clinton had to come back from her poor performance in Philadelphia. So in that sense she won if […]

The USG Open Source Center analyzes Russia’s renewed ties of patronage with Syria. The analysts look at arms sales, energy deals and port access for the Russian navy, among other dimensions of the relationship, and also trace the ways in which Russia has attempted to defend Syria in international forums. ‘OSC Analysis 15 Nov: Russia […]

The USG Open Source Center translates an interview given by the leader of Pakistan’s oldest and largest Muslim fundamentalist party, the Jama’at-i Islami [Islamic Society], Qazi Husain Ahmad. The Jama’at had been willing to be part of the government since 2002, and [the coalition to which it belongs] had held about a fifth of the […]

Turkish aircraft struck at targets inside Iraqi Kurdistan on Tuesday, seeking to inflict damage on the Kurdish Worker Party guerrillas who have crossed over into Iraq in search of safe haven. The Iraq and Afghanistan wars (mostly the Iraq War) have cost the US taxpayer $1.8 trillion, twice what Bush has alleged. Al-Hayat reports in […]

The Pakistani public is generally outraged at the repressive measures implemented by Gen. Musharraf, which now include forbidding the importation of satellite dishes to Pakistan. Musharraf seems to think he is dealing with Uzbekistan or something; Pakistanis are far more sophisticated than that, and Lahore can always get Indian t.v. stations– and the word spreads […]

Opposition politician Benazir Bhutto has called for Gen. Pervez Musharraf to resign as president of Pakistan, and says she will never serve as prime minister under him. He put her back under house arrest on Tuesday. My guess is that Benazir Bhutto will now be deported by Musharraf. He only let her back into the […]

The Turkish Daily News reports the results of a poll of persons living in 14 cities in southeastern Turkey, which has a large Kurdish population. Only 1% of those polled said that they would prefer to live in an independent Kurdish state in northern Iraq rather than in Turkey (where they presently live). Ominously, the […]