Fundraiser Thanks

I cannot thank enough the hundreds of supporters who donated or proffered a voluntary subscription to Informed Comment this year! We had an ambitious goal, and we more or less met it (certainly it will be met this quarter). I and the Informed Comment support team of tech professionals who keep the site humming like a well-oiled machine are profoundly grateful for this outpouring of support. We’ll face many important issues in 2013 — Syria may boil to a denouement, Egypt will have new parliamentary elections in late February, Tunisia has elections scheduled for June, and Libya’s uncertain security situation continues to plague its new government as it begins to draft a constitution. Iran continues to be a preoccupation of Washington and of Israel, with Israeli President Shimon Peres saying yesterday that he is sure President Obama will ‘in the end’ attack Iran. Iraq remains unsettled, and the coming US withdrawal from Afghanistan may well create a power vacuum for the country’s insurgents and regional neighbors to fill. Pakistan will have elections this year. The Gulf monarchies continue to fear the aftermath of the Arab Spring, and some, as with the United Arab Emirates, view the Muslim Brotherhood rather as Austria looked on the radical Jacobins in the 1790s. I’ll have an opportunity to report from the Gulf this year, as well as from Egypt and the Levant.

At home, a whole range of civil liberties issues, a raging Islamophobia, and the pressing matter of climate change, will preoccupy these pages.

Excelsior, and thanks again!