(By Shahram Akbarzadeh) The last round of talks to bring some relief to the humanitarian disaster in Syria achieved remarkable nothing. The anti-Assad delegation traded barbed insults with the Syrian government delegation and all left the meeting with the reaffirmed conviction that the other side cannot be trusted. But something peculiar happened on the side […]
Archives for February 2014
False Dawn: The 35th Anniversary of Iranian Revolution
(By Farhang Jahanpour) The Iranian revolution succeeded exactly 35 years ago this week. After 37 years of rule, Mohammad Reza Shah left Iran on 16 January 1979, never to return. His nemesis, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, who had waged a campaign against him mainly from his exile in Najaf in Iraq for 14 years returned in […]
Obama & Hollande stress Hope for Iran Breakthrough
(By Juan Cole) In his news conference with French President Francois Hollande, President Obama outlined four areas of diplomatic progress. The first is foreign policy, including Iran, Syria and the Israeli-Palestinian struggle. Re: negotiations with Iran, Obama said, “Our unity with our P5-plus-1 partners, backed with strong sanctions, has succeeded in halting and rolling back […]
The Arts of the Arab Uprisings at the Arab-American Museum
VOA interviews my colleague Christiane Gruber of the Art History Department at the University of Michigan on the exhibit she helped curate at the Arab-American Museum in Dearborn, Michigan, which came out of our symposium in November at which Arab bloggers and graffiti artists and other practitioners of the arts of protest presented alongside academics […]
Assassination by Leak: US floats Trial Balloon of Droning an American to Death
(By Tim Cushing) Administration Officials Perform Some Very Public Handwringing Over Extrajudicial Drone Killing (via Techdirt) The administration has sort of painted itself into a corner with its new rules on drone strikes. It’s apparently seeking to take out a US citizen who has joined al-Qaeda and is “actively plotting” against the US. Multiple issues […]
Iraq illegally Jailed thousands of Women, Torture & Abuse Alleged
(Human Rights Watch) (Baghdad) – Iraqi authorities are detaining thousands of Iraqi women illegally and subjecting many to torture and ill-treatment, including the threat of sexual abuse. Iraq’s weak judiciary, plagued by corruption, frequently bases convictions on coerced confessions, and trial proceedings fall far short of international standards. Many women were detained for months or […]
Big Green Energy is Remaking Africa and Asia
(By Juan Cole) A significant part of the population of Africa and Asia at present has no access to electricity, and in some countries those deprived amount to as much as 80 percent of the population. That is true in Ethiopia, for instance. Demand for electricity will therefore grow enormously in Africa and Asia over […]
Abraham Foxman To Step Down as Anti-Defamation League Chief
Abraham H. Foxman announced he will step down from his position as National Director of the Anti-Defamation League on July 20, 2015, bringing to a close a 50-year career in Jewish communal service. Click here for the rest of the article…
8 Unsustainable Delusions of the American Way of Life
(By Tom Giesen) The ideal of the American way of life as formulated in the twentieth century has collapsed early in the new Millennium without most Americans even realizing it. Its basic tenets are either by now just false, or are unsustainable, so that we’re in a barrel and about to go off the edge […]
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