By Juan Cole Israel now has a border with al-Qaeda! Israeli observers have been alarmed by the capture of the Quneitra checkpoint between Syria and the Israeli-Occupied Golan Heights by the al-Qaeda affiliate, the Succor Front (Jabhat al-Nusra). The Succor Front has also captured 44 Fijian UN peacekeeping troops and has surrounded some 75 UN […]
Archives for August 2014
World-Renowned Historian Natalie Zemon Davis Pleads Case of Steven Salaita with U-Illinois
Natalie Zemon Davis , among our most distinguished living historians and past president of the American Historical Association, has written a heartfelt appeal to Chancellor Phyllis M. Wise at the University of Illinois, Urbana Champaigne, urging her to reconsider the firing of Professor Steven Salaita, a specialist in Native American Studies, for his trenchant criticisms […]
Obama, al-Assad and ISIL update FB Status: It’s Complicated
AJ+ AJ+ Will The US Bomb IS Group (AKA ISIS) In Syria?
ISIS: How to Defeat a Phony “Caliphate”
By John Esposito via Huffington Post Containing and ultimately defeating ISIS will require both short and long-term response. ISIS expansion has been made possible by political conditions in Syria and Iraq, ethnic-religious/sectarian divisions and violence and terror in the region, and the failures of the US and international community. Bashar al-Assad’s unprincipled and disproportionate military […]
US Public Worried about ISIL, Putin– But Climate Change is Real Challenge
By Juan Cole In a new Pew/ USA Today poll, the American public shows itself alarmed by the rise of the so-called Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant in northern Iraq and Syria as a threat to US security, finding it more threatening even than Russia’s Vladimir Putin, who has risen on the villain […]
US Open round-up: Stan Wawrinka tells fan to ‘shut up’ en route to third round
In the heat of the moment, locked in a suddenly tight match after midnight at Flushing Meadows, Australian Open champion Stan Wawrinka snapped at a rowdy spectator, telling him to “shut up”. An hour later, his 6-3, 6-4, 3-6, 7-6 victory over 91st-ranked Thomaz Bellucci of Brazil in the second round of the US Open […]
Not the Onion: Shooting Range raises Age Limit to 12 after 9-year-old girl Kills Instructor with Uzi
CBS New York buries the lead: “A 9-year-old New Jersey girl accidentally killed an Arizona shooting instructor as he was showing her how to use an automatic Uzi, authorities said Tuesday. CBS 2’s Weijia Jiang reports.” Ms. Jiang’s last sentence is about the shooting range raising the age limit to 12 (from, apparently, anything). CBS […]
Mitch McConnell caught Promising Billionaires he’ll Enrich them at our Expense
By Nicole Girard via Liberals Unite Mitch McConnell really does not care about our problems. The way he talks about the needs of average Americans, you’d think we were his sworn, personal enemy. At a Koch Brothers Summit in Dana Point, California this summer, the conscience-less, corporate shill basically promised our country’s head on a […]
Israel War Aftermath: Epidemic feared in Gaza sheltering centers as skin infections spread
BETHLEHEM (Ma’an) — Displaced Gaza residents in sheltering centers are suffering from dangerous skin infections which could become a epidemic as a result of water shortage, the Ministry of Health says. Speaking to Ma’an, the director of the chronic diseases department said about 50 percent of Gazans who live in sheltering centers suffer from skin […]