By Richard Foltz | (Special to Informed Comment) — Among the many victims of the barbarous Daesh (what Arabs call ISIS or ISIL), none has suffered more severely than the Kurdish Yezidis. After overrunning a number of Yezidi villages in Northern Syria and Iraq during the summer of 2014, Daesh extremists – who consider Yezidis […]
Archives for December 2014
Tunisia: Nationalist Candidate’s claimed win in Presidential Poll Contested
By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) — The major political parties do fairly sophisticated exit polling in Tunisian elections now, and secular, nationalist warhorse Beji Caid Essebsi claimed a victory of some 52 or 53% on Sunday evening. His opponent, human rights activist and incumbent interim president, Moncef Marzouki, however, declined to concede. Formal results […]
Israel Turns Beersheba Mosque into Museum, while 10,000 have no place to Pray
BEERSHEBA (Ma’an) — Authorities in the southern Israeli city of Beersheba have recently converted an historic mosque into an Islamic museum despite the fact that 10,000 local Muslims still have nowhere to pray, locals said. Locals told Ma’an that an exhibit showcasing a collection of Muslim prayer rugs was recently opened in the building that […]
The *Other* Torture Report: What the USA looks like to the World
(special to Informed Comment) — At long last – despite the attempts at sabotage by, and over the protests of the CIA, and notwithstanding the dilatory efforts of the State Department – the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence has finally issued the executive summary of its 6,300-page report on the CIA’s detention and interrogation program. […]
How the Iraq Wars began with the Invasion of Panama
By Greg Grandin | (Tomdispatch.com) — As we end another year of endless war in Washington, it might be the perfect time to reflect on the War That Started All Wars — or at least the war that started all of Washington’s post-Cold War wars: the invasion of Panama. Twenty-five years ago this month, early […]
Anthony Bourdain on Iran and Beirut (Bisley Interview)
By Alexander Bisley | (Special to Informed Comment) — “By the end of this hour I will be seen by many as a terrorist sympathizer, a Zionist tool, a self-hating Jew, an apologist for American imperialism, an orientalist, socialist, fascist, CIA agent, and worse,” the inimitable Anthony Bourdain introduced his vital Gaza/West Bank episode Bourdain’s […]
Kurds inflict first Major Defeat on Daesh/ ISIL, Rescue Yezidis of Sinjar
By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) — The pan-Arab London daily, Al-Hayat [Life] reports that the Iraqi Kurdistan paramilitary, the Peshmerga, have taken Mt. Sinjar from Daesh (what Arabs call ISIL or ISIS). They have therefore saved several thousand members of the Yezidi (Izadi) Kurdish religious minority, who have been besieged and sometimes enslaved or […]
GOP Denialism to Sink Capital: 150 Tidal Floods a Year for Washington DC by 2045
Link TV | — “The eastern coast of the United States– from the Gulf of Mexico to New England — has one of the highest rates of sea level rise in the world. As a result of climate change, 5 to 11 inches of sea level rise is expected by 2045 leaving communities like Norfolk, […]
Leftist Jordanians protest expected gas deal with Israel
BETHLEHEM (Ma’an) — Dozens of protesters marched in the Jordanian capital of Amman on Friday to denounce a gas deal with Israel that is expected to be passed by the end of the year. Protesters held signs against the Israeli diplomatic mission in Jordan and against normalization with Israel during the rally, bearing messages such […]
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