By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – Migrants: Those who voluntarily go to another country to live and work, seeking a better life. Refugees: Those who are forced out of their homes, because of political persecution or natural disaster or a chronically bad economy. and have no choice but to try to make […]
Archives for August 2015
Appeals Court Falls for Government’s Shell Game in NSA Spying Case
By Cindy Cohn | (Electronic Frontier Foundation) | – – The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit’s opinion today in Klayman v. Obama is highly disappointing and, worse, based on a mistaken concern about the underlying facts. The court said that since the plaintiffs’ phone service was provided by one subsidiary of Verizon—Verizon […]
Missing, Believed Murdered: ISIL in Mosul Releases 1st ‘Death List’ of 2,070 Victims
Khales Joumah | Mosul | (Niqash.org) The Islamic State group in Mosul has released lists of locals whose families thought they were missing, but who have been executed. The extremists are also carefully monitoring who wants the information. Streets of Mosul, a city where thousands are missing, most likely murdered by extremists. His heart began […]
Are Turkish Pres. Erdogan’s anti-PKK Campaign, Snap Elections Backfiring?
By Kubilay Yado Arin | (ISLAMiCommentary) | – – Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. (photo courtesy Wikimedia Commons) Turkey’s president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan this week called for new elections on November 1, after his government failed to form a coalition following the June poll in which his party —the AKP — failed to win a majority of […]
Austrian Truck Tragedy echoes Palestinian Story, reminding us of 7 mn still stateless
By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – The gruesome discovery of an abandoned truck in eastern Austria with 71 dead refugees in it, 4 of them children, has horrified the world. But few will realize that the plot of this story was laid out in the 1960s by Palestinian writer Ghassan Kanafani, in […]
Can Donald Trump Become President Without Latinos?
AJ+ | (Video Report) – – “After attacking immigrants, Mexicans and other Latinos, can Donald Trump become president without their votes? We look at the numbers and come up with an answer.” AJ+ “Can Donald Trump Become President Without Latinos?”
What if it were your kids’ School the Israelis were demolishing?
By: Fadwa Baroud | (Ma’an News Analysis) | – – On July 12, 2015, Israel announced that it would seek to carry out demolition orders of structures in the Palestinian village of Susiya in what is known as Area C, an area that covers 60 percent of the West Bank, under Israeli control, including the […]
Fighting at Funerals: Turkey plunges back into Conflict
T. Deniz Erkmen | (Informed Comment) | – – It has been a month since the government of Turkey has ended the tenuous peace process with the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), by bombing Qandil mountains in Iraq and rounding up Kurdish activists. What instigated the resumption of the conflict was the killing of two […]
Egypt’s al-Sisi and Putin Pledge Common Front against Terrorism
By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – Egypt’s president Abdel Fattah al-Sisi met Wednesday for the third time in a year with Russian leader Vladimir Putin in Moscow. Putin is attempting to draw Egypt into a common front against terrorism. He wants to fight Daesh [ISIS, ISIL]) in Syria, which is only a […]