By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – The positioning of Jorge Bergoglio, Pope Francis, as a “liberal” or “progressive” in American politics is incorrect and indeed a little bizarre. The Pope is a conservative. In fact, he has railed against “adolescent progressivism” and against secularism, which he calls “the devil.” Pope Francis opposes […]
Archives for September 2015
Making money off Nuclear Apocalypse while obsessing about Non-Nuclear Iran
By Richard Krushnic & Jonathan Alan King | (Tomdispatch.com) | – – Imagine for a moment a genuine absurdity: somewhere in the United States, the highly profitable operations of a set of corporations were based on the possibility that sooner or later your neighborhood would be destroyed and you and all your neighbors annihilated. And […]
Why the Pope and America won’t leave each Other Unchanged
By Massimo Faggioli | (The Conversation) | – – The papal trip to the United States that Francis will begin on September 22 is the most difficult of his pontificate so far. This is because of what I call the pope’s “American problem” – a cultural and ideological distance between the more socially minded Jesuit […]
Could Daesh/ ISIS bring Russia and the west together?
By Marta Ter | (Open Democracy) | – – For a couple of years after 9/11, there was a solid US-Russia anti-terrorism cooperation that basically gave the Kremlin a freer hand in crushing the Chechens. The first Chechen war: Grozny. Demoted/Alexander Nemenov. All rights reserved.“The Islamic State (IS) is Russia’s main enemy”, the Russian Foreign […]
Syrians welcomed Armenian, Iraqi, other Refugees but now Unwelcome as Refugees
AJ+ | – – “The world hasn’t been very hospitable to refugees from Syria – a country with a long history of taking in people displaced from other parts of the world.” AJ+: “History Of The Refugees Who Fled To Syria”
As Russia supports Iran in Syria, Netanyahu Loses Again
By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – On Monday, Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, accompanied by Armed Forces Chief of Staff Gadi Eizenkot and Military Intelligence chief Hertzi Halevy, visited Moscow and attempted to hammer out an agreement with Russia to forestall any military confrontations between the two. Netanyahu also lobbied Russian President […]
Dark Money Surge: Conservatives Buoyed by Historic Flood of Contributions
By Sarah Lazare, staff writer | ( Commondreams.org) – – A new report from Center for Responsive Politics finds single-candidate groups have spent $16.2 million total so far—- over 55 times levels seen in 2012—- and conservatives disproportionately benefit. Political spending by outside groups seeking to the influence the 2016 presidential election is already dramatically […]
Violent clashes in Jerusalem fed by extreme Israeli counter-measures
By Yoav Galai | (The Conversation) | – – On the evening of Monday September 14, Alex Levlovich was driving back from the Rosh-Hashana Seder, the celebration of the Jewish new year, along the road that separates the Jewish neighbourhood of Armon Hanatziv and the Palestinian neighbourhood of Tsur Bahir in East Jerusalem when the […]
Syria, Reserve army of Terrorism: Taliban Uzbek in Suicide Bombing of Shiite Village
By Joanna Paraszczuk and Barno Anvar | ( RFE/ RL ) An Uzbek militant has carried out a suicide truck bombing in the predominantly Shi’ite town of Fua in Idlib Province, part of a major attack against Bashar al-Assad’s Syrian forces by Islamist factions led by Syria’s Al-Qaeda affiliate, the Al-Nusra Front. One of a […]