TeleSur | – – “You have an individual … who’s basically creating the ideological aspects of where we’re going,” said former imperial wizard, David Duke of the Ku Klux Klan. “And ideology ultimately is the most important aspect of any government.” Duke’s endorsement was for none other than U.S. President-elect Donald Trump’s newly-appointed chief strategist […]
What Everyone Should Know about the Prophet Muhammad
Steve Scholl | (Spirituality and Health Magazine) | – – Muhammad has become a strangely unifying figure in America—able to get conservative Glenn Beck and liberal Bill Maher to agree that Islam is a backward, medieval religion and a threat to all civilization. Both are making a common, fundamentalist mistake. I was recently driving on […]
Dear Mayor Giuliani: We can’t turn our backs on Syrian Refugees
Akil Awan | (Informed Comment) | – – I recently visited Jordan as part of my work on political violence and youth radicalisation for the United Nations on Security Council Resolution 2250. Jordan borders Syria to its north, and although Jordanians display a remarkable sense of normalcy in their everyday lives, visitors cannot really escape […]
Will Trump really be Isolationist? Or will he March us to War?
By Nick Turse | (Tomdispatch.com) | – – “So is he going to win?” The question washed over me as I slumped in my hard plastic chair. I had passed the day walking through a town where most homes lay in ruins and human remains were strewn across a field, a day spent looking over my shoulder for soldiers […]
FBI Confirms Rampant Islamophobia: Hate Crimes Surged by 67%
TeleSur | – – While anti-Muslims crimes shot up, Jews still remain the most frequent target of religious-based hate crimes in the U.S. From last year’s Chapel Hill shooting to the execution-style killing in August of a Queens Iman to September’s arson attack on the Florida mosque that Pulse nightclub shooter Omar Mateen attended, and […]
A Jerusalem Litmus Test
By Michael G. Roskin | (Informed Comment) | – – A quick and early litmus test of Trump’s “pragmatism”: Will he move the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem? He promised to do it immediately, but that could unleash anti-American Muslim violence worldwide. Congress voted overwhelmingly for it in 1995 but presidents, fearing repercussions, […]
Shadow Wars: The Secret Struggle for the Middle East
By Christopher M. Davidson | (Informed Comment) | – – Swept along on a tidal wave of euphoria, by spring 2011 many had cautiously begun to believe that the wave of Arab uprisings that had already managed to topple the regimes of Zine El Abidine Ben Ali and Hosni Mubarak would herald the dawn of […]
Real-Life Trolling: How Provocation Works and How to Respond
By Joshua Cole | ( The Michigan Daily) Yesterday was the anniversary of the attacks in Paris at the Bataclan concert venue and other locations throughout the city. These terrorist attacks in 2015 were provocations intended, as my colleague Juan Cole, a history professor put it, to “sharpen the contradictions” within French society. The goal […]
Election Postmortem: Did the Labor Unions get Taken for a Ride?
By Andrew Kolin | (Informed Comment) | – – According to a recent article in the Wall Street Journal, “Labor Unions Step Up Presidential Election Spending,” labor unions contributed to Hillary Clinton at a scale that is without precedent. The article pointed to $108.2 million contributed in this presidential election cycle. These contributions raise questions […]