By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – The Saudi-led coalition is waging total war on Yemen in a bid to defeat the guerrilla group, the Houthis or the Helpers of God. The Houthis took power in Sanaa in fall of 2014 and consolidated it in early 2015. By March-April, Saudi Arabia’s Muhammad Bin […]
Lebanese PM Hariri arrives in or Escapes to France
By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – Lebanese prime minister Saad Hariri arrived Saturday morning with his family in Paris, after a two-week stay in Saudi Arabia, where he is a dual citizen and has a mansion. Lebanese president Michel Aoun had charged that Saudi Arabia had taken Hariri hostage, but the latter […]
US-Led Bombings in Iraq Killed 31 Times More Civilians Than Reported: NYT
By Jessica Corbett, staff writer| ( Commondreams.org ) | – – New York Times reporters uncovered “consistent failure by the coalition to investigate claims properly or to keep records that make it possible to investigate” in what “may be the least transparent war in recent American history” An 18-month investigation by a pair of New […]
World, horrified at Trump, sends US Ranking Plummeting
By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – The US is usually number 1 in the German research firm Gfk’s rankings, headed up by political consultant Simon Anholt. They ask some 22,000 people around the world to rank countries on six scales. This year it fell five full places to number 6. No such […]
Pres. Aoun: Saudi Holding Hariri an Act of Aggression
By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – The Beirut newspaper Al-Nahar [The Day] reports that President Michel Aoun of Lebanon said Wednesday, “Nothing justifies Prime minister Saad Hariri’s failure to return to Beirut after the passage of 12 days from his announcement of his resignation.” Aoun said he considered Hariri to have been […]
After Trump lets hundreds of ISIL Leave Raqqa, Turkey Enraged
By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – On Tuesday, Turkey lambasted the US and its largely Kurdish allies in Syria, the YPG, for having made a deal that allowed 250 Daesh fighters and all their children and relatives to flee from Raqqa. Turkey’s prime minister Binali Yildirim said, “The YPG terrorists let Daesh […]
The Civil War inside Buddhism caused Ethnic Cleansing of Muslims
Paul Fuller | (The Conversation) | – – There is a desperate humanitarian crisis underway in Myanmar, centring around the Rohingya Muslims. There is what has been described as a “textbook case of ethnic cleansing” against the approximately one million Rohingya who live in the western Myanmar state of Rakhine. As well as retaliations from […]
Protests as Trump promotes Coal at Climate Summit in Berlin
By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – The Trump White House actually did a pro-coal exhibit at the Bonn climate summit in Germany, COP23. It did not go over well. Indeed, this sort of absurd stunt has the makings of a complete end to American leadership in the world. Mark Twain once observed […]
Lebanon’s Big Crisis, and What Saudi Arabia could Lose
By Billie Jeanne Brownlee and Maziyar Ghiabi | (The Conversation) | – – The Twitter account of Lebanon’s prime minister, Sa’ad Hariri has been inactive since November 6, just after he announced his resignation in the Saudi Arabian capital, Riyadh. Hariri justified his decision as a move to escape an assassination plot. So far, both […]
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