By Frances Trix | (Informed Comment) | – – On 12 June, 5,000 skirts and dresses were hung on 45 clotheslines in the football stadium in Prishtina, capital of Kosova. “The laundry is washed clean, like the women who are clean and pure—they carry no stain,” asserted artist Alketa Xhafa-Mripa, the Kosovar originator of the […]
Can Leftist Kurdish Militia cut ISIL/ Daesh off from Turkish Supply Routes and Kill the Caliphate?
By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – The intrepid Liz Sly of the Washington Post gets the story of the attempt of the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) and their Arab allies, the Euphrates Volcano, to cut Daesh (ISIL, ISIS) off and kill it. Sly’s insightful report is buttressed by one from Ahmad […]
Young Middle East Millennials’ Digital Split From Fundamentalism (Cole Interview)
Elliot Hill | (TheLipTV Video Interview) | – – “Millennials in the Middle East are forming a clear generational gap between themselves and their elders, with the digital revolution effecting a sweeping advance of secularization. With majority populations under the age of 30, many countries are seeing a wide gulf between their social media savvy […]
Wind Power rapidly bringing Clean Electricity to masses in Global South
By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – Google is in talks to invest in Kenya’s enormous Lake Turkana Wind Power Project, which will cost $700 million. The project will increase Kenya’s electricity production by a fifth, adding 300 megawatts, in a country where less than a quarter of the population has electricity. Wind […]
Al-Qaeda in Syria rubs out 23 members of Druze Religious Minority, Persecutes Others
By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – The al-Qaeda-linked Support Front has murdered 23 men from a single Druze clan in Qalb Lawzah, Idlib Province, Syria. Druze villagers fled in large numbers to surrounding Sunni hamlets seeking refuge from al-Qaeda. There are some 18 Druze villages in the north of Idlib Province. The […]
Has ISIL/ Daesh killed 50,000 in one Year? Iraq’s Horrors by the Numbers
By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – The Human Rights Commission of Iraq, a body attached to the Iraqi parliament, issued statistics on Wednesday for the one-year impact of Daesh (ISIL, ISIS) on that country. Some of the numbers have to be taken with a grain of salt, but others are likely about […]
ISIL and the Middle East Generational Shift (with Juan Cole)
Elliot Hill | (The LipTV Video) | – – “With ISIS rampaging through Syria and Iraq, and a generational shift in politics and religion happening across the Middle East, we dissect some of the political changes happening in the region with author Juan Cole. The dual advance of secularism and violent fundamentalism, islamophobia in the […]
Modest Increase in Iraq Training Mission shows Obama still Uninterested & Maybe he’s Right
By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – The Obama administration got itself some headlines on Wednesday morning by pledging to send a few hundred more military trainers to Iraq and to create a new base in al-Anbar Province. But there is less to this announcement than meets the eye. The US has some 3000 […]
Implications for ICC? SCOTUS Jerusalem Decision shows Limits of Israel Lobbies
By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – It has been the position of the US presidents for decades that the status of Jerusalem in international law is unsettled. That is why the US embassy is in Tel Aviv, and why US passports showing the place of birth as Jerusalem just list the name […]
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