Trade

By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – President Vladimir Putin of the Russian Federation paid a state visit to Cairo on Tuesday, consulting with President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi on a range of economic and foreign policy issues. The meeting was seen by many observers as underlining the desire of Egypt to become less dependent […]

Culture

Huge Win for the Open Internet! FCC Officially Embraces Title II

contributors

By Corynne McSherry | Electronic Frontier Foundation | — Well done, Team Internet. After a year of intense activism, we may have finally convinced the Federal Communications Commission to change course and craft clear, bright-line rules to protect the open internet, based on legal authority that will actually survive the inevitable legal challenge. According to […]

Economy

Attn. Tea Party: ‘How Immigrants (yes, Muslims and Latinos) can save Detroit & other Cities’

contributors

The Economist | — “From Detroit to Philadelphia to Baltimore, policy makers in America’s old industrial metropolises are struggling with the same problem: how to reverse the fortunes of decaying cities. Decades of economic decline and suburbanisation have left their city centres depressed and dangerous. But immigrants – whether students, migrants or refugees – could […]

Economy

Egypt bets on Suez Canal Expansion to combat Economic Crisis

contributors

CCTV America | – “Egyptian president Abdel Fattah El Sisi said he hopes the Suez Canal expansion project will increase his country’s foreign cash reserves during his meetings while on an official visit to China earlier this week. Egypt expects the expanded canal will bring in more $100 billion annually. CCTV’s Adel EL Mahrouky reported […]

Corruption

Koch Bros To Spend Nearly A Billion Buying The 2016 Elections

contributors

Cenk Uygur | (The Young Turks) – “”The Koch brothers’ operation intends to spend $889 million in the run-up to the 2016 elections — a historic sum that in many ways would mark Charles and David Koch and their fellow conservative megadonors as more powerful than the official Republican Party. The figure, which more than […]

Bashar al-Assad

Did Iran win “2014”? Top 6 Iran Developments this Year

Juan Cole

By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) — In 2014, Iran made news on a number of important fronts. 1. Although there was no decisive breakthrough in its relationship with the United States and the European Union, there was anticipation that some sort of deal would be reached eventually with the permanent members of the UN […]

Central Asia

China’s Pivot toward Europe may Cut USA out of Deal

contributors

By Pepe Escobar | (Tomdispatch.com) — November 18, 2014: it’s a day that should live forever in history. On that day, in the city of Yiwu in China’s Zhejiang province, 300 kilometers south of Shanghai, the first train carrying 82 containers of export goods weighing more than 1,000 tons left a massive warehouse complex heading […]

Bahrain

Artificial Billionaires: Regimes’ Crony Capitalism Stifling Middle East

contributors

World Bank Across the Middle East and North Africa, countries are being forced to face up to a harsh reality—that, left as they are now, their economies won’t create anything like enough jobs for the hundreds of thousands of people entering their job markets each year. Popular discontent will continue alongside widespread economic inactivity. What […]

Climate Change

Divestment and Popular Politics: Big Oil and Israeli Occupation

Juan Cole

By Jen Marlowe On September 21 (one day before world leaders converged on New York for the United Nations Climate Summit, and one day after up to 400,000 people took to the streets of NYC for the People’s Climate March), the president of the Rockefeller Brothers Fund made an announcement: the Fund would be divesting […]