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By Juan Cole Israel shot down a Syrian MiG fighter jet on Tuesday, saying it had penetrated into Israeli airspace over the Golan Heights. The regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad took little time to imply that the Israelis were thus protecting the al-Nusra Front, instead of joining in the fight against al-Qaeda offshoots. The […]

censorship

Shock & Awe In Syria: It never Works

Juan Cole

By Juan Cole The London pan-Arab daily “Hayat” [Life] reports this morning on the air strikes conducted on ISIL positions in Raqqah, Syria, by the United States and several Arab allies. The Syrian government acknowledged that the US gave fair warning it would bomb Raqqah to the Syrian ambassador to the UN. That is, the […]

Climate Change

NYC Climate Demo: Top 5 Massive Rallies that had no Effect

Juan Cole

By Juan Cole Don’t get me wrong. I am all for demonstrating and admire everyone who came out in New York City on Sunday (some 400,000 according to Time magazine) to demand that world leaders deal urgently with climate change. But I just do have to point out that holding large rallies doesn’t always result […]

Arab Spring

The Arab Political Crisis: It isn’t a Matter of Civilization and it isn’t Unique

Juan Cole

By Juan Cole Hisham Melhem has a piece on what he calls the collapse of Arab civilization. The piece is riddled with contradictions and fuzzy thinking and with all due respect to Milhem, who is a knowledgeable and experienced correspondent, I am going to disagree with it vehemently. I think he is arguing that Arabs […]

Bashar al-Assad

Changing US-Iran Relations: Kerry: Iran has a Role in Defeating ISIL Militants

Juan Cole

by Juan Cole Secretary of State John Kerry said on Friday that Iran has a role to play in defeating ISIL. Addressing a meeting of the United Nations Security Council, he said that the military alliance put together by the US and its allies is only one part of the task, and that the other […]

Climate Change

Education, Health, and Global Warming: Top 5 Reasons 45% of Scots Wanted to Leave the Right Wing UK

Juan Cole

by Juan Cole The US media coverage of the Scottish referendum is oddly lacking in any reference to actual politics. As usual, the corporate media concentrates on issues in ethnicity to cover up issues in social class and social policy. The “Washington consensus” of Neoliberalism, substituting blind so-called “market forces” for good governance, has been […]

Featured

Shiite Militias of Iraq Reject US Return, Threaten to Attack US Forces

Juan Cole

By Juan Cole The pan-Arab, London-based daily, “Al-Sharq al-Awsat” (The Middle East) reports that the major Shiite militias of Iraq are denouncing Prime Minister Haydar al-Abadi for welcoming US air support in the fight against the so-called Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL). Prime Minister al-Abadi himself rejected conventional US ground troops for […]

Featured

Should US policy toward ISIL be Containment?

Juan Cole

By Juan Cole The US launched air strikes on Tuesday on ISIL targets, south of Baghdad and also in the north. The ones south of Baghdad were in support of the Iraqi Army, for the first time since the ISIL crisis broke in early June. US close air support to the Iraqi army and the […]

Featured

Must Muslim Americans Condemn ISIL? Must Turkish Jews Condemn Gaza War?

Juan Cole

By Juan Cole During the recent Israeli war on the Gaza Strip, a controversy broke out in Turkey about whether Turkish Jews were required to condemn Israel’s actions, as some pro-Palestinian Turks suggested. Turkish Jewish intellectuals wrote in an open letter to the newspaper Hurriyyet [“Liberty,” Istanbul]: “”Israel’s latest attack on Gaza led, once again, […]