International Politics and Economy

By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – Not all American Christian leaders have covered themselves in glory when it comes to the issue of Syrian refugees being accepted by the US ( not many are). Evangelist Franklin Graham sees these refugees as a security threat because many of them are Muslim (though there […]

Foreign Policy

American Workers need a Raise, & the Iran Deal, and Peace

contributors

By Michael Eisenscher | (Foreign Policy in Focus) | We’ll never rebuild this country if we keep wasting money on war. This Labor Day, like others before it, finds American workers squeezed on many fronts. Inequality is rising, union membership is dwindling, and wages aren’t keeping up with job growth. Naturally, addressing all those challenges […]

Dissent

Remember how Congress said we Should Support Iran Reformists? Well they want the Nuclear Deal

contributors

By Golnaz Esfandiari | ( RFE/ RL Parvin Fahimi, who lost her son to repression by the Iranian state, hopes the agreement global powers reached with Tehran on its nuclear program last month will not only remove sanctions and the threat of war, but also lead to improved human rights inside the country. Fahimi, whose […]

Kurds

Fighting at Funerals: Turkey plunges back into Conflict

contributors

T. Deniz Erkmen | (Informed Comment) | – – It has been a month since the government of Turkey has ended the tenuous peace process with the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), by bombing Qandil mountains in Iraq and rounding up Kurdish activists. What instigated the resumption of the conflict was the killing of two […]

Authoritarianism

Turkey’s Snap Elections: Erdoğan is forcing his people to take sides

contributors

By Bahar Baser and Ahmet Erdi Öztürk | (The Conversation) | – – Ever since the June 2015 elections, which thwarted the proposed presidential system that President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has long craved, Turkey has been hurtling into one of its most turbulent periods in decades. And with a snap election called for November 2015, […]

Climate Change

Water Being Used as Weapon of War in Syrian Conflict, UN Warns

contributors

By Lauren McCauley, staff writer. | (Commondreams.org) | – – Compounded by scorching heat wave, Syrians are experiencing ‘deliberate’ water cut-offs, often for weeks at a time The United Nations on Tuesday said it has reason to believe that groups in the Syrian conflict are using the country’s scarce water supply as a weapon of […]

Featured

Defending Natalie Portman on Holocaust: Sometimes it can be subverted to fear-mongering

Juan Cole

By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – Actress Natalie Portman has kicked off a controversy with remarks about how to remember the Nazi Holocaust against the Jews, in which the National Socialists murdered 6 million. Her critics have run off on tangents and presented a lot of red herrings. Portman did not question […]

Arab Americans

GOP Islamophobia: Scott Walker thinks there are only “a Handful” of “Reasonable Muslims”

contributors

Via Bridge Project Tracking islamophobia

Apartheid

President of Israel declares Israeli Squatting in Palestinian West Bank a “Right”, key to Zionism

Juan Cole

By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – Israeli President Reuven Rivlin on Monday declared Israeli squatting on the Palestinian West Bank a “right” and as an essential Zionist principle. Reuven, a former chairman of the far-right Likud Party now in power, is known to favor a paternalist form of the one-state solution. He […]