Libya

(By Michael G. Roskin) With a Congressional committee about to seize on the Benghazi question (as part of the 2014 election campaign), some previously unasked but basic questions should come before the committee: Who was the consul? Yes, the person—a State Department Foreign Service Officer—-in charge of a consulate. (A consul general is in charge […]

Featured

Top 10 Reasons GOP Benghazi Witch Hunt is just a Campaign Fundraising Ploy

Juan Cole

(By Juan Cole) Since Obamacare is increasingly a wildly popular success, the GOP is flailing around looking for an issue, any issue to help fundraising for the fall congressional campaigns. In a vote that will live in infamy, the House GOP has decided to create a select committee to investigate the 2012 Benghazi consular attack […]

History

Mussolini buys Crowds during visit to Libya (1937) – Historical Video of the Day

Juan Cole

Italy ruled Libya from 1911 until midway through WW II, with the fascist years being especially harsh. This newsreel gives a sense of how the Italian colonial administration regimented the population (likely with a combination of bribes and threats) for a spectacle during brutal dictator Benito Mussolini’s visit to his colony in the late 1930s. […]

Featured

GOP Armed Services Chair: Dropping Benghazi, Military did all it Could (Is the Witch Hunt Over?)

Juan Cole

(By Juan Cole) Republican Rep. Howard “Buck” McKeon, chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, declared on Thursday that the US military did all it could during the chaotic two days of September 11-12, 2012 in Benghazi, Libya and that his own investigation of the US response to the violence of that day is over. […]

Economy

Libya’s Parliament dumps PM Zeidan, Elects al-Thinni, over Oil Tanker Crisis

Juan Cole

(By Juan Cole) In a series of dramatic political moves, the Libyan General National Congress on Tuesday carried out a vote of no confidence in Prime Minister Ali Zeidan. Zeidan, identified as a liberal nationalist, has been targeted since his election in 2012 by the Muslim Brotherhood bloc in the elected Libyan parliament, but they […]

Human Rights

Can Int’l Community help stop Libya’s Slide into Chaos?

contributors

(By Sarah Leah Whitson) (Tripoli) – The international community should agree to provide assistance to Libya’s flailing judicial system, Human Rights Watch said . . . following the international ministerial conference on Libya . . . The assistance should include urgently needed training for judicial police and trained personnel to help Libya end the crime […]

Human Rights

Three Years Later: Can the Libyan Revolution Succeed?

Juan Cole

Libyans on Monday celebrated the third anniversary of the beginning of their popular revolution against the dictatorship of Muammar Gaddafi. The commemoration was bittersweet, since although personal freedoms have much expanded, 3,000 non-governmental organizations have been founded, and political activity is relatively unconstrained on paper, the persistence of militias and low-intensity violence have cast a […]

Arab Spring

The Arts of the Arab Uprisings at the Arab-American Museum

Juan Cole

VOA interviews my colleague Christiane Gruber of the Art History Department at the University of Michigan on the exhibit she helped curate at the Arab-American Museum in Dearborn, Michigan, which came out of our symposium in November at which Arab bloggers and graffiti artists and other practitioners of the arts of protest presented alongside academics […]

Libya

America Black Ops Wars in 134 Countries

contributors

(By Nick Turse) They operate in the green glow of night vision in Southwest Asia and stalk through the jungles of South America. They snatch men from their homes in the Maghreb and shoot it out with heavily armed militants in the Horn of Africa. They feel the salty spray while skimming over the tops […]