Arab World

TeleSur | – – The U.N. said malnutrition and other preventable diseases are killing thousands of children in Yemen as its health system is on the verge of collapse. Every 10 minutes at least one Yemeni child dies of preventable diseases such as malnutrition, diarrhea, and respiratory tract infections, the United Nations said Tuesday, blaming […]

Featured

Syria’s Aleppo Falling: The Government Russia actually Turned

Juan Cole

By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – By Monday morning Syrian time, the large and important district of Shaikh Saeed in southeastern Aleppo had completely fallen to the Syrian Arab Army and its allies among the Shiite militias of Lebanon and Iraq. (Orange in this map areas regime has taken in past 3 […]

Authoritarianism

Life under the Junta: Deadly Explosion at Cairo’s Coptic Christian Cathedral Kills 25

contributors

TeleSur | – – The Coptic cathedral explosion has reportedly killed 25 people and injured dozens more. A crowd gathered outside Cairo city’s biggest Coptic Christian cathedral Sunday morning chanting, “Tell the sheikh, tell the priest, Egyptians’ blood is not cheap!” after a deadly bombing killed at least 25 people in the worst attack on […]

Displaced and Refugees

Why is the US at War in Yemen and will Trump Escalate?

Rebecca Gordon

San Francisco ( Tomdispatch.com) | – The long national nightmare that was the 2016 presidential election is finally over. Now, we’re facing a worse terror: the reality of a Trump presidency. Donald Trump has already promised to nominate a segregationist attorney general, a national security adviser who is a raging Islamophobe, a secretary of education […]

Energy

Is Bruited Sec. of State Tillerson allied with Iran & at war with Iraq?

Juan Cole

By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – A couple of years ago an oil tanker showed up off the Texas coast with cargo from Iraqi Kurdistan. The problem? Iraqi Kurdistan is a province of Iraq, and the central government in Baghdad claims that petroleum discovered in Iraqi Kurdistan is under the control of […]

Children

2016 ‘One of worst Years in History for Children’: UNICEF

contributors

By Matthew Tempest | ( EurActiv.com ) | – – Syria: Abdulaziz (in red), 10, whose father was killed in the continuing conflict, spends time with his friends at the ‘Land of Childhood’ – two basements linked with a tunnel to create an underground playground that gives children a relatively safe place to have fun […]

Iraq

The Fate of Iraq’s Minorities After Mosul

contributors

By Tyler Fisher and Kamal Kolo | ( OpenDemocracy.net) | – – The liberation of Mosul offers the international community a unique opportunity to permit the region’s most vulnerable minorities to exercise self-preservation and self-determination. Prayer cloths on Mount Arafat in the Yezidi holy site of Lalish, Kurdistan Region. Picture by Levi Clancy. Creative Commons […]

Featured

Syria unlikely to be Partitioned: The Resilience of Colonial Borders

Juan Cole

By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – Whenever a country falls into civil war, there are always observers who suggest that the problem could be resolved by a partition of that country. It is as though they think the parties to the war are like squabbling children in the back seat of the […]

Featured

More districts of East Aleppo fall to Regime & Militia Allies

Juan Cole

By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – Both regime sources and the Britain-based Syria Observatory said Tuesday that the Syrian Arab Army and its Shiite militia allies from Lebanon and Iraq had taken the district of Shaar in the East Aleppo pocket. In the past two weeks rebel forces have lost the northeast […]