Middle East

By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – Steve Bannon by his own admission promoted the Breitbart webzine as a mouthpiece of white supremacism, in an attempt to create a new, well-educated and well-dressed version of seedy racism. The Republican Party had since the Nixon Strategy of the 1970s played on a soft version […]

Israel/ Palestine

Israel to Impose Fines for Commemoration of Nakba (Palestinian Defeat)

contributors

IMEMC | – – Israeli occupation authorities are prepared to impose massive fines on Palestinians who commemorate the Israeli occupation of Palestine, a report revealed on Tuesday. An Arab member of the Knesset said, according to Days of Palestine, that occupation authorities have decided to fine institutions which rent out space for events organized by […]

Donald Trump

US Military in Syria to Stay, YPG Kurds Say

contributors

TeleSur | – – The United States has been funding and supporting the group for months, due to “strategic interests” in the region, a spokesperson revealed. U.S.-backed Kurdish forces in Syria — who are among Washington’s most important and powerful regional allies — told Reuters Thursday that the U.S. military will remain in northern Syria […]

Epidemics

Under Saudi Bombs, Yemen hit by 500,000 Cholera Cases

contributors

TeleSur | – – Each day there are more than 5,000 new cases of the waterborne disease. More than half a million people in Yemen have been infected with cholera since the epidemic began four months ago and 1,975 people have died, the World Health Organization, WHO, announced Monday. Each day there are more than […]

Donald Trump

Iran’s Parliament defies new Trump/GOP Sanctions, Increases Missile Funds

contributors

TeleSur | – – The bill would allocate over US$260 million each to Iran’s ballistic missile program and the Quds Force. Iran’s parliament has approved the first step of a bill to boost Tehran’s missile program spending on the heels of new U.S. sanctions against the country. Lawmakers gave the go ahead for the crafting […]

Iraq

Iraq after ISIL needs Security, Anti-Corruption & Jobs, not Identity Politics

contributors

By Andrea Teti, Pamela Abbott, and Munqith Dagher | ( OpenDemocracy.net ) | – – Ignoring priorities that have popular support in Iraq risks undermining post-ISIS attempts to build a stable country, with knock-on effects at a regional level. As the defeat of ISIS/Daesh looms large both in Syria and in Iraq, attention turns to […]

Democracy

Iraq’s Next Elections will be the most Important in its History

contributors

Mustafa Habib. | Baghdad | (Niqash.org) | – – In Iraq, larger political parties disagree on everything except maintaining the status quo: Parliament just passed a law that will badly affect the smaller parties competing in the next elections. It has been said before. But this time it may well be true: Iraq’s next elections […]

Donald Trump

If an Iranian president talked like Trump we’d think them all nut cases

Juan Cole

By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – Over the years the smug Western pundits have had a good deal of fun at the expense of unhinged Middle Eastern rulers. There was Daffy Gaddafi in Libya, Saddam Hussein in Iraq, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in Iran. One headline in the 1990s spoke of ‘the fruitcake ravings […]

Arms Sales

Should Western Countries be Selling Masses of Arms to Saudi Arabia?

contributors

By Riccardo Labianco | (The Conversation) | – – Since the catastrophic Yemeni civil war began in 2015, the British public has woken up to a serious problem: the use of UK-manufactured arms by Saudi Arabia. Various NGOs, campaigners and many MPs are increasingly worried about evidence that since the beginning of the conflict, Saudi […]