Middle East

By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – If there were a Palestinian Donald Trump, he’d be fulminating against illegal immigrants swamping the Palestinian West Bank. And he’d be complaining that fully 1 in 6 of these undocumented squatters are Americans . Since Americans have trouble understanding the basic facts of the situation, it […]

Iraq

Missing, Believed Murdered: ISIL in Mosul Releases 1st ‘Death List’ of 2,070 Victims

contributors

Khales Joumah | Mosul | (Niqash.org) The Islamic State group in Mosul has released lists of locals whose families thought they were missing, but who have been executed. The extremists are also carefully monitoring who wants the information. Streets of Mosul, a city where thousands are missing, most likely murdered by extremists. His heart began […]

Kurds

Are Turkish Pres. Erdogan’s anti-PKK Campaign, Snap Elections Backfiring?

contributors

By Kubilay Yado Arin | (ISLAMiCommentary) | – – Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. (photo courtesy Wikimedia Commons) Turkey’s president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan this week called for new elections on November 1, after his government failed to form a coalition following the June poll in which his party —the AKP — failed to win a majority of […]

Human Rights

What if it were your kids’ School the Israelis were demolishing?

contributors

By: Fadwa Baroud | (Ma’an News Analysis) | – – On July 12, 2015, Israel announced that it would seek to carry out demolition orders of structures in the Palestinian village of Susiya in what is known as Area C, an area that covers 60 percent of the West Bank, under Israeli control, including the […]

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 […]

Eastern Europe

Egypt’s al-Sisi and Putin Pledge Common Front against Terrorism

Juan Cole

By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – Egypt’s president Abdel Fattah al-Sisi met Wednesday for the third time in a year with Russian leader Vladimir Putin in Moscow. Putin is attempting to draw Egypt into a common front against terrorism. He wants to fight Daesh [ISIS, ISIL]) in Syria, which is only a […]

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, […]

Apartheid

Major World Aid Groups & 150,000 people demand end to Israel’s Gaza blockade

contributors

Oxfam | (Press Release) – – Oxfam Press Release : More than 150,000 people from around the world have today joined 35 aid, faith, development and human rights organizations in backing an unprecedented joint call urging world leaders to press the Israeli government to lift the blockade on Gaza and remove the restrictions on basic […]

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 […]