Middle East

Jazz guitar legend John McLaughlin plays for Palestine (via AFP) The Palestinian territories are rarely a destination for jazz musicians let alone stars of an art form that is more at home in big cities such as New York and Chicago. Which makes the performance of jazz guitar legend John McLaughlin before a packed… […]

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. […]

Human Rights

Military Occupation as Bullying: The Palestinian Struggle for Dignity in Hebron

Juan Cole

(By Johannes A. Makar) Eyewitness Hebron: Follow young Badr in his city of bullies This February, after crossing the Taba-Eliat border from Egypt, less than 36 hours before the deplorable bomb attack there, I arrived in Jerusalem. After spending a couple of days in the city, I hopped on the bus to Hebron from the […]

Eastern Europe

Russian Sanctions-Busting?: Putin’s bruited 500k b/d oil deal with Iran draws US Threats

Juan Cole

Russia has rejected US criticism of a plan that has been floated to import 500,000 barrels a day of petroleum from Iran on a barter basis. The US Treasury Department has been instructed by Congress to place a financial blockade on Iran. The US has had that country kicked off major international bank exchanges, making […]

Human Rights

Made Homeless by Israel, defiant Bedouin vow to stay in Jordan Valley

Juan Cole

Homeless but defiant, Bedouin to stay in Jordan Valley (via AFP) Two weeks after their fragile tin shacks were destroyed by Israeli bulldozers, Atiya Bani Minna and his family are still sleeping under the stars, struggling to resume some semblance of normal life. For this 50-year-old Bedouin shepherd, it is the third… ——- Related […]

Featured

Poof! John Kerry Blames Israeli Squatting in E. Jerusalem for breakdown in Peace Talks; Bennett: It’s Just Zionism

Juan Cole

(By Juan Cole) You heard it first here. I had argued on Sunday that that the actions and statements of the far rightwing Israeli Likud government had sunk the peace negotiations with Palestine. Secretary of State John Kerry gave a similar narrative [my points 9 & 10] on Tuesday before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee […]

Economy

Tunisia has made strides in Democratic Transition: Can it get the Economy Right?

Juan Cole

(By Francis Ghilès) Tunisians have reasons for optimism. For any regular visitor to Tunis, the change of atmosphere in the capital in the first months of 2014 – compared even to autumn 2013, and certainly to 2012 – is striking. The underlying reason for the change is the adoption of a new constitution in January […]

Energy

Is Rand Paul right that Cheney invaded Iraq for Halliburton Profits?

Juan Cole

(By Juan Cole) David Corn at Mother Jones got the scoop: In 2009, Rand Paul gave a talk at Western Kentucky University in which he accused former vice president Dick Cheney of having gotten up the Iraq War to rescue his troubled oil services company, Halliburton, which– along with its subsidiaries– was awarded enormous no-bid […]

Arab Spring

Post-Revolution Yemen between Dialogue and Violence

Juan Cole

(by Tobias Thiel) A Map of Yemen’s Six Federal Regions, copyright: Yemen Times After ten months of deliberations, Yemen’s 565-member National Dialogue Conference (NDC) closed its doors on January 25, 2014. The NDC was the flagship of Yemen’s negotiated transition process. Jamal Benomar, the UN Special Adviser for Yemen, widely advertised the transition as a […]