After floating the possibility of a five-day humanitarian ceasefire in Yemen yesterday, today Saudi Arabia gave that ceasefire a firm start time: 11 PM local time next Tuesday, May 12. This is good news, tentatively, though it should probably be taken with a grain of salt seeing as how the last Saudi ceasefire didn't even … Continue reading Maybe this ceasefire will actually be a ceasefire

Ever since I got the first whiff of the emerging right-wing conspiracy around the military's Jade Helm 15 training exercise, I have gone to great lengths to avoid hearing, seeing, reading about, or otherwise coming into contact with any mention of the whole story. There's just nothing to it. We're talking about a group of … Continue reading Conspiracy theory faceoff

This should go well: The British Conservative Party’s victory in yesterday’s British elections should give hope to U.S. Republicans who remember how Margaret Thatcher’s decisive victory in 1979 preceded Ronald Reagan’s sweep of the U.S. election in 1980. That Prime Minister David Cameron’s party managed to actually pick up seats in Parliament — despite being … Continue reading Just what everybody needed

Here's the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (though not for much longer), General Martin Dempsey, in April, when Ramadi seemed like it was on the verge of falling to ISIS (the situation has since stabilized somewhat but the city is still at risk): If the Iraqi city of Ramadi, which is under imminent … Continue reading Sour grapes in Iraq

Things aren't looking good for Bashar al-Assad these days. He's almost totally lost control of Idlib Province in the past two months, to a rebel coalition mostly controlled by Jabhat al-Nusra and the equally Islamist, albeit not al-Qaeda affiliated (there are links, but they fall short of outright affiliation), Ahrar al-Sham. That loss gives the … Continue reading Tide turning against Assad, my newest at LobeLog

Crisis averted, I guess. Benjamin Netanyahu cut a deal with Naftali Bennett literally minutes before the deadline, so he's the proud leader of a brand new 61-seat majority coalition in the Israeli Knesset. Bennett himself will serve as Education Minister, which just makes sense given his zero experience in education, and Jewish Home MK Ayelet … Continue reading Netanyahu in under the wire

Apparent Israeli election winner Benjamin Netanyahu has until midnight tonight to cobble together a 61 seat majority in the Knesset before Israeli President Reuven Rivlin has to give somebody else a crack at the job. It appears that he's scrambling to meet the deadline: Mr. Netanyahu, who exulted in what looked like a strong mandate … Continue reading Bibi-sitter hanging on by the skin of his teeth

Back in 2011, social scientist Steven Pinker wrote a book called The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined, wherein he argued that we're living in the most peaceful time in human history thanks to humanity's general embrace of a more empathetic, reason-centric, moral view of the world. He won a lot of … Continue reading New evidence that violence, or at least its impact, isn’t declining

The thing about Lindsey Graham is that he's normally dumb enough that when he says a thing that could either be a bad joke or something extra dumb, you're never sure which way to go with it. So it is with this gem of a quote: "Everything that starts with 'Al' in the Middle East … Continue reading “…and then there’s, um, alcohol, and algorithms, and Al Gore, and…”

A Tunisian journalist named Asma Ghribi writes about recent developments there over at Foreign Policy: On April 8, the Council of Ministers approved a controversial new draft law that would grant additional powers and protections to the military, internal security forces, and the customs service — and curb constitutionally granted civil liberties. The law has … Continue reading Not a good sign