Thoughts on the August 26-27 Russian escalation in Ukraine

Well, this was worth busting in on vacation to mention: Israeli and Palestinian negotiators have agreed to an Egypt-brokered, open-ended ceasefire agreement. The terms reportedly include the easing of the blockade on Gaza, reduction of the buffer zone that Israel imposed inside Gaza's borders, an extension of Gaza's permitted fishing zone in the Mediterranean from … Continue reading Israel, Hamas agree to do this all again sometime

You may remember a 2009 earthquake in L'Aquila, Italy, that killed 308 people and wound up causing seven members of Italy's National Commission for the Forecast and Prevention of Major Risks to be convicted of manslaughter for their failure to predict the quake. I had forgotten all about it until I found a piece on … Continue reading Failure to communicate

Hey, if you've been wondering what former British PM Tony Blair has been up to, and I can't see why you wouldn't have been, you'll be pleased to know that he's found a real niche as an image consultant for repressive dictators (via): Tony Blair gave Kazakhstan’s autocratic president advice on how to manage his … Continue reading Where are they now

I thought I'd give this Medium thing that the kids are talking about a try, and I've been wondering why the murder of James Foley has resonated so much with so many people while the equally innocent and equally irreplaceable people who are dying in places like Syria, Gaza, Iraq, and Ferguson aren't evoking our … Continue reading At Medium: “On James Foley and grieving”

This kind of thing just makes it harder for Baghdad to bring unhappy Sunnis back on side: At least 73 people have been killed after a Shia Muslim armed group opened fire inside an Iraqi Sunni mosque in the village of Bani Wais in the country's eastern Diyala province, medical sources have said. A security source said bodies had been arriving at the hospital in … Continue reading Mosque attack in Diyala sets back the cause of Iraqi unity

Gaza continues to be immolated. Israeli airstrikes killed another 8 people overnight, which means nearly 2100 people there have been killed since the fighting began, and it's becoming clear that the IDF is systematically targeting what little economic infrastructure Gaza has actually developed. Hamas executed 18 alleged spies yesterday, and one of their rockets killed … Continue reading What if Gaza ends where it began?

A lot of attention has rightly been focused on the danger that the Yazidi community has been under since IS swept through northern Iraq (many of those who were trapped in the mountains around Sinjar have gotten to freedom, but many others have been killed or forced to convert to Islam), but this discouraging story … Continue reading The Shabak: another minority at risk from IS

Well, this is awkward: When American forces raided a home near Falluja during the turbulent 2004 offensive against the Iraqi Sunni insurgency, they got the hard-core militants they had been looking for. They also picked up an apparent hanger-on, an Iraqi man in his early 30s whom they knew nothing about. The Americans duly registered … Continue reading You made me feel so bad

So it turns out that Iranian FM Mohammad Javad Zarif doesn't think Western leaders are idiots after all. Despite what some media reports have said (and what some of us stupidly just picked up without checking), he wasn't linking sanctions relief to fighting IS in Iraq yesterday, he was linking relief to modifying the heavy … Continue reading Always check the video