I need your help to keep this blog going! Please read this and consider contributing something. Also, while you’re out there on the internet tubes, please consider liking this blog’s Facebook page and following me on Twitter! And please share my work with your friends/followers to help me grow the audience around here! Thank you! The … Continue reading The anti-ISIS free-rider problem

ISIS is in Libya. This has been known for some time, but either its foothold there is actually getting stronger or the important Something Doers of the world are just starting to figure out what's happening. Either way, we're starting to talk about whether or not it's time to Do Something: An international coalition is … Continue reading Libya braces for more international military assistance

I need your help to keep this blog going! Please read this and consider contributing something. Also, while you’re out there on the internet tubes, please consider liking this blog’s Facebook page and following me on Twitter! And please share my work with your friends/followers to help me grow the audience around here! Thank you! Here's … Continue reading Forget it Jake, it’s the Iowa Caucus

Remember Alberto Nisman, the Argentine prosecutor who was pursuing an investigation related to the (allegedly Iranian-perpetrated) 1994 bombing of a Jewish community center in Buenos Aires and turned up dead in a case of alleged suicide? And how his investigation was focused on former Argentine President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, and so there were a … Continue reading Who was paying Alberto Nisman, and why were they paying him?

Al-Monitor's Laura Rozen has more on the Syrian opposition's High Negotiations Committee's decision to reverse course, somewhat, and attend peace talks in Geneva after all. It appears that the HNC's delegation is there with a pretty narrow mandate: “We have come to Geneva to seek relief for our people by insisting UN Security Council resolution … Continue reading Progress in Geneva, terror back home

Over at LobeLog I've got a new piece that looks at what I could find of Bernie Sanders's statements and record with respect to several core Middle East issues--Israel-Palestine, ISIS, Iran, etc. Sanders doesn't have much of a foreign policy record, so apart from Israel-Palestine I was going mostly on things he's said so far … Continue reading What a President Sanders might mean for the Middle East

Despite their insistence that terrorism did not cause the crash of Metrojet 9268 last October, an insistence with which pretty much nobody else agrees, it appears that Egypt may now have a suspect in the, um, terrorist bombing of Metrojet 9268: An EgyptAir mechanic whose cousin joined Islamic State in Syria is suspected of planting … Continue reading Egypt may have a suspect in the Metrojet bombing

The Syrian rebel High Negotiations Council has decided to send representatives to Geneva after all. Kind of: A senior HNC delegate said the group would send "30, 35 people" to Geneva, the AFP news agency reports. Earlier, Fuad Aliko, a source close to the group, said the delegation would not be acting "as negotiators". Farrah … Continue reading A change of heart, sort of

I'm not one of those "Al Gore is a big fat hypocrite for talking about global warming because he flies on airplanes" clowns. But I think there may be a teeny problem with the way we're describing Paul Allen in the first line of this story: A yacht owned by Microsoft co-founder and marine conservationist … Continue reading Today’s great deed in conservation

I hope you're sitting down, because this is a real stunner: The Syrian opposition said it will not attend peace talks due to begin in Geneva on Friday, derailing the first attempt in two years to hold negotiations aimed at ending the five-year-long war. An opposition council convening in Riyadh said its delegation would "certainly" … Continue reading Totally unforeseen