I hope something good comes out of the FIFA indictments, I really do. It's a very powerful and by all appearances very corrupt institution, and the people who run those kinds of institutions should be brought to justice. Dan Drezner contends this is the best foreign policy move the US has made this year, and … Continue reading The FIFA indictments: already too late for too many

For a long time now we've been hearing about how Barack Obama pals around with terrorists, am I right fellow US Americans? The brethren have been so convinced of this one immutable fact that they've convinced themselves that Obama is in cahoots with every terrorist group or potential terrorist sponsor under the sun, despite the … Continue reading Is Qassem Soleimani forming his own Tea Party chapter?

Jabhat al-Nusra's emir, Abu Muhammad al-Julani, gave an interview to Al Jazeera yesterday that seems to have been intended to put the best possible face on his Al-Qaeda franchise for a secular/Western audience. Most of it was transparently bullshit though, and by digging through the bullshit you can see the clear reasons why nobody -- … Continue reading Nusra’s Julani: “I get so scared in case I fall off my chair”

Finally, the long awaited announcement has been made! You know what I'm talking about -- a certain someone is about to get a big-time promotion! That's right, Demi Lovato is starting her own record label! Way to go, Demi! Oh, and in other news, a Pennsylvania man announced that he plans on losing the Republican … Continue reading Wingnut’s wingnut launches second doomed vanity campaign for President, nation laughs to keep from crying

Defense Secretary Ash Carter isn't making many friends in Baghdad this week, not after going on CNN's "State of the Union" this week and saying that Ramadi fell to ISIS because the Iraqi soldiers defending it "just showed no will to fight": Carter's remarks are the strongest yet from any Obama administration official speaking on … Continue reading A good point badly stated

Trita Parsi and Paul Pillar (who is not inclined toward conspiracy theorizing, to say the least) suggest the possibility that Israel might start a war with Iranian proxy Hezbollah in order to move Congressional opinion toward rejecting a nuclear deal: If a Congressional vote on a resolution rejecting the nuclear deal were held today,President Obama … Continue reading Would Israel start a war to try to scuttle an Iran deal?

When you're the defense minister of a country that has nuclear weapons but won't admit to having them, citing Hiroshima and Nagasaki as models for dealing with the professed greatest threat to your country's existence is, um, an interesting rhetorical choice. Yet here we have Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Yaalon, last week at a conference … Continue reading From the “you probably shouldn’t have said that” file

Way back in 2004, King Abdullah of Jordan told Chris Matthews, for some reason, that Sunni governments in the Middle East were askeert about the growing power of Iranian-backed Shiʿa movements in the region, despite the fact that Sunnis constitute about 60% of all Muslims in the Middle East and 90% of all Muslims around … Continue reading About that “Shiʿa Crescent”…

Not much good news, I'm afraid. First, there's been an outbreak of cholera among the Burundian refugees in Tanzania: About 3,000 refugees fleeing political turmoil in Burundi have been infected in a cholera epidemic in neighboring Tanzania, the United Nations said on Friday, stoking fears of a growing humanitarian crisis in Africa's Great Lakes. Up … Continue reading Refugee updates and charity links

Last week's US/GCC "summit" (I'm not sure it counts as a real summit when 4 of the 6 GCC leaders didn't bother showing up) ended so expectedly that, well, I just plain forgot to blog about it. What I wrote before the "summit": As I said on the program on Saturday, one possible outcome of … Continue reading A couple of reasons why Camp David didn’t end with any major agreements