International Politics and Economy

Human Rights Watch – (Beirut) – Saudi authorities have been carrying out an unprecedented surge in executions in 2025 without apparent due process, Human Rights Watch and the Middle East Democracy Center said today. The June 14 execution of Turki al-Jasser, a journalist known for exposing corruption within the Saudi royal family, raises concerns that the […]

Espionage

Israel Secretly Recruited Iranian Dissidents to Attack Their Country From Within

ProPublica

By Yossi Melman and Dan Raviv for ProPublica | – ( ProPublica ) – In the early morning hours of June 13, a commando team led by a young Iranian, S.T., settled into position on the outskirts of Tehran. The target was an anti-aircraft battery, part of the umbrella of radars and missiles set up […]

Arms Sales

Easy Money for War Profiteers in the Age of Trump

William D. Hartung

( Tomdispatch.com ) – When, in his 1961 farewell address, President Dwight D. Eisenhower warned of the dangers of the unwarranted influence wielded by a partnership between the military and a growing cohort of U.S. weapons contractors and came up with the ominous term “military-industrial complex,” he could never have imagined quite how large and […]

Authoritarianism

Protesting Georgetown U’s Sanctioning of Prof. Jonathan Brown for Speaking out on Iran War

Committee on Academic Freedom

Committee on Academic Freedom | Middle East Studies Association of North America | – Letter to Georgetown University protesting its statements and actions with regard to Professor Jonathan Brown Robert M. Groves Interim President, Georgetown University [email protected] Dear Interim President Groves, Interim Provost Colbert, Dean Edelstein and Vice President Ferrara: We write on behalf […]

Kurds

Lessons from a historic Act of Disarmament in Kurdistan

Waging Nonviolence

After decades of armed struggle, the PKK is laying down its weapons and beginning a new nonviolent chapter in the Kurdish independence movement. Matt Meyer ( Waging Nonviolence ) – On July 11, in the hills of Northern Iraq, a scene unfolded that would shake even the most experienced disarmament activist. Walking down a steep […]

Corruption

‘Come meet us in Dubai’: the new Offshoring of grand Corruption

The Conversation

By John Heathershaw, University of Exeter and Ricardo Soares de Oliveira, Sciences Po (The Conversation) – During an interview one of us (Ricardo Soares de Oliveira) carried out in 2017, an African high net-worth individual said he was told by an executive whose business had long served him out of London: “Come meet us in […]

Arms Sales

Feeding the Warfare State: We Lose, the Weapons Makers Win

William D. Hartung

( Tomdispatch.com ) – The Senate is on the verge of passing the distinctly misnamed “big beautiful bill.” It is, in fact, one of the ugliest pieces of legislation to come out of Congress in living memory. The version that passed the House recently would cut $1.7 trillion, mostly in domestic spending, while providing the […]

Archaeology

Early Farming in Middle East, Sometimes Matriarchal, Spread through Learning, not Conquest

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – A new study by Dilek Koptekin et al., a Swiss-Turkish team, has appeared in Science that combines archeological and genetics research to shed new light on the emergence of farming in the Middle East in the transition from hunting and gathering called the Neolithic Revolution. The authors find that big […]

Featured

The Assault on Diversity, Equity and Inclusion: The US v. Canada

Hugh J. Curran

“These first few months [have resulted] in the Trump administration’s cuts to scientific and medical research, clampdown on any efforts promoting diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI), newly aggressive policies for students with loan debt, revoking of visas for international students and more”…. In recent months… [elimination of] programs meant to train scholars and diversify the sciences as part of an effort to […]