Current Analysis After the Bomb in Beirut As a recent arrival in Beirut, I quickly learned the Lebanese map, geographic and political, when the bomb hit Ashrafiyya on October 19, killing eight and injuring more than 100. A friend in the US e-mailed to ask if the bomb was close, but since I didn’t hear it explode or smell the smoke, gauging Lori Allen • 4 min read
Current Analysis A Separation at Iranian Universities On August 6, with the new academic year approaching, the government-backed Mehr News Agency in Iran posted a bulletin that 36 universities in the country had excluded women from 77 fields of study. The reported restrictions aroused something of an international uproar. Parastou Dokouhaki, Nazanin Shahrokni • 15 min read
ufheilsomers_101712 Current Analysis Tie a Pink Ribbon Obligatory displays of Komen pink for Breast Cancer Awareness Month continue their spread beyond women’s accessories and yogurt containers into the masculine redoubts of the NFL and even the US military. While NFL players and coaches will spend the month sporting pink accessories, sailors in the Sou Amanda Ufheil-Somers • 2 min read
Current Analysis Drones Over Israel Two stories regarding Israel and drones appeared last week, illustrating both the dangerous new world of drone proliferation and Israel’s major role in making that possible. Steve Niva • 3 min read
Current Analysis Iran in the Campaign's Crosshairs The war of words over Iran's nuclear program keeps expanding. It’s now a multi-sided melee pitting Iran against the West and Israel, Israel against the Obama administration, Mitt Romney against Barack Obama, and neo-conservatives like William Kristol against the rest of the US foreign policy establi Chris Toensing • 2 min read
Current Analysis Men Behaving Badly Here we go again. A preposterous provocation easily manages to ignite fevered protests in Muslim-majority countries around the world, and everyone is worse off as a result. The episode is playing like a sequel to the 2005 Danish cartoon controversy, but with bigger and better explosions than the ori Moustafa Bayoumi • 8 min read
Current Analysis Romney's Remnants In Egypt, popular sentiment runs high against those dubbed fuloul (leftovers or dregs), the epithet for politicians and former officials associated with the immense corruption and despotism of the Mubarak regime. Anti-fuloul sentiment ultimately doomed Mubarak’s final prime minister, Ahmed Shafiq, t Steve Niva • 5 min read
Current Analysis Copts Denounce Islamophobia In the wake of the lethal rocket attack on State Department personnel in Benghazi, and salafi protesters’ assault upon the US Embassy in Cairo, Egyptian blogger Zeinobia draws attention [http://egyptianchronicles.blogspot.com/2012/09/the-protest-that-everybody-ignored.html] to “the protest that ever • 3 min read
Current Analysis "Green on Blue": Message Not Received American and NATO media handlers are in message control mode trying to contain the fallout from the escalation of insider killings of American and NATO soldiers by trained Afghan forces, known in military parlance as “green on blue” attacks. The latest rash of insider attacks [http://www.nytimes.com Steve Niva • 4 min read
Current Analysis Liberal Sophistry About Drones Drones kill civilians, but far fewer civilians than other forms of kinetic warfare, and anyway, war is about killing. The drones’ ability to kill from a distance is no more unsavory than aerial bombing, and in any case drones “enable us to kill enemies without exposing our own personnel.” That drone Laleh Khalili • 3 min read
Current Analysis Nays and Yeas in Charlotte The kerfuffle over the initial non-mention of Jerusalem in the Democratic Party platform throws into particularly sharp relief just how disconnected are discourse and reality when it comes to Israel-Palestine. Chris Toensing • 3 min read
Current Analysis Explaining Obama's Deference to Israel It is a truism that President Barack Obama inherited a mess from his predecessor in the White House. The United States was bogged down in two foreign wars of dubious provenance; Wall Street gamblers had flung the economy into deep recession; and, not least, the US had seemingly abandoned its self-ap Chris Toensing • 3 min read