James Ryan

@jdryan08.bsky.social

4723 Followers 1888 Following

Executive Director, Middle East Research and Information Project (www.merip.org | @merip.bsky.social). Adjuncting at Rowan University. Historian interested in Turkey, Prodigal Son of Philadelphia. Usual caveats.

Dril tweet altered to read “issuing correction on a previous post of mine, regarding the NEOCONS. you do not, under any circumstances, ‘gotta hand it to them.’”
“It’s not just that students are losing their scholarships,” Ryan said. “When students lose their scholarships, they don’t enroll in language classes. And when they don’t enroll in language classes, the classes themselves collapse, right? And so, we just stop teaching these things.”
Mohammed Ouahbi, Morocco coach. Wearing a blue blazer and white shirt, no tie. Stylish glasses and looking like a 21st century Jean Paul Sartre.
Palestinian-Lebanese Ussama Makdisi, a historian at U.C. Berkeley, compared the agreement to a May 1983 agreement between the Israeli army and the weak, pro-U.S. Lebanese government installed after Israel’s 1982 invasion of Lebanon. “Because it was so unpopular and illegitimate in the eyes of so many Lebanese, that ‘agreement’ was annulled following an uprising in February 1984 by various Lebanese militias and parties against the U.S.-backed government,” he said.
Trending bsky topics. Ukraine war and… some English special election???
Some people might say that Trump and Netanyahu started this war. They bombed Iran, they failed to dislodge the Iranian regime, and Iran decided to hold the entire global economy hostage, which has led to horrific effects all across the world. And so they had to make a deal. Aren’t you supposed to have planned for something like this? If this is what you are going to do, don’t start the war. Don’t do it. I think a lot of Americans would agree with that. But please listen a little bit. It’s even worse. There is—not was, is—a very good plan to replace the regime. Not one hundred per cent. Not eighty per cent. But most likely.
Epic handshake meme, Hamilton and Burr and World Cup Fans shaking over slow boats to Weehawken.
Star Trek ship zooping by a planet “The Nightman Cometh” in title text.
That’s the wrong way to look at things, according to Joe Brennan, who was filling his thirsty Mercedes-Benz in a corner of the station. The president is doing well and we all could use a little patience, said Brennan, a Republican. “It would have been easy for the president to kick the can down the road like previous presidents did, and not take on Iran and the terrorists there,” he said. “That’s like when the world allowed Hitler and Stalin to gather power, while doing nothing. “But Trump is thwarting them.”
Picture of a black man in a beanie sitting in the driver seat of a white suv with the door open. “Gas is really getting above my means,” said Nash, 31, a chemical operator and Democrat who logs a lot of miles on his Toyota SUV. “Not three months ago, I had an extra $150 a month in my pocket that’s now gone to gas,” he said. “These are the consequences of war. We fight to help Israel, not us. This is the stuff I don’t get. Trump could be a better leader and not pursue war.”
Most importantly, in response to the Palestinian uprising, public opinion, media coverage and (to a lesser degree) the rhetoric of US policy toward Israel have begun to shift. One survey done for the American Jewish Congress in April 1988 found that 43 percent of the US public favored an “independent Palestinian state on the West Bank” and 62 percent endorsed US negotiations with the PLO. According to pollster John Marttila, support for a Palestinian homeland has increased by 10 percent among the general public in the last three years. [8] The Los Angeles Times poll done this spring found that 34 percent of non-Jews favored a reduction of military aid to Israel and 65 percent thought there was “an element of racism involved in the attitude of Israelis toward Arabs.” The change in the press’ approach was highlighted by ABC Nightline’s week-long series from Israel and the occupied territories in the spring. The Jerusalem “town meeting” between three Palestinians and four Israelis, in front of a live audience made up of members of both communities, emphasized what became an important theme of media coverage this year: that at its core this was a conflict of two nations. [9]
The sector needs to be taken by the collar and shaken very hard until resources that are adequate to the support of humanities doctoral students are jarred loose from higher-ed institutions themselves,” Harper said, growing animated. “The role of the Mellon Foundation is to catalyze that sort of change. It’s not to serve in perpetuity as the piggy bank for research.” Mellon, he said, was never supposed to be a panacea for the humanities. But with the academic humanities in their death throes, Harper’s distinction between role and position may be largely beside the point. No, it is not Mellon’s job to be the humanities’ piggy bank. Yes, Mellon is the humanities’ piggy bank. The resulting situation is dismal, and the Trump administration’s funding cuts will only make things worse.
Screenshot: MAGA’s war on empathy: the crisis in Minneapolis reveals a deep moral rot at the heart of Trump’s movement. Hillary Rodham Clinton
The people at the State Department are going to do their best to rise to the challenge, but they’ve got two audiences,” said Gerald Feierstein, a former senior U.S. diplomat whose positions included ambassador to Yemen. “They’ve got the foreign audience, where the desire is going to be to roll out the welcome mat. The other audience is this xenophobic administration that just looks around the world and sees lots of people that they don’t like and don’t want to see come here. That’s the tightrope the State Department is going to be walking
Two fingers of Pogue’s Mason bourbon, neat.
On January 3rd, the Trump administration carried out extensive military strikes on the Venezuelan capital and captured Venezuela’s president, Nicolas Maduro, and his wife, purportedly to effectuate their arrest on U.S. drug trafficking charges. There is a strong bipartisan and international consensus that Nicolás Maduro is a brutal and illegitimate leader, and that his policies have inflicted great harm on the Venezuelan people as well as the entire region, with millions of Venezuelans fleeing the repressive Maduro regime in recent years. However, President Trump’s unilateral decision to invade another country to initiate regime change and a long-term economic or military occupation of Venezuela is a blatant abuse of power and an attack on both our Constitutional order and international law. Members of Congress have repeatedly demanded facts and legal justification for those strikes, only to be stonewalled by Trump’s White House. Throughout the late summer and fall, we saw the escalating use of U.S. military forces against Venezuela, starting with strikes against small boats in the Caribbean, which have now killed over 100 people. While the White House initially claimed that the boat strikes were part of its campaign to fight drug trafficking, this is a radical departure from prior practice. Typically, the Coast Guard and US law enforcement intercept such boats and prosecute any confirmed criminal activity. This order of operations is consistent with the most fundamental tenet of United States law - that our government does not deprive persons of life or liberty without due process of law. Using the military to bomb boats which might or might not contain drugs, and people, who might or might not be drug dealers, raised immediate concerns both here and abroad. The administration’s shifting, inadequate justifications and reliance upon disputed facts only heightened these concerns. Chief among them that in the absence of legal justification, these boat strikes were “ex…
Nino Sarratore in Season 4 of My Brilliant Friend.
A prime rib covered in salt that’s been soaked in a red-wine reduction. Ready to go in the oven.
The look of a guy who definitely knew something about having one of his opponents dismembered by bonesaw inside his country’s embassy.
Roberts states: “I disagree with and even abhor things that Nick Fuentes says.” If that’s true, why defend those who mainstream him? Why characterize legitimate outrage at platforming a Holocaust denier as a “venomous coalition” serving “someone else’s agenda”?
A hand drawn cartoon in the style of the New Yorker showing five people in a business meeting next to a big window out on the city. There is a chart with a downward sloping graph. The caption reads “Have we considered localizing the intifada?”
You can dislike much of what Kirk believed and the following statement is still true: Kirk was practicing politics in exactly the right way. He was showing up to campuses and talking with anyone who would talk to him.
Thank you for reaching out to my office about foreign aid and assistance. I appreciate hearing from you. Our country is a beacon of democracy for the world, and it is in every Pennsylvanian’s interest that the United States continues to step up when freedom and democracy are under attack. If we don’t step up when we are needed most, terrorists and rogue dictators like Putin will continue to violate international norms and place civilians in harm’s way. The stakes truly couldn’t be higher. The Trump administration is taking a sledgehammer to programs like those under USAID, which saved countless lives, spread freedom and American values, and protected Americans from foreign threats. There is no question that these moves have had, and will have, deadly consequences for millions around the world while damaging America’s standing. I have voted against – and will continue to vote against – any reckless cuts to foreign assistance programs. The hard truth is Senate Republicans hold a 53-seat majority, and they have made reckless slashing of investments across the government their top priority. Unfortunately, they’re going to have the votes they need to force through the cuts they want. Though I will continue to speak out and vote against these bills, the math is not on my side. I will continue to engage with Senate Republicans to remind them what's at stake, and I encourage you to do to the same. Thank you again for contacting me to share your thoughts. Please do not hesitate to reach out in the future about other issues of importance to you. If I can be of assistance, or if you’d like to learn more about my work on behalf of Pennsylvanians and our commonwealth, I encourage you to visit my website, https://www.fetterman.senate.gov/.
Which numbers are inflated? The numbers coming from the Gaza Health Ministry. You have the raw figure, I think, of sixty thousand today. And you know that’s inflated? I am not necessarily contesting the number, although they get those from a lot of different sources. I am contesting the fact that they do not count combatants as anything other than innocent civilians, and that the Gaza Health Ministry has said that seventy-two per cent of all deaths were women and children. They walked that back by April of 2024.
(Full text over four images) Dear President Alivisatos, Provost Baker, and Dean Nelson, I am writing to you as an alumnus of the College who earned a Bachelors in Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations (since renamed Middle Eastern Studies) in 2008, out of concern for the reporting in the Chicago Maroon and information shared by other alumni and friends and colleagues in the department that in the coming year the Middle Eastern Studies Department and the Center for Middle Eastern Studies may face drastic reductions and loss of independence. I would like to make it unequivocally clear that I believe any decision to eliminate either or both of the department and center would represent a betrayal of the values instilled in me in the years I spent at Chicago, and which I have carried with me throughout my career to this point. Furthermore, as someone who has spent the time since 2008 deeply connected to the broader field of Middle East Studies, in both academic and applied settings, I can say that such a decision would represent a tremendous loss for the field, for the country, and the wider world -- there are simply very few places in the world where the study of the Middle East's languages, history, and culture can be studied as deeply at all levels as they can be at UChicago, and its bachelors, masters and doctoral programs offered through the department and center have been leaders in their field for decades. I find the mere implication, and I think any scholar in the field would agree, that these programs are "failing" or "weak" to be utterly farcical, to the point that one doubts such suggestions are being made in good faith.
A photo grid with 8 AI generated images. Title is “Last Ten Prime Ministers of Turkey” It lists them in correct order, though lists Mesut Yilmaz’s term as “30 June 1997 - 11 January 1919.”
Gov. Josh Shapiro on Tuesday called for the United States to “dramatically increase” aid to Gaza as he joins a national conversation about the deepening humanitarian crisis there as the death toll of Palestinians waiting for food and other aid grows. “I think it is fair to say that I’m both praying for the return of the hostages and praying to make sure that these kids get fed in Gaza,” Shapiro said. “The fact that kids are starving in Gaza is not OK.”
Former Turkish president and prime minister Turgut Özal, in a blue knit sweater, holding two rotary phones to his ears.
Edward Said, looking over the back of a chair, smiling. He’s wearing a striped shirt and a dark grey jacket.
Grossman said that statement had been tailored to focus on the historical arguments that President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia made to justify the invasion. “That historical narrative was considered false by just about every professional historian of that part of the world in the United States,” he said. “Our critique was based on his abuse of history as the justification for the invasion,” Grossman said. “There is no similar consensus among historians in the United States regarding the historical issues on the table here.”
Grossman told Inside Higher Ed Friday that “the Ukraine statement was purely historical. It was well within our scope.” He said, “No serious professional historian in the United States considers Putin’s historical explanation to be anything close to accurate history, so the war itself was based on an abuse of history, and that’s what our statement addressed.”
Page D3 of today’s Philly Inquirer. Picture of Pepé the King Prawn, a muppet, and his creator, Bill Baretta in glasses smiling. Headline “Pepé the King Prawn’s creator on growing up in the Philly suburbs and the viral TikTok meme.”
Screencap of SNL Bill Clinton McDonalds sketch from the 90s. Phil Hartman as Clinton in an Arkansas sweatshirt and Georgetown baseball cap holds a sausage patty in one hand and a McRib in another exclaiming “warlords” while explaining how hard it is to get aid to Somalia.
Şimdi boku yedik / Now we ate shit.
Firoozeh Kashani-Sabet’s new book, Heroes to Hostages, America and Iran, 1800-1988.