Within days of starting the war, Saudi Arabia imposed a total land, air and sea blockade, along with targeting vital agriculture and food supply infrastructure that sustains life for the 29 million Yemenis—all of which constitute war crimes under international law.
Saudi interest in developing nuclear weapons dates back to the 1970s, when the kingdom learned of major steps taken by both Israel and India in the development of nuclear armaments.
No matter their age, Saudi women are treated like minors — to the point that many require permission from their sons to work, study, or travel.
Contrary to popular media portrayals, the Middle East wasn’t always plagued by regressive fundamentalism. Salafi jihadist groups like Al Qaeda were not popular in the region. They still aren’t. They have been violently imposed on people thanks in large part to the actions of the US, which has a longstanding pattern of backing religious fundamentalists […]
2016 was a very difficult year for the Egyptians. Most—both the average man and the political caste—even say it was / is the worst year in the country’s history. Attacking the “revolution” or uprising of 2011, its aims, symbols and representatives, has no longer become an excess of some “Mubarakists”, but obviously, the policy of […]
Since 2011, the torrent of ill-informed, inaccurate and often entirely dishonest analysis of events in Syria has been unremitting. I have written previously about the dangers of using simplistic explanations to make sense of the conflict, a problem that has surfaced repeatedly over the past five years. However, there is a greater problem at large.
Back in 1963 Bob Dylan (soon to be 75) wrote a bitter song; Pete Seeger also sang it often. It asks, after the death of a young boxer: “Who killed Davey Moore? How come he died, and what’s the reason for?” Then came the alibis of all those responsible, from the manager and media to […]
WASHINGTON — President Hillary Clinton, making good on her 2008 threat to “totally obliterate” Iran, celebrated her first week in office by ordering a nuclear strike on Iran’s capital city of Tehran. As a squadron of F-35s streaked through the sky toward the Mideast metropolis of over eight million, President Clinton outlined her foreign policy […]
The Left upsurge in Latin America appears to be abating. In October 2015 Jimmy Morales, the conservative candidate in Guatemala, defeated the Left-leaning Sandra Torres in the presidential elections. On November 22, Mauricio Macri, the conservative presidential candidate in Argentina, defeated Daniel Scioli, his Peronist rival, by a narrow margin, to bring to an […]
2016 began here with an icy chill, not only with the weather but far worse, with human relations. It also offered some, like myself, at least a few warm rays of hope. First the larger scene. The huge influx of immigrants and asylum seekers, over a million in 2015, saw Germany effectively split in […]
Early this month in Germany, a few thousand refugees from war-torn Syria and neighboring countries spilled out of a train station and into Munich. Rather than being tripped by the locals, or thrown inside cargo trucks, or sorted out according to skin color (as per quaint Old World custom), the migrants were actually welcomed by […]
A silent three-year-old, lying drowned on a Turkish beach; the tearful protest of a Syrian man as he, his wife and baby are torn from the tracks next to a locomotive by Hungarian police; desperate families jammed into tiny, leaky boats, hoping to reach Europe alive or, if they do, facing ever new obstacles from […]
In their recent article on “How Britain and the US Decided to Abandon Srebrenica to Its Fate” (Observer, July 5, 20151), Ed Vulliamy, a veteran reporter for the Guardian and Observer newspapers, and Florence Hartmann, a reporter and former spokesperson for the Office of the Prosecutor at the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia […]
A television news program opens with a clip of marching soldiers, an obligatory image when the subject is North Korea. A voiceover intones: “A bold, ambitious plan apparently sanctioned by Kim Jong Un. Is he in league with the women’s group to promote peace between North and South Korea?” The program in question is the […]
The Western errors and neo-liberal damages: Saddam Hussein and Muammar Gaddafi knew how to contain the Islamist drift, but they were slaughtered. In Libya, Paris and Washington have it all wrong. We reached Samir Amin — philosopher, economist, and director of the Third World Forum based in Dakar — in Paris by phone, to […]
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