March 2011

CIA killer gets “pardoned” in exchange for $2 million blood money

by Paul Woodward 03.16.2011

In order to make sure Hillary Clinton can enjoy cordial exchanges with her counterparts in Pakistan during her upcoming visit, CIA contractor Raymond Davis just got “pardoned” by the families of the men he killed in late January. Dawn reports: The US government did not pay any compensation to the families of two Pakistanis killed [...]

Read the full article →

How the West empowered Gaddafi and undermined the Arab democratic revolution

by News Sources 03.16.2011

“I am very worried about #Libya. I do not want #Gaddafi to win this, and the complicity of the international community is allowing him to.” @Sandmonkey (Mahmoud Salem), Cairo, March 16. “The fierce urgency of now” is a concept that Obama abandoned the day he got elected. The Decider got replaced with The Deliberator. For [...]

Read the full article →

Libyan uprising close to collapse as Gaddafi’s troops near Benghazi

by News Sources 03.15.2011

The Guardian reports: Muammar Gaddafi’s effort to defeat the rebels before international support can come seems to be paying off, with the uprising close to collapse as the US ended weeks of stalling to join Britain and France in supporting a United Nations resolution to impose a no-fly zone over Libya. A vote is expected [...]

Read the full article →

Smile sweetly and say peace for the cameras — and bring in the big guns

by News Sources 03.15.2011

Tahiyya Lulu writes: The international community is taking weeks to decide whether to impose a no-fly zone over Libya. Meanwhile, in the eerie quiet of a Bahraini afternoon a deployment of 1,000 soldiers from the Saudi Arabia who are part of the Pensinsula Shield Force entered the country. Bahrain TV proudly aired clips showing cheering [...]

Read the full article →

Nick Turse: the Pentagon and murder in Bahrain

by TomDispatch 03.15.2011

Reprinted with permission of TomDispatch.com Secretary of Defense Robert Gates has been one busy official of late.  Last week, on a surprise visit to Afghanistan, he managed to apologize for U.S. helicopters killing nine boys collecting wood on a hillside in Kunar Province, even as he announced that a negotiating team would soon be dispatched [...]

Read the full article →

The fight for Libya

by News Sources 03.14.2011

The Guardian reports: Libya’s revolutionary leadership is pressing western powers to assassinate Muammar Gaddafi and launch military strikes against his forces to protect rebel-held cities from the threat of bloody assault. Mustafa Gheriani, spokesman for the revolutionary national council in its stronghold of Benghazi, said the appeal was to be made by a delegation meeting [...]

Read the full article →

The Arab spring is brighter than ever

by News Sources 03.14.2011

Brian Whitaker writes: “The Arab world’s much-heralded collective push toward democracy is now in jeopardy,” an article for McClatchy newspapers in the US informed its readers at the weekend. The fact that autocratic regimes in Libya, Bahrain and Yemen are fighting back with lethal force should surprise no one. The more surprising thing is that [...]

Read the full article →

Why Palestinians will protest on March 15

by News Sources 03.14.2011

Rawan Abu-Shahla writes: We are a group of Palestinian youths who have come together for the sole purpose of leaving behind our political identities and affiliations, and deciding to put our best interests above all else, united under our Palestinian flag. We have called for peaceful demonstrations on Tuesday, 15 March across the Palestinian nation [...]

Read the full article →

Europeans are losing their illusions about Israel

by News Sources 03.14.2011

Daud Abdullah writes: In Europe, Israel has historically enjoyed a high level of support, not least because it was perceived as a progressive democracy in a sea of Arab backwardness. At the same time, most Europeans knew very little about the Israel-Palestine conflict: as recently as 2004, the Glasgow University Media Group found that only [...]

Read the full article →

The Saudi intervention in Bahrain is a slap in the face of the US

by News Sources 03.14.2011

Jean-François Seznec writes: On Saturday, March 12, U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates visited Bahrain, where he called for real reforms to the country’s political system and criticized “baby steps,” which he said would be insufficient to defuse the crisis. The Saudis were called in within a few hours of Gates’s departure, however, showing their disdain [...]

Read the full article →

James Carroll: Where did all the fatwas go?

by TomDispatch 03.14.2011

Reprinted with permission of TomDispatch.com A week or so ago, a friend of mine noticed a poster taped to a wall inside the rotunda of the Wisconsin State Capitol building, where American demonstrators were camped out.  It showed a lone demonstrator walking toward a line of helmeted Egyptian police, holding high a protest sign.  Under [...]

Read the full article →

Saudis move troops into Bahrain to crush pro-democracy movement

by Paul Woodward 03.14.2011

CNN opts for the anodyne and official phrasing “Gulf Cooperation Council security forces,” but the troops who just marched into Bahrain are Saudis. When US Defense Secretary Gates visited Bahrain on Friday, I assume King Hamad bin Issa al-Khalifah gave the US advance warning that his Kingdom would shortly be under something resembling Saudi martial [...]

Read the full article →

The fight for Libya

by News Sources 03.13.2011

Samia Nakhoul reports: By the time the outside world agrees on a response to Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi’s bloody onslaught against a popular revolt, it could all be over. The advance of Gaddafi’s better-armed forces, who seem to have shown little regard for civilians when storming in to retake rebel strongholds, has outrun the slow [...]

Read the full article →

Obama’s regime of secrecy

by News Sources 03.13.2011

Mark Benjamin reports: It shouldn’t be much of a surprise that State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley has resigned his post in wake of his too-candid assessment of the incarceration conditions of suspected Wikileaker Private First Class Bradley Manning. Last Thursday, Crowley told a panel at MIT that the Pentagon’s treatment of Manning at the Marine [...]

Read the full article →

The new Israeli Left

by News Sources 03.13.2011

Joseph Dana and Noam Sheizaf write: As the controversial 443 highway, which connects Tel Aviv with Jerusalem by passing through the West Bank, begins to curve toward Israel’s capital, the eye is inevitably drawn to an imposing gray structure with massive concrete walls, part of the Ofer Military Prison. Commuters are barely aware of what [...]

Read the full article →

Pepe Escobar: mummies and models in the new Middle East

by TomDispatch 03.13.2011

Reprinted with permission of TomDispatch.com They can’t help themselves.  Really, they can’t.  Like children, the most monstrous of secret police outfits evidently come to believe themselves immortal.  They lose all ability to imagine that they might ever go down and so keep records to the very moment of their collapse.  Those records, so copious, damning, [...]

Read the full article →

Intifada update

by News Sources 03.13.2011

Saudi Arabia’s day of little rage Friday was Saudi Arabia’s “day of rage”, planned for and anticipated for weeks. But, in the event, there wasn’t even a grumble – unless you count the ongoing protests in the eastern province which had been going on for a week. The protests in the east, where the Saudi [...]

Read the full article →

Libya’s armed protest movement at the edge of an abyss

by Paul Woodward 03.13.2011

As some commentators solemnly warn about the dangers of a backlash if the Arab democratic revolution was to become poisoned by American involvement in a no-fly zone over Libya, they fail to note a rising chorus inside Libya: anger towards the United States because of its reluctance to become involved. There’s stunning paradox here. Three [...]

Read the full article →

Benghazi’s rebels know it is now them or Gaddafi

by News Sources 03.12.2011

Chris McGreal reports: Ask people in Benghazi what awaits them if Muammar Gaddafi’s army fights its way back into the rebel capital and the chances are they will talk about Huda Ben Amer. Today she is one of the Libyan dictator’s most closely trusted lieutenants, but nearly three decades ago Ben Amer was a young [...]

Read the full article →

Arab League calls on UN to enforce no-fly zone over Libya

by News Sources 03.12.2011

The Wall Street Journal reports: The Arab League on Saturday called on the United Nations Security Council to enforce a “no-fly zone” over Libyan airspace, marking a decisive diplomatic victory for rebel forces opposed to Moammar Gadhafi, the Libyan ruler. The announcement will bolster calls by some European leaders to intervene in the violent confrontation [...]

Read the full article →

Libya: fear of collapse — ‘we need a no-fly zone’

by News Sources 03.12.2011

Jon Lee Anderson writes: Yesterday, as the government appeared to take control of the western city of Zawiya, Seif al-Islam Qaddafi made a public vow that was extensively texted and retweeted in Libya: Hear it now, I have only two words for our brothers and sisters in the east: We’re coming. A Libyan friend reached [...]

Read the full article →

Wesley Clark: Libya isn’t worth helping — they don’t have enough oil

by News Sources 03.12.2011

Retired US Army general and NATO’s former supreme allied commander in Europe, Wesley Clark, says Libya doesn’t provide the US with enough oil for the fate of the country to be regarded as a vital interest. Not only that, the US is busy helping democracy movements in Iraq and Afghanistan! In 2001, when the United [...]

Read the full article →

Why Libya matters

by Paul Woodward 03.12.2011

A reader here comments: I have great respect for you and your site but find myself dumbfounded by your enlisting Leon Wieseltier in your campaign to impose (or as you would say “respond to the rebels’ pleas”) a NFZ [no-fly zone] in Libya. The right or wrong of such a move is highly debatable. I [...]

Read the full article →

The fight for Libya

by News Sources 03.11.2011

The New York Times reports: Only days ago, rebels were boldly promising to march on Surt, Colonel Qaddafi’s hometown, then on to Tripoli, where opposition leaders predicted its residents would rise up. But the week has witnessed a series of setbacks, with a punishing government assault on Zawiyah, near the capital, and a reversal of [...]

Read the full article →

← Previous Entries

Next Entries →