April 2011

News roundup — April 30

by Paul Woodward 04.30.2011

Syrians escaping violence flee to Turkey About 250 people raced across the Syrian border into Turkey, government officials said Saturday, a flight that reflects the fear and violence gripping the Arab nation. The people hustled to the southern Turkish Yaylidagi district in Hatay province on Friday afternoon, according to local and federal government officials. Turkish [...]

Read the full article →

War and truth in Libya and Palestine

by News Sources 04.30.2011

Tarak Barkawi writes: We are told that war is the pursuit of politics by other means. Attributed to Clausewitz, the thought is actually rather comforting. War may be violent but at least it’s rational. It is a sometimes necessary strategy to achieve objectives. A world is imagined in which armed force is an instrument that [...]

Read the full article →

When Montgomery comes to Nabi Saleh

by Guest Contributor 04.30.2011

By Mark Perry On March 24, the Israeli government arrested Bassem Tamimi, a 44-year-old resident of the small Palestinian village of Nabi Saleh, which is just west of Ramallah. Tamimi was arrested for leading a group of his neighbors in protest marches on a settlement that had “expropriated” the village’s spring — the symbolic center [...]

Read the full article →

News roundup — April 29

by Paul Woodward 04.29.2011

Scores killed on Syria’s ‘day of rage’ Dozens of people have been shot dead by Syrian security forces, activists claim, as tens of thousands took part in anti-government rallies dubbed a “day of rage”. Activists said at least 50 protesters were killed across the country on Friday, although Al Jazeera cannot independently verify the death [...]

Read the full article →

The Arab Spring reaches Palestine

by Paul Woodward 04.29.2011

Reconciliation between Fatah and Hamas, the siege of Gaza about to be lifted, and Washington’s favorite Palestinian, Salam Fayyad, directed to vacate his position as prime minister — these aren’t the changes Obama believes in. But since all that the US and Israel have been intent on doing in the name of the so-called peace [...]

Read the full article →

Out of Syria’s darkness come tales of terror

by News Sources 04.28.2011

Robert Fisk writes: In Damascus, the posters – in their tens of thousands around the streets – read: “Anxious or calm, you must obey the law.” But pictures of President Bashar al-Assad and his father Hafez have been taken down, by the security police no less, in case they inflame Syrians. There are thieves with [...]

Read the full article →

News roundup — April 28

by News Sources 04.28.2011

Gaddafi arms Libyan ‘home guard’ – minimum age 17 Muammar Gaddafi is arming Libyan 17-year-olds to build a “home front” against Nato military intervention and the possibility of rebels from the east of the country reaching largely loyalist towns and cities in the west. As part of the drive towards an unofficial civilian army, the [...]

Read the full article →

The post-Islamist revolutions

by News Sources 04.28.2011

Asef Bayat writes: How should we make sense of the revolts that have engulfed the Arab world? Some observers see them as postmodern revolutions, diffused and leaderless, with no fixed ideology. Others view them as the next wave of democratic and liberal revolutions. Most commonly, they are described as youth revolutions, since young people played [...]

Read the full article →

Arab Spring: a discussion on Libya, Egypt and the Mideast

by News Sources 04.28.2011

A discussion on Libya, Egypt and the Mideast with Palestinian writer Rula Jebreal, author of “Miral” and journalist Issandr El Amrani on Democracy Now! Share

Read the full article →

God save the Arab kings?

by News Sources 04.28.2011

Brian Whitaker writes: One of the less-discussed facts about the wave of uprisings in the Middle East is that the Arab monarchies are still relatively unscathed. The regimes most seriously challenged by popular protests – in Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen, Libya and Syria – have all been republics. This may seem odd to Europeans whose revolutions [...]

Read the full article →

Gaza’s Salafis under scrutiny

by News Sources 04.28.2011

Jared Malsin writes: Palestinians in the Gaza Strip were shocked the week before last when an Italian activist and journalist, Vittorio Arrigoni, was kidnapped and then murdered by a self-proclaimed Salafi jihadi group. Arrigoni, a bighearted man who I met several times during a recent two-month stay in Gaza, was well known around the Strip [...]

Read the full article →

A more militarized CIA for a more militarized America

by News Sources 04.28.2011

Glenn Greenwald writes: The first four Directors of the CIA (from 1947-1953) were military officers, but since then, there has been a tradition (generally though imperfectly observed) of keeping the agency under civilian rather than military leadership. That’s why George Bush’s 2006 nomination of Gen. Michael Hayden to the CIA provoked so many objections from [...]

Read the full article →

Nick Turse: how to arm a dictator

by TomDispatch 04.28.2011

Reprinted with permission of TomDispatch.com Recently, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates attended a groundbreaking ceremony at Mount Vernon for a National Library for the Study of George Washington.  (“I’d like to thank the Mount Vernon Ladies Association for extending this invitation to me…”)  He used the occasion for a full-throated defense of the American right [...]

Read the full article →

Wall Street tames Washington

by News Sources 04.28.2011

Jim Hightower writes: They came, they saw, they conquered. This line pretty well sums up a little-reported but important story about the new tea partiers in the U.S. House of Representatives. No sooner had they arrived than the corporate lobbying corps came to visit, saw what these supposed rebels were made of and quickly conquered [...]

Read the full article →

News roundup — April 27

by Paul Woodward 04.27.2011

Fatah and Hamas reconciliation agreement The rival Palestinian movements Fatah and Hamas agreed Wednesday to reconcile and form an interim government ahead of elections, after a four-year feud, in what both sides hailed as a chance to start a fresh page in their national history. Israel said the accord, which was brokered in secrecy by [...]

Read the full article →

News roundup — April 26

by Paul Woodward 04.26.2011

The epic Arab battle reaches Syria Rami G. Khouri writes: Syria is now the critical country to watch in the Arab world, after the homegrown regime changes in Tunisia and Egypt, and the imminent changes in Yemen and Libya. The Syrian regime headed by President Bashar Assad is now seriously challenged by a combination of [...]

Read the full article →

Shahin and Juan Cole: the women’s movement in the Middle East

by TomDispatch 04.26.2011

Reprinted with permission of TomDispatch.com Against all odds, they just keep tottering.  I’m talking, of course, about the autocrats of the Middle East: first, Ben Ali of Tunisia, then Mubarak of Egypt, now Ali Abdullah Saleh of Yemen.  After two months of demonstrations in the streets of Yemen’s cities, after the defection to the pro-democracy [...]

Read the full article →

How Obama leads from behind

by News Sources 04.26.2011

Ryan Lizza writes: This spring, Obama officials often expressed impatience with questions about theory or about the elusive quest for an Obama doctrine. One senior Administration official reminded me what the former British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan said when asked what was likely to set the course of his government: “Events, dear boy, events.” Obama [...]

Read the full article →

McCoy and Reilly: an empire of failed states

by TomDispatch 04.26.2011

Reprinted with permission of TomDispatch.com Imperial powers hedge their bets.  The most striking recent example we have of this is in Egypt.  While the Pentagon was pouring money into the Egyptian military (approximately $40 billion since 1979), it turns out — thank you, WikiLeaks! — that the U.S. government was shuttling far smaller amounts (millions, [...]

Read the full article →

News roundup — April 25

by Paul Woodward 04.25.2011

Poll: Over half of Egypt wants end to Israel peace More than half of all Egyptians would like to see the 1979 peace treaty with Israel annulled, according to results of a poll conducted by the U.S.-based Pew Research Center released Monday. The poll highlights the deep unpopularity of the three-decade-old treaty, which is central [...]

Read the full article →

The courage of ordinary people standing up to Gaddafi

by News Sources 04.25.2011

Chris McGreal, who is covering the war in Libya for The Guardian and who as the paper’s South Africa correspondent witnessed the end of the apartheid era, says: “Few revolutions have been more inspiring. After years of reporting uprisings and conflicts driven by ideology, factional interests or warlords soaked in blood — from El Salvador [...]

Read the full article →

The Gitmo Files

by News Sources 04.24.2011

On Sunday April 24, 2011 WikiLeaks began publishing 779 secret files from the notorious Guantanamo Bay prison camp. The details for every detainee will be released daily over the coming month. Children and senile old men among detainees The Guantánamo files reveal the often fragile physical and mental condition of Guantánamo’s oldest and youngest residents, [...]

Read the full article →

The crisis of American tentativeness

by News Sources 04.24.2011

Christopher Dickey and John Barry write: From Washington’s vantage, every Friday is becoming Black Friday in the Middle East. Muslim prayers turn to protests that keep building toward full-scale uprisings faster than anyone had predicted, and with potentially cataclysmic consequences nobody dares imagine. This Friday, the shock came in Syria, where President Bashar al-Assad runs [...]

Read the full article →

This will be the Arab world’s next battle

by News Sources 04.24.2011

Lester Brown writes: Long after the political uprisings in the Middle East have subsided, many underlying challenges that are not now in the news will remain. Prominent among these are rapid population growth, spreading water shortages, and growing food insecurity. In some countries grain production is now falling as aquifers – underground water-bearing rocks – [...]

Read the full article →

← Previous Entries