May 2011

Inside Story – Turkey’s changing tunes on Syria

by News Sources 05.15.2011

Share

Read the full article →

Iranian ‘feud’: Much ado about nothing?

by News Sources 05.15.2011

Sharmine Narwani writes: A public spat between Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and the country’s president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad made the international headlines last week. Politics is rarely ever a harmonious business in any country, so why the brouhaha over this particular stand-off? To be sure, the disagreement itself was an unusual occurrence. Khamenei’s very [...]

Read the full article →

Time for Obama to stand up in support of Arab freedom

by News Sources 05.14.2011

Rami G. Khouri writes: What is it about free Arabs that Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and other leading Western officials still do not fully understand or embrace? I am troubled that every few months, we hear a drum roll of anticipation building up to a moment when we are told to expect a defining speech, [...]

Read the full article →

Obama’s Middle East cluelessness

by News Sources 05.14.2011

Scott McLeod writes: Friday’s announcement of George Mitchell’s planned resignation as the U.S. mediator in the Arab-Israeli conflict appears to be yet another sign of the disarray and failure in President Obama’s handling of the Middle East. Recently, two articles provided a troubling inside look at the ineptitude that makes Mitchell’s departure unsurprising. A New [...]

Read the full article →

Israelis defy Nakba law on Independence Day

by News Sources 05.14.2011

Share

Read the full article →

Inside Story – Yemen on the brink

by News Sources 05.14.2011

Share

Read the full article →

Listening Post – Syria: Keeping the story alive

by News Sources 05.14.2011

Share

Read the full article →

Storm over Syria

by News Sources 05.14.2011

Malise Ruthven writes: “Damascus has seen all that has ever occurred on earth, and still she lives,” wrote Mark Twain after visiting Syria’s capital in the 1860s. “She has looked upon the dry bones of a thousand empires, and will see the tombs of a thousand more before she dies.” The turmoil in Syria, where [...]

Read the full article →

Captive soldiers tell of discord in Libyan army

by News Sources 05.14.2011

C J Chivers reports from Misrata: The army and militias of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi, who for more than two months have fought rebels seeking to overthrow the Libyan leader, are undermined by self-serving officers, strained logistics and units hastily reinforced with untrained cadets, according to captured soldiers from their ranks. In interviews this week in [...]

Read the full article →

The quaint and obsolete Nuremberg principles

by News Sources 05.14.2011

Glenn Greenwald writes: Benjamin Ferencz is a 92-year-old naturalized U.S. citizen, American combat soldier during World War II, and a prosecutor at the Nuremberg Trials, where he prosecuted numerous Nazi war criminals, including some responsible for the deaths of upward of 100,000 innocent people.  He gave a fascinating (and shockingly articulate) 13-minute interview yesterday to the CBC in [...]

Read the full article →

News roundup — May 13

by News Sources 05.13.2011

Protesters in Sanaa, Yemen, May 13: Yemen protesters shot as Saleh vows defiance Three protesters have been killed and at least 15 wounded after government forces opened fire at demonstrators in the southern Yemen city of Ibb. The soldiers began shooting after protesters surrounded a building where the troops had taken shelter after a clash [...]

Read the full article →

News roundup — May 12

by News Sources 05.12.2011

Sunni monarchies close ranks Reports that the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) is considering some form of membership for two non-Gulf states – Jordan and Morocco – confirm that the conservative Sunni monarchies of the Middle East are closing ranks against Iran, Shiite-led Iraq and the democratic wave sweeping the region. GCC secretary general Abdullatif al-Zayani [...]

Read the full article →

William Astore: a new age of “enlightened” war

by TomDispatch 05.12.2011

Reprinted with permission of TomDispatch.com In case you hadn’t noticed, they are — no kidding around — absolutely the niftiest non-humans on Earth.  I’m speaking about the special operations force of Navy SEALs that took out Osama bin Laden.  They and their special ops colleagues are “supermen” (ABC News), “X-men” (Jon Stewart), “America’s Jedi Knights” [...]

Read the full article →

Whose side is Pakistan’s ISI really on?

by News Sources 05.12.2011

Declan Walsh writes: If there was one telling moment in Pakistan in the 10 days since Osama bin Laden’s death, when a Hollywood-style American assault on a suburban house left the country reeling, torn between anger, shame and denial, it occurred late one evening on a prime-time television show hosted by Kamran Khan. Chatshow hosts [...]

Read the full article →

Time for Pakistan to divorce the US

by News Sources 05.12.2011

Shaukat Qadir, a retired brigadier and former president of the Islamabad Policy Research Institute, explains how Pakistan ended up at war with itself dealing with a tribal rebellion. If we hark back in time, in 2001, the Pakistani Pashtun and all Afghans were celebrating US intervention in Afghanistan. It would liberate them from Taliban oppression. [...]

Read the full article →

Syria fortifies Obama in his indecision

by News Sources 05.12.2011

From Beirut, Michael Young writes: The New York Times gave readers a double-whammy of Syrian statements on Tuesday. Its correspondent in Beirut, Anthony Shadid, landed interviews with presidential adviser Bouthaina Shaaban and with Rami Makhlouf, the powerful maternal cousin of President Bashar Assad, who represents the financial front of the regime. Shadid was allowed into [...]

Read the full article →

Freeing Israel from its Iran bluff

by News Sources 05.12.2011

Trita Parsi writes: One of the great bluffs in the foreign policy community in the previous decade was that Israel would have no choice but to attack Iran’s nuclear facilities unless Washington stepped up and took military action first. With predictable frequency since the mid-1990s, reports emerged claiming that Israel was months, if not weeks, [...]

Read the full article →

Edward Tufte — the information sage

by Attention to the Unseen 05.12.2011

Joshua Yaffa writes: One day in the spring of 2009, Edward Tufte, the statistician and graphic design theorist, took the train from his home in Cheshire, Connecticut, to Washington, D.C., for a meeting with a few members of the Obama administration. A few weeks earlier, he had received a phone call from Earl Devaney, a [...]

Read the full article →

Statement from the family of Osama bin Laden

by Paul Woodward 05.12.2011

The New York Times published a statement from the family of Osama bin Laden. I Omar Ossama Binladin and my brothers the lawful children and heirs of the Ossama Binladin (OBL) have noted wide coverage of the news of the death of our father, but we are not convinced on the available evidence in the [...]

Read the full article →

Obama needs a challenge from the left

by News Sources 05.11.2011

Mehdi Hasan writes: Cast your minds back to November. Barack Obama had received his “shellacking” in the midterm elections, as the Republicans regained a majority in the House of Representatives and seized control of 29 of the 50 state governorships. It was the worst midterm defeat for the Democrats since 1938. Just a week earlier [...]

Read the full article →

Unspoken truths

by Attention to the Unseen 05.11.2011

Christopher Hitchens continues shining light on the approach of his own death. I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker, And I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and snicker, And in short, I was afraid. —T. S. Eliot, “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.” Like so many of life’s varieties [...]

Read the full article →

Eli Pariser: Beware online filter bubbles

by News Sources 05.11.2011

Share

Read the full article →

Koch brother buys professors at public university to spread free market propaganda — is public education the Kochs’ next front?

by News Sources 05.11.2011

Sarah Seltzer writes: Usually, when billionaires or millionaires give a large sum of money to a university, even a private one, they can specify where that gift will go — which department or function, facilities, new hires, dorms, or what have you. And it’s no secret that some of those big donations may lead to [...]

Read the full article →

The bin Laden assassination

by News Sources 05.11.2011

Did Pakistan know bin Laden was ‘hiding in plain sight’? David Ignatius writes: The ISI is, in the biblical phrase, a house with many mansions. What was known in one wing was not always shared with others. Indeed, if the ISI had transmitted information about sheltering bin Laden, U.S. intelligence almost certainly would have picked [...]

Read the full article →

← Previous Entries

Next Entries →