They came from all walks of life and represented all ages: men, women and children stretching more than five kilometers outside Bahrain’s capital city, Manama, on 5-18-2012 to categorically reject any union between their country and Saudi Arabia, which was discussed, though not approved, in Riyadh, the Saudi capital.
For a state to function reasonably well, it must fulfill certain basic needs of the people: provide security of life, limb and property as well as food, water, education and health services.
Imran Khan, cricket-star-turned-social worker-turned politician, is riding high in public opinion polls in Pakistan.
The doctrine of the separation of powers, by which governance is divided among three branches — the executive, legislative and the judiciary — is an old concept which was first developed in ancient Greece that continues to form the foundation of governance in most liberal democracies today.
In war, numerous tactics are used to weaken the enemy with a view to its ultimate defeat.
Photographs are the privileged medium for showing the graphic horrors of war.
On February 26, a young African American middle schooler named Trayvon Martin was shot dead in Florida, as he walked back to a family member’s home after having bought some candy at a local convenience store.
As Turkey’s hopes of becoming the leading power to restore Muslim public identity and its own Islamic socio-political distinctiveness gradually fade away from Muslim memory, it is important not to exaggerate the deviations of contemporary Turkey.
When it comes to the War on Terror, it appears there is always a possibility to find legal justification for just about anything. Despite there being an “absolute” prohibition on torture under international law, John Yoo, then a Deputy Assistant Attorney at the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel (OLC).
With Rick Santorum’s recent win in the Louisiana primary, Barack Obama’s elegantly simple re-election strategy seems to have succeeded. While Mitt Romney is poised to win the crown of the Republican nomination for president, Santorum stubbornly strong showing is displaying a fragmented Republican base that bodes well for the incumbent president.
Hundreds of thousands of people from around the world have converged on countries bordering Occupied Palestine in an attempt to march to al-Quds (Jerusalem) in solidarity with the Palestinian people. Called the Global March to Jerusalem (GMJ).
The uneasy peace that had descended on Gaza after the bloody Israeli onslaught of December 2008–January 2009, code-named Operation Cast Lead, ended on March 9 when Israel launched an air strike against Zuhair al-Qaissi, Head of the Popular Resistance Committees group.
After the 2011 Libya War, a beleaguered Syria is the new Middle Eastern prize for which the world’s military-industrial gladiators are now battling. This smoldering long war was inaugurated by the Arab Spring, where the popular movements provided a perfect cover for the Anglo-American axis to slip in their Manchurian candidates a la the Syrian “opposition.”
Civilian suffering, especially that of children, always arouses deep concern among Muslims, indeed all people. Human suffering of any kind should concern people everywhere and they should help end this tragic situation as quickly as possible. It is, however, at the larger level that there is much confusion and misunderstanding about what is really afoot in Syria.
Two competing narratives continue to dominate discussion about events in Syria. The first and most-often repeated narrative, eagerly projected by the Western corporate media as well as al-Jazeera, is that the people of Syria have risen up for their rights and will settle for nothing less than the ouster of President Bashar al-Asad.
Khader Adnan, a 33-year-old Palestinian baker detained without charge by Israel since December 2011, ended his 66-day hunger strike on February 21, which had taken him to the verge of death. Adnan ended his strike only after Israel agreed to release him after serving another two months of “administrative detention”, under which a suspect can be held without charge for six-month periods, renewable indefinitely.
The Qatari-based tribal-owned network, al-Jazeera’s news broadcast on February 16 about Libya was revealing. It started with a report on the mayhem that has gripped Libya since the capture and brutal murder of Colonel Muammar Qaddafi on October 20, 2011. Without showing any footage of the brutality perpetrated by various militias against civilians, the network switched to an episode of 16 years ago to tell viewers how terrible Qaddafi’s rule was.
The self-proclaimed superpower is clutching at straws about “peace talks” following the Taliban’s convincing defeat of US-NATO armies in Afghanistan. While talk about talks has gone on for years with American officials — civilian and military — making bold pronouncements about commencement of “secret talks”, only to discover that some goat herder or a petty bicycle shop owner had taken the “smart” Americans for a long ride, the latter have not given up.
Merely a year ago Turkey enjoyed much respect among neighbors and established warm and cordial relations with them, helping to catapult Ankara’s political, economic and cultural objectives. Frequent visits to neighboring countries by Turkish delegations, usually accompanied by senior government officials including Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, signing memorandums of understanding and agreements, increasing trade and political as well as military cooperation, heralded a new era for the conflict-torn region.
