Lowest US prestige ever in the Middle East

This month, in the Middle East, has seen the unmaking of the President of the United States. While Barack Obama and Benjamin Netanyahu played out their farce in Washington – Obama groveling as usual – the Arabs got on with the serious business of changing their world, demonstrating and fighting and dying for freedoms they […]

Russia pledges to back Palestinian bid for state recognition

A top Hamas official said Monday that Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has pledged Moscow’s support if the Palestinians seek recognition as a United Nations member-state in September. “All peoples need unity, not least the Palestinian people, who are justly seeking a solution to their task of creating a state,” Lavrov said. Israel and the […]

Obama Netanyahu Israel and Palestine

Middle East envoy Tony Blair said Thursday that he believes President Barack Obama launched his peace initiative out of concern for what might happen to Israel if Palestinian statehood is endorsed by the U.N. General Assembly. Blair described Obama’s initiative — rejected by Israeli leader Benjamin Netanyahu — as “an attempt to fill a vacuum […]

US Special Forces warfare Geneva Conventions and UN Charter be damned

[Until recently, the approaches to warfare could be summed up as] the Powell Doctrine, the Rumsfeld Doctrine, and the Petraeus Doctrine. The Powell Doctrine is essentially conventional warfare a-la-World War II: massive firepower, lots of soldiers, clear goals. This was the formula for the first Gulf War, which, after a month of bombing, lasted only […]

The New Face of US War

The assassination of al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden did more than knock off America’s Public Enemy Number One, it formalized a new kind of warfare, where sovereignty is irrelevant, armies tangential, and decisions are secret. It is also one that requires a vast intelligence apparatus, one that now constitute almost a fourth arm of government […]

Osama bin Laden burial at sea unacceptable to Muslims

Excerpt of a CNN Opinion by Abdal Hakim Murad, a lecturer in Islamic Studies at the Faculty of Divinity, Cambridge University, England. In 2010 he was voted Britain’s most influential Muslim thinker by Jordan’s Royal Islamic Strategic Studies Center. The burial at sea of Osama bin Ladin was a sad miscalculation. It is not clear […]

US Senators reveal secret Patriot Act

You may think you understand how the Patriot Act allows the government to spy on its citizens. Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Oregon) says it’s worse than you’ve heard. Congress is set to reauthorize three controversial provisions of the surveillance law, but Wyden says that is a mere fig leaf for a far broader legal interpretation of […]

Japan Fukushima Daiichi nuclear reactors riddled with holes

Two of the damaged reactors at the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in Japan may be riddled with holes, according to the facility’s owner. The holes may be as big as 7 to 10 centimeters (2.8 – 3.9 inches), Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO) said in a 225-page document submitted to Japan’s Nuclear and […]

The US completely supports Israel and yet they call the shots?

In America, the power of the Israel lobby is much greater than at any time in the past, and certainly since the 1967 war. We are faced, here in this country, with the extraordinary spectacle of a US President confronting a foreign leader, Benjamin Netanyahu, with a list of reasonable requests – negotiation in good […]

JSOC Private Killing Machine of the US President

They’re known as “JSOC” — Joint Special Operations Command. They report directly to the president and, as National Journal reporter Marc Ambinder put it “operate worldwide based on the legal (or extra-legal) premises of classified presidential directive.” “Kill/capture” has been waged by the Joint Special Operations Command, or JSOC, 3,000 operations in only the past […]