On the subject of the Syrian war there has been much deserved mockery of the name change by Jabhat Al-Nusra, Al-Qaeda’s local Syrian branch, to its new name: “Jabhat Fateh al-Sham”. It has been rightly pointed out that this name change, and the organisation’s attempt to distance itself from its Al-Qaeda parent, is a transparent fraud made all the […]
The Holocaust was the first historic event that touched my inner core as a human being. Perhaps this explains my early fascination with everything Jewish. In the 1990s, I lived for two years in Israel, where I volunteered in a center for adults with special needs. This was part of my German Zivildienst — a civilian substitute for conscientious objectors […]
10: Bashar al-Assad has a higher approval rating than Barack Obama Despite Obama’s claims Assad is illegitimate and must step down, the fact remains that since the conflict erupted in 2011, Assad has held the majority support of his people. The elections in 2014 – which Assad won by a landslide with international observers claiming no violations – is a testament […]
When Turkish President/aspiring Sultan Recep Tayyip Erdogan landed at Istanbul’s Ataturk airport early Saturday morning, he declared the attempted coup against his government a failure, and a “gift from God.” © AFP 2016/ STR / TURKISH PRESIDENTIAL PRESS OFFICE Erdogan Blames Gulenist Network, Calls on Public to Fight Against Coup in Public Squares God apparently uses Face Time. It was […]
Rabbi Michael Lerner gives us all a lesson in Speaking Truth to Power at Muhammad Ali’s funeral – much to the discomfort of front row audience member Bill Clinton. Touching on justice for Palestinians, a basic income, and challenging Hillary Clinton to reverse America’s murderous foreign policy, Lerner wasn’t ever going to just go after Trump, but spoke of universal […]
“If you don’t like refugees coming to your country, stop voting for politicians who love to bomb the shit out of them.”
Policymakers in Official Washington talk piously about waging “humanitarian” wars, but the real-life consequences of these interventions play out in squalid refugee camps far from U.S. shores, as Ann Wright witnessed.
One hundred years ago this week, a secret deal was concluded between Britain and France that plunged the Middle East into a century of bloodshed. Two colonial negotiators, Mark Sykes and François Georges-Picot, agreed to carve up the Middle East between their respective countries in order to secure European control of the failing Ottoman Empire at the end of the First World War.
If you believed the western corporate media you might think that the Syrian Government, for some unknown reason, has been bombing its own hospitals, and had killed Aleppo’s only paediatric surgeon. Nothing could be further from the truth.
Faced with a strong and compelling defence, and a weak Crown case, the campaigners were acquitted of all charges. In summarising, the Judge couldn’t be clearer. As well as pointing out that the police had ignored claims of illegality on the part of the organisers, his verdict referenced “Clear, credible and largely unchallenged evidence from the expert witnesses of wrongdoing at DSEI and compelling evidence that it took place in 2015.”
Today, Turkey continues its brutality in its war against its Kurdish population. The state is imposing new curfews daily in the south-east of the country. Hundreds of citizens have been killed so far, whilst the western mainstream media and politicians remain largely silent about the massacres. Anti-militarist activists in the UK, however, are taking action against atrocities carried out by […]
American, European and Russian corporations are the only ones winning from humanitarian disasters of their own making. As a tentative ceasefire continues to hold in Syria, with the next round of peace talks having resumed this week, you’d be forgiven for thinking that there might be an end in sight to a conflict that has raged for nearly five years. […]
The downing by NATO member, Turkey, of a Russian aircraft on the Syrian-Turkish border in November 2015 – the first of its kind since 1952 – brought into sharp focus the complex patchwork of contending geopolitical and strategic allegiances against what is ostensibly a unified military response to ISIS. Turkey’s role in supporting the Al-Qaeda affiliate, the Al Nusra Front, starkly emphasises […]
