OpenDemocracy.net, July 6, 2012, by Stephen Zunes,
and CETRI Le Sud en mouvement (Belgium).
A growing anti-government movement consisting of nonviolent demonstrations as well as scattered rioting is beginning to threaten the Sudanese dictatorship of Omar al-Bashir, an indicted war criminal, who has ruled this large North African nation for 23 years. Beginning as protests against strict austerity measures imposed three weeks ago, the chants of the protesters have escalated to “the people want to overthrow the regime,” the line heard in recent uprisings in other Arab countries, including Egypt, Yemen, Libya, Bahrain and Syria. Could Sudan be the next Arab country in which an autocratic government is brought down in a largely nonviolent civil insurrection?
Category: Middle East
Middle East Overview
Interview: U.S. Mid-East Policy in Relation to the Ongoing Uprising in Bahrain (audio)
Source is no longer available online. See related links.
U.S. in No Position to Condemn Alleged Russian Transfer of Helicopter Gunships to Syrian Regime
Foreign Policy In Focus/Institute for Policy Studies, June 13, 2012.
Republished by National Catholic Reporter & ZNetwork
U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton has claimed that “there are attack helicopters on the way from Russia to Syria,” though the Russian government denies the accusation. If true, it would be highly disturbing, given the Syrian regime’s widespread use of such weapons against unarmed civilians. Amnesty International and other human rights groups have called for an immediate end of arms transfers to the Syrian regime, particularly of weapons that have been used to target civilians… Thousands of Salvadoran civilians are believed to have been killed by U.S.-supplied helicopter gunships during the 1980s…
Congress Pushes for War with Iran
Foreign Policy In Focus/Institute for Policy Studies June 13, 2012.
Republished by National Catholic Reporter & ZNetwork
In another resolution apparently designed to prepare for war against Iran, the U.S. House of Representatives, in an overwhelmingly bipartisan 401–11 vote, has passed a resolution (HR 568) urging the president to oppose any policy toward Iran “that would rely on containment as an option in response to the Iranian nuclear threat…” Indeed, the rush to pass this bill appears to have been designed to undermine the ongoing international negotiations on Iran’s nuclear program…
Bipartisan Assault on Middle East Peace
29 May 2012 Foreign Policy In Focus/Institute for Policy Studies
Also: Huffington Post, Antiwar.com, Rise Up Times, Salem News (Oregon) and interviewed on The Scott Horton Show.
Earlier this month, the House of Representatives passed 411-2 a dangerous piece of legislation (H.R. 4133) which would undermine the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, weaken Israeli moderates and peace advocates, undercut international law, further militarize the Middle East, and make Israel ever more dependent on the U.S.
University of California Takes Aim at Human Rights Activists
Truthout, 4 May 2012, by Stephen Zunes.
Also in Rise Up Times and interviewed on The Scott Horton Show. From the Vietnam War to the Central American revolutions to apartheid South Africa to the East Timor occupation to the invasion of Iraq, university campuses have been an important venue for concerned scholars and activists to raise issues regarding human rights, international law and US foreign policy…
Remembering Israel’s West Bank Offensive
Eurasia Review, IHaveNet.com & Foreign Policy In Focus./
Institute for Policy Studies April 18-19, 2012:
Ten years ago this month, following a particularly deadly series of Palestinian terrorist attacks, Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) launched an assault on several Palestinian cities and refugee camps in the West Bank. The Bush administration largely supported the Israeli offensive, even as hundreds of civilians were killed and thousands of young men detained without charge amid widespread reports of torture. Both Israeli and international human rights groups condemned the widespread violations of international humanitarian law.
Military Intervention in Syria Is a Bad Idea
Foreign Policy In Focus/Institute for Policy Studies,
Antiwar.com, Common Dreams, March 29, 2012
Empirical studies have repeatedly demonstrated that international military interventions in cases of severe repression actually exacerbate violence in the short term and can only reduce violence in the longer term if the intervention is impartial or neutral. Other studies demonstrate that foreign military interventions actually increase the duration of civil wars, making the conflicts longer and bloodier, and the regional consequences more serious…
Obama, Palestine, and the United Nations
Tikkun magazine, March 2, 2012: For the Palestinian Authority to win UN recognition of Palestinian statehood, it would have to overcome major hurdles presented by the Obama administration. Back in 1948, Israel achieved its independence through a U.S.-backed UN General Assembly resolution. Credit: Ramzy Taweel (Cartoon Movement). For those of us who hoped that President Barack Obama would usher in a new era supporting international law, the United Nations, and Israeli-Palestinian peace, 2011 proved to be a profoundly disappointing year.
[Also archived at Duke University Press]
CrossTalk on Yemen: Rise of Al-Qaeda?
Source is no longer available. Find related links.
US Outrage Over Syria Veto at UN Rife With Hypocrisy
Truthout, February 8, 2012, also by The Israel Palestine Project
Official Washington has been rife with condemnation at the decision by the governments of Russia and China to veto an otherwise unanimous UN Security Council resolution condemning the ongoing repression in Syria and calling for a halt to violence on all sides; unfettered access for Arab League monitors; and “a Syrian-led political transition to a democratic, plural political system, in which citizens are equal regardless of their affiliations or ethnicities or beliefs.” Human rights activists were outraged…
Syrian Repression, the Chinese-Russian Veto, and U.S. Hypocrisy
Foreign Policy In Focus/Institute for Policy Studies, February 7, 2012
Also Eurasia Review, Global Policy Focus, Middle East Spectator, The Indypendent, Democratic Underground, Mulay Smara, Alternatives International Journal and Transnational Blog
Just as France shields Morocco from accountability for its ongoing occupation and repression in Western Sahara, and just as the U.S. shields Israel from having observe international humanitarian law, Russia and China have used their permanent seats on the UN Security Council to protect the Syrian regime from accountability for its savage repression against its own citizens. Although inexcusable, the self-righteous reaction by U.S. officials betrays hypocrisy on a grand scale…
Unarmed resistance still Syria’s best hope
26 January 2012 National Catholic Reporter
Also Huffington Post, and Znetwork.org
The Syrian pro-democracy struggle has been both an enormous tragedy and a powerful inspiration. Unlike Tunisia and Egypt, where the opposition was relatively united and was able to take advantage of divisions within the ruling circles, the elites in Syria have been united against a divided opposition. Decades of human rights abuses, sectarian divisions, suppression of independent civil society institutions, ubiquitous secret police, and an overall culture of fear have made it difficult to build a unified opposition movement.
Iraq: Remembering Those Responsible
Truthout Published 1 January 2012: Also at Common Dreams, Transnational.org, Peace and Justice Post and ZNetwork
The formal withdrawal of US troops from Iraq this month has led to a whole series of retrospectives on the invasion and the eight and a half years of occupation that followed as well as a host of unanswered questions.. of critical importance at this juncture is that we not allow the narratives on the war to understate its tragic consequences or those responsible for the war — both Republicans and Democrats — to escape their responsibility…
Protesters persist despite crackdown
National Catholic Reporter December 22, 2011 and The Free Library
Of the popular pro-democracy civil insurrections that have swept the Middle East over the past year, none were as large — relative to the size of the country — as the one that took place in the island kingdom of Bahrain. And while scattered resistance continues, none were so thoroughly suppressed.
Obama Ad Condemns Israel Aid Opponents
Foreign Policy In Focus/Institute for Policy Studies
December 14, 2011 and at Common Dreams.
An ad on my Facebook page from barackobama.com reads, “Mitt Romney, Rick Perry, and Newt Gingrich say they would start foreign aid to Israel at zero. Reject their extreme plan now!”
This struck me as odd for two reasons: First, it is disingenuous and misleading… Secondly, millions of Americans—particularly younger voters—support zeroing out aid to Israel on human rights grounds.
Iran Threat Reduction Act Actually Enhances Threat of War
Huffington Post & Commondreams.org, November 14, 2011 Congress is taking up dangerous legislation which appears to be designed to pave the way for war by taking the unprecedented step of effectively preventing any kind of U.S. diplomatic contact with Iran.
U.S. policy undermines moderate Palestinians
National Catholic Reporter October 28, 2011
The Palestinians declared an independent state back in 1988, which has been recognized by more than 130 of the world’s nations. The Obama administration, however, insists that it is still too early for Palestine to be admitted into the UN.
Answering Obama’s UN Address
September 30, 2011. Source is no longer available.
Although his September 21 address before the UN General Assembly contained a number of positive elements, in many ways it also contained many of the same kind of duplicitous and misleading statements one would have expected from his predecessor. Excerpts below…
Congress and Its Colonialist Agenda
Truthout & Salem News (Oregon) July 15. 2011
Up until the mid-20th century, Western attitudes regarding national freedom essentially went like this: the independence of white Western nations (Great Britain, France, the United States etc.) was a given. Independence for nonwhite, non-Western nations (such as those in Africa, the Middle East and Asia), however, could only be under conditions granted by the occupying powers. The time at which these nations could be free, their specific boundaries and the conditions of their independence could only be reached through negotiations between the colonial occupiers and representatives