Expert Analyst: International Politics, Middle East & Nonviolent Action
The Progressive and Transnational.org July 9, 2014The right-wing Israeli government took advantage of the murder of three Israeli teen members of an Israeli settlement in the occupied West Back to whip up ultra-nationalist sentiments, engage in a new wave of…
The dramatic rise of the extremist Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS)—which even al-Qaeda deemed too extreme to remain part of its network—is a tragedy by any measure. It would also be tragic if we allowed the very forces that created this mess to explain it away.
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KUER: NPR Utah, March 21, 2014, featuring Stephen Zunes:The Kerry Initiative: Hope for Resolution of the Israel – Palestine Conflict?Co-sponsored by Peace Advocacy Coalition (PAC) and the Barbara L. and Norman C. Tanner Center for Nonviolent Human Rights Advocacy.
The failure of John Kerry’s Israeli-Palestinian peace talks showed just how extreme U.S. policy on the conflict has become.
Ukraine faces a rising tide of violence in the restive east. Here’s why nonviolent activism is the best strategy for fighting back. Written with Erica Chenoweth.
Because nuns, folk singers and dockworkers have the better track record for helping countries achieve democracy. Nearly 70 countries have shown us how.
Foreign Policy In Focus, March 13, 2014 Given the limits of its power and its own compromised relationship with international law, the U.S. isn’t in a position to do much about Ukraine.
Since the military coup in Egypt against the unpopular but democratically elected government of Mohammed Morsi last July, more than 1,000 regime opponents have been killed, thousands more have been hauled before military courts on political charges, and a repressive anti-protest law has been enacted, severely limiting the right of peaceful assembly.
y claiming that the secular pro-democratic left is somehow in cahoots with both of Washington and the Muslim Brotherhood to undermine the nation, the Egyptian military is trying to have it both ways: appealing to the foreign policy establishment in Washington by suppressing both the Islamists and the left, while playing the pseudo-nationalist card for the Egyptian masses.
The brutal crackdown on both Islamist and secular oppositionists by the US-backed Egyptian military junta has taken on a bizarre twist: using government-controlled media to promote long-discredited conspiracy theories originally put forward by ultra-left fringe groups.
Michael Barker, in an article posted on this site a few days ago, takes offense at my labeling him as someone “notorious” for “conspiracy-mongering.” However, a careful reading of his article and its links actually reinforces that argument.
In preparing my syllabus for my introductory course on the Middle East this semester, it gives me pause that the California Assembly is still on record declaring that discussing certain well-documented historic incidents in modern Middle Eastern history should “not be tolerated in the classroom.” This unprecedented attack on academic freedom came in the form of a resolution (HR 35), co-sponsored by 66 of the 88 Assembly members, which passed by a voice vote in 2012.
The tragic upsurge of violence in Iraq in recent months, including the temporary takeover of sections of two major Iraqi cities by al-Qaida affiliates, is a direct consequence of the repression of peaceful dissent by the U.S.-backed government in Baghdad and, ultimately, of the 2003 U.S. invasion and occupation.
It was the second week in January of 1991. I was in the sanctuary of a large Catholic Church in Baghdad. Every votive candle in the place was lit, no doubt in support of prayers for loved ones in anticipation of the massive U.S. bombing campaign, which was to be known as Operation Desert Storm, which was soon to commence.
Late last month, President Barack Obama met with Morocco’s King Mohammed VI in Washington for their first face-to-face meeting. The result was a bitter disappointment for supporters of human rights and international law.
In the time since his death at age 95, Nelson Mandela’s thinking on the strategic direction of the liberation struggle in South Africa has been oversimplified by proponents of nonviolent and armed resistance alike. His leadership in the relatively peaceful end to the brutal apartheid system was indeed critical, as was his leadership three decades earlier in the shift from nonviolent to armed resistance by the African National Congress (ANC). Yet many analysts have largely ignored the critical events in South Africa which took place in between, during his nearly three decades in prison.
“Mandela was a great leader because he recognized that the movement had become a civil insurrection, a largely nonviolent struggle. A great leader is one who recognizes where the movement is and leads them accordingly, not one who says, ‘Do it my way!’”
Carl Gibson and Steve Horn have done an important service in writing their article outlining Srdja Popovic’s inexcusable collaboration with the global intelligence company STRATFOR and his disclosure of the activities of movements and activists with whom he has worked. Unfortunately, as will be spelled out below, the article falls into a rather simplistic and reductionist analysis of Popovic’s motivations and, more critically, misrepresents the nature of the popular uprisings in Serbia and other countries. The article also contains a number of factual errors and misleading statements.
A response to Maged Mandour: There is little systematic evidence to suggest that “ruthlessness” is, in and of itself, a critical variable.