In Response – Under the headline “Nobel Laureates Clueless About Real Tibet,” semi-official mouthpiece Global Times rebuts a recent open letter from 12 Nobel laureates to Chinese leaders raising concerns about the self-immolation …
Saudi Arabia
Must-Reads from Around the World: March 26, 2012
Noisy Neighbors – China’s Global Times reacts to the Hong Kong election Sunday, by a small elite circle, of Leung Chun-ying as new Chief Executive with an opinionated ode for the region and the mainland to improve their sometimes …
Must-Reads from Around the World: March 14, 2012
Beware the Librarians — Newish online-only outfit Global Mail writes about the revolt against the director of the revived ancient Bibliotheca Alexandrina in Egypt amid corruption claims. Ismail Serageldin faces calls for his
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“I am convinced that there was a direct line between at least some of the terrorists who carried out the September 11th attacks and the government of Saudi Arabia.”
Can Syria’s Assad Fight His Way to Political Survival?
Despite the death and destruction his security forces are raining down on opposition-held neighborhoods in Syria, President Bashar Assad is unlikely to succeed in crushing a year-old rebellion. International revulsion at the …
Must Reads from Around the World: Jan. 27, 2012
Geopolitics - Foreign Policy takes an astute look at how Iran – contrary to its own initial hopes and others’ fears – has failed to benefit from the Arab Spring. “In fact, Iran’s regional position has taken a big hit,” Colin H. …
Can China Benefit From Growing U.S.-Iran Tensions?
U.S. efforts to reduce global demand for Iran’s oil exports as a means to pressure it into curbing its nuclear ambitions could present major problems for China, the leading customer of Iranian crude exports. China reacted …
Despite Downed U.S. Drone Claims, Iran War Talk May Be Overblown
Anyone cut off from all news media for the six months before December 2011 could be forgiven for imagining we’re in the opening stages of a war between the West and Iran. Sunday’s headline was Iran’s claim to have captured a …
Bahrain’s Rights Report: Power Speaks Truth to Itself
Can the truth heal? That’s what the people of Bahrain are about to find out as they embark on an ambitious, and unprecedented, attempt to move beyond the ravages of an aborted revolution that has sundered the social fabric of this cosmopolitan island kingdom in the Persian Gulf. Five months ago Bahrain’s King Hamad bin Isa …
Cairo in Turmoil: Obama’s Plan B Stumbles, What’s Plan C?
The reason the Obama Administration has been so reluctant to criticize Egypt’s military junta for its violent handling of the latest round of democracy protests is that the generals have, all along, been Washington’s preferred stewards of post-Mubarak political change. The State Department on Tuesday finally condemned the “excessive …
U.N. Body Accuses Iran of Nuclear Weapons Research, But Can Military Action Stop Tehran?
The U.N.’s nuclear watchdog has finally lent its imprimatur to the suspicion that Iran is using its atomic energy program to put the means to build nuclear weapons within its reach. That’s the upshot of Tuesday’s report by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) on Iran, making it the agency’s harshest finding yet on Iran’s …
Despite Mounting Bloodshed, Syria is Unlikely to See a Libya-style NATO Intervention
Seven months of often bitter fighting and up to 30,000 casualties notwithstanding, Libya’s civil war to end the regime of Col. Muammar Gaddafi was relatively easy for its regional and international stakeholder — at least it was when compared with the challenge of responding the increasingly bloody standoff in Syria. As the Arab League …
Game of Thrones: Why the Saudi Succession Spells Instability in the Long Term
The death of Saudi Arabia Crown Prince Sultan on Saturday came as no surprise. For years the 86-year-old Saudi defense minister and brother to the king had been ailing, and in fact had been undergoing treatment for cancer in the United States when he died. The appointment of another brother, Prince Nayef, 78, as King Abdullah’s …
