In yesterday’s address to his followers on the anniversary of the 2000 Israeli pullout from Lebanon, Hizballah chief Hassan Nasrullah was typically bombastic when it came to his views on supporting the desires of the Palestinian people to live in freedom. When it came to Syrians seeking to liberate themselves from a corrupt and …
Syria
Bahrain’s Voiceless: How al-Jazeera’s Coverage of the Arab Spring Is Uneven
A couple of weeks ago, the Qatari English language daily the Peninsula ran the provocative headline, “Why Are We So Timid?” in its Saturday special issue. “Freedom eludes the Qatari media even as the country’s top leadership is keen to promote free expression and has lifted all kinds of restrictions on the local press,” opined …
Global Briefing: Bosom Buddies and the Same Old Bad Guys
Anglo Unity: Fresh from his late Monday night arrival in Ireland, President Obama meets U.K. Prime Minister David Cameron in London today, as the White House steps up its efforts to rekindle the much-touted “special relationship” between the across-the-pond allies. As Catherine Mayer writes, they do have a lot to discuss.
Bursting the …
Obama: So Loved in Britain, He Might Consider Staying
The President was supposed to arrive for his two-day state visit to the U.K. on the morning of May 24. Instead, a plume of volcanic ash from Iceland forced a change of plan that saw POTUS curtail his trip to his ancestral homeland, Ireland, and head for London before Air Force One could be grounded. As officials scrambled to find him a …
Why Obama’s Mideast Speech is For Domestic, Not Arab Consumption
The question among Middle East watchers over Thursday’s planned speech on the Arab Spring by President Obama has been this: Why would he address the Arab world at a moment when his policies have little hope of reversing diminished U.S. standing? After all, the Arab consensus views Obama has having failed miserably to deliver on the …
Behind the Israel Protest Turmoil: A Middle East Without a Peace Process
Welcome to the post-peace process: The drama that unfolded on Israel’s boundaries on Sunday as 12 Palestinians were killed in a wave of unarmed civil disobedience was but a taste of things to come. That was the warning from Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak, Sunday night, and he’s certainly got reason to worry: Rather than pin their …
Signs of Fatigue and Unease as Europe Struggles with Libyan and Syrian Crises
Despite intensified NATO bombings and important gains made by the rebels who are fighting loyalists of Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi on Tuesday, it seems increasingly clear that the clock is ticking on the international community’s involvement in Libya’s civil war — and that doubts about the outcomes of other Arab Spring uprisings …
Pakistan May Have Been Cheating on the U.S., but Don’t Expect the Marriage to End
That Pakistan has been an unreliable ally to the U.S. is hardly news: just as Osama bin Laden was hiding in plain sight in Abbottabad, so has Pakistan’s security establishment scarcely bothered to conceal the fact that it pursues an agenda quite different from that of the U.S. While that establishment has helped the U.S. roll up hundreds …
The Aghast List: Guess Who’s Not Coming to the Royal Wedding
Tomorrow’s wedding—yes, that one—is termed a semi-state occasion. And it seems that the House of Windsor and Her Majesty’s Government have got themselves into a semi-state about it. Hear that screeching? It’s the noise of palace machinery being thrown into reverse as representatives of dodgy regimes are disinvited, while Tony Blair …
Syria: There Will Be (Lots More) Blood
Unable to assuage their grievances with empty promises of reform, Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad this week adopted the “Tiananmen Model” of dealing with a popular protest movement. Like the Chinese authorities in 1989, Assad on Monday sent in the tanks and thousands of troops to reclaim the streets of Deraa, where the rebellion began …