Blood on the Constitution America will never solve its gun problem until it gets over its fetish for the Founding Fathers. By Rosa Brooks  18 Sept 2013 Here we go again. With 12 dead bodies at Washington’s Navy Yard, not including that of the shooter, Americans are back to the usual handwringing: Why, oh why can’t we […]

By Hisham Allam 19 September 2013 Hisham Allam is an award-winning investigative reporter based in Cairo. He was an investigative editor for the El-Watan newspaper, but the recent crackdown on the Egyptian press has taken a toll on his freedom to report the truth. In this Secrets of the Masters interview, he describes his groundbreaking coverage of the Egyptian revolution […]

By VICTOR GILINSKY and HENRY D. SOKOLSKI 18 September  2013 THE recent agreement between the United States and Russia on Syria’s chemical weapons made clear what should have been obvious long ago: President Obama’s effort to uphold international norms against weapons of mass destruction in the Middle East will entangle the United States in a […]

High above Nazareth, an Israeli mayor wants to keep his city Jewish ‘now and forever’ “Upper Nazareth” Mayor Shimon Gapso stands on the terrace at city hall, looking out over his city and beyond in Nazareth, Israel on September 17, 2013.   By William Booth and Ruth Eglash  20 Sept 2013 NAZARETH ILLIT, Israel — […]

By John Reed in Jerusalem   20 Sept 2013 Israeli soldiers manhandled European diplomats and confiscated an aid truck carrying tents to homeless Palestinians in the West Bank on Friday in an incident likely to test Israel’s strained relations with European countries. The incident happened on Friday afternoon in the northern Jordan Valley when Acted, […]

By Michael Omer-Man  16 September  2013 The EU’s settlement guidelines, if implemented, could be the first step in showing Israel that there are consequences for its occupation and illegal settlement building, and actually push both sides toward a resolution to the conflict. Since the EU announced new guidelines regarding its activity in settlements in July, […]

Why don’t white feminists support Muslim women by respecting our right to make our own choices? By Salma Yaqoob  13 Oct 2013 Harriet Harman MP, Labour’s “in-house feminist”, has entered the debate on Muslim women and integration with the observation that “the veil is an obstacle to women’s participation, on equal terms, in society”. Her comments echo those […]

By Time Stanley 18 Sept 2013 So Tommy Robinson (aka Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, Andrew McMaster, Paul Harris and Ilsa the She Wolf) walked into Selfridges with a friend and the chap behind the counter refused to serve them. Tommy filmed the incident (as you do) and Selfridges says that it was “very disappointed” by what happened […]

When a member of staff at Selfridges refused to serve the EDL leader, they were suspended from the store. But declining to interact with someone who sows hatred on a daily basis is a perfectly rational thing to do. By Alex Andreou   18 Sept 2013 I’m not going to do the thing of listing all […]

By Dan Hodges   16 sept 2013 This morning Lib Dem Home Office minister Jeremy Browne has created a bit of a storm by saying that we need a “national debate” on the topic of Muslim women wearing of veils. His call was echoed by Tory MP Dr Sarah Wollaston, who said that “we must not […]

French anti-veil laws are steeped in racism and have opened the door to abuse against Muslims. By Valeria Costa-Kostritsky   30 Nov 2012 In 2004, France introduced the law on “secularity and conspicious religious symbols in schools” which banned wearing conspicuous religious symbols in French public primary and secondary schools. Its supporters argued that this was keeping […]

By THE EDITORIAL BOARD The New York Times               12 Sept 2013 Two years after thousands of Egyptian protesters risked their lives to bring down the dictator Hosni Mubarak, the military-controlled government in Cairo is expanding a repressive system that may ultimately be worse than the one Mr. Mubarak built […]

By J. Dana Stuster  12  Sept 2013 Russian President Vladimir Putin made a direct appeal to the American public in an editorial in Thursday morning’s New York Times. “The potential strike by the United States against Syria,” he writes, “despite strong opposition from many countries and major political and religious leaders, including the pope, will result in more […]

By Katelyn Fossett  11 Sept 2013 The shocking findings of a study on sexual assault in Asia, published Tuesday in the Lancet Global Health journal, have been generating a lot of buzz, particularly the figures on Papua New Guinea, where 59 percent — yes, more than a majority — of men admitted to raping sexual partners. The researchers involved in the […]

Obama’s Syria plan forced AIPAC’s hand. By Steven J. Rosen   4 Sept 2013 President Barack Obama’s decision to make Congress decide on the course of the Syrian intervention has put the pro-Israel camp just where it did not want to be: openly advocating American military involvement in the volatile Middle East. It’s a calculation […]

By Thomas Lippman   3 Sep 2013 When King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia and his foreign minister, Prince Saud al-Faisal, issued unequivocal pledges of support for Egypt’s military government and its crackdown on the Muslim Brotherhood, their move was widely depicted in the news media as a logical extension of the kingdom’s opposition to revolutionary […]

By Maung Zarni   3 Sept 2013 Over the past year, Myanmar has been plagued by neo-Nazi “Buddhist” racism and organized mob violence targeting the country’s minority Muslims of diverse ethnic and historical backgrounds. At the very heart of Myanmar’s Islamophobic campaign lies the state and its successive senior leaderships, which continue to operate within […]

By Mehdi Hasan Political director of The Huffington Post UK    29 Aug 2013 Why act now against the loathsome Assad regime in Syria? The alleged use of chemical weapons against the residents of Ghouta is a “moral obscenity”, according to the US Secretary of State John Kerry. “There have been decades of painstaking work to construct an […]

By Heather Saul   29 Aug 2013 Saudi Arabia‘s cabinet has passed a ban on domestic violence and other forms of abuse against women for the first time in the Kingdom’s history. The cabinet approved the ban on physical or sexual violence earlier this week, which applies both at home or within the work place. […]

By Deborah Cassrels   27 Aug 2013 “THEY call me a traitor,” says Roni Hammermann, 73, an Israeli activist from Machsom (Checkpoint) Watch, which monitors Israel’s West Bank checkpoints for human rights violations against Palestinians. Israeli soldiers are edgy as masses of Palestinians queue at the largest military checkpoint, Qalandiya, between northern Jerusalem and Ramallah. […]

No matter where you look in the world, American words don’t match American deeds. By John Arquilla  26 Aug 2013   In his ode to free thinking, “Self-Reliance,” Ralph Waldo Emerson had it right when he affirmed that “foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen.” He understood the need for […]

By Emily L. Hauser  22 Aug 2013 We don’t talk about it as much, but the West Bank and Gaza Strip aren’t the only territories Israel conquered in 1967 over which it’s still arguing. The Golan Heights was taken in the course of horrific battles with Syria, and though Israel annexed the land in 1981, […]

The hidden power of Egypt’s drug-running cops. By Mark Perry  23 Aug 2013 In March 1986, a new and more potent form of hashish began to show up on the streets of Cairo. Called “Bye Bye Rushdie” by the drug lords who peddled it, the hashish was named for recently deposed Interior Minister Ahmed Rushdie, […]

The U.S. knew Hussein was launching some of the worst chemical attacks in history — and still gave him a hand. By Shane Harris and Matthew M. Aid   26 Aug 2013 The U.S. government may be considering military action in response to chemical strikes near Damascus. But a generation ago, America’s military and intelligence communities knew […]

Ministers hope measures will help to tackle prejudice in the wake of Lee Rigby’s death By Oliver Wright  25 Aug 2013 Ministers are to send serving Muslim soldiers into schools around the country to counter Islamaphobia in the wake of the killing of Lee Rigby, The Independent has learnt. Muslim servicemen and women will be asked to […]

By Jonathan Cook  24 Aug 2013 The Holy Land may be the cradle of Judaism, Christianity and Islam – the three Abrahamic faiths that share much in common – but Israel has preferred to draw on a tradition that imagines the region in terms of a clash of civilisations. Theodor Herzl, the father of Israel’s […]

By Jon Lee Anderson  21 Aug 2013 When Salvador Allende, the democratically elected socialist President of Chile, was overthrown by his country’s military—with the awareness, and possible assistance, of the C.I.A.—on September 11, 1973, he committed suicide rather than surrender. By then, Chile’s Air Force had already bombed the Presidential palace, where he had decided […]

Did Gen. Abdel Fattah al-Sisi just set Cairo on the path to its own “black decade”? By Robert Zaretsky  20 Aug 2013 Despite the roughly 1,000 miles of Libyan desert that lie between them, Algeria and Egypt have never seemed as close as they do now. When Gen. Abdel Fattah al-Sisi forcibly removed President Mohamed […]

Whatever the problems roiling Cairo, more weapons sales won’t solve them. By Andrew J. Bacevich  20 Aug 2013 When it comes to Egypt, the U.S. has little leverage and therefore no real options. That’s according to the prevailing wisdom, at least. Yet this analysis — endlessly reiterated in mainstream commentary — is misleading. The absence […]

King Abdullah fears the Muslim Brotherhood, which challenges the kingdom’s claim to be the protector of Islam By David Hearst  20 Aug 2013 It took almost 60 years for the CIA to own up to its role in the British-backed coup that overthrew Iran’s prime minister Mohammed Mossadeghon August 19, 1953. But Saudi Arabia’s backing for the […]