Gaddafi came to Idi Amin in his hour of need.
As Predicted, Gaddafi Ended up in a Hidey Hole Like Saddam
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Human Rights
Putting a Face on Iran Policies a Study in Frustration
It’s just as difficult determining who makes the decisions about Iran’s nuclear program as whether the Revolutionary Guard is behind the plot to assassinate the Arab ambassador.
Cuba’s Culture of Dissent
When the Cuban government released a number of dissidents earlier this year, human rights groups applauded the decision. But critics also took the occasion to paint Cuba once again as a society where a single word of criticism gets you shipped off to a dungeon, from which you will never return, reduced to being a statistic in an Amnesty International report. This belief may contain a kernel of truth. But in many ways it provides a cartoon version of Cuba, one that misses altogether the texture and reality of Cuban life, particularly its politics and its culture of dissent. And there is a culture of dissent.
Gaddafi Just Another Tyrant Who Painted Himself Into a Corner
By burning their bridges, dictators condemn themselves to fight until the bitter end.
Iran Assassination Plot Has Earmarks of FBI Care and Feeding
For many years, almost every terrorist plot the FBI has unearthed has been planted and nurtured by the FBI.
The Last Colony in Africa
‘The Western Sahara is the last country in Africa that has not been correctly decolonised – instead, the right of the Sahrawi people to post-colonial independence has been frozen in time,’ writes Konstantina Isidoros in introducing this special edition of Pambazuka News. ‘If we are to take the rule of international law as our guiding foundation, then Morocco has blatantly defied international law twice, by its illegal invasion of someone else’s sovereign territory and by its illegal occupation that still continues today.’
The Nobel Prize and The African Woman
Three women are sharing the 2011 Nobel Prize for Peace. One is Yemeni human rights leader Tawakul Karman. The other two are African: Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, Liberia’s current president and Africa’s only female democratically elected head of state, and her countrywoman Leymah Gbowee who is a peace activist and spellbinding challenger of the ultra-male, brutality-wielding world of warlords.
Burma’s Junta: Can a Tiger Change Its Stripes?
Burma’s leadership announced it would free 6,359 prisoners, but only 207 political prisoners have been released thus far.
Ford Confirmation: Too Little, Too Late
In early October, Senate Republicans reversed a yearlong policy of deflection and unanimously confirmed Robert Ford as the U.S. ambassador to Syria. Though Ford has served in the post since his recess appointment by President Obama in early 2010, Republicans had balked at the idea of “rewarding” the Syrian government with the presence of an official U.S. ambassador, a position that had previously remained unfilled since the assassination of Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Al-Haririin 2005. Since the Syrian uprising began earlier this year, Ford has been a persistent and vocal supporter of the opposition, and has issued a number of scathing indictments against the regime of Bashar Al-Assad.
Personality Cult of Assads in Syria Usurped Their Own People, the Alawites
When Syrian President Assad’s father, Hafez, came to power, he marginalized his own people, the Alawites.