We Must Stop Family Separation — And We Can Do It Now
The Biden administration has tools it can use right now to put kids and families first in immigration policy.
Will Ukraine Write the Alt-Right’s Epitaph?
Most of the leaders of the alt-right are scrambling to distance themselves from Vladimir Putin. It might be too late.
11 Years of War in Syria
What started as an anti-authoritarian uprising became a brutal international proxy war. However many years pass, the solution remains the same.
Ukraine: The Refugee Double Standard
Love thy neighbor, but only if they look like you?
Mexico’s Movement for Real Democracy
Weeks after Mexico’s presidential elections, thousands of people have turned out to protest the declared winner, Enrique Peña Nieto, and the imminent return to power of the party that ruled Mexico for more than seven decades. The Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, which is slated to take office December 1, now faces increasing accusations of fraud, a legal demand to declare the elections invalid, and a youth movement that refuses to go away.
There May Be a Method to the Madness of Apathy and Ignorance
Advocates and activists spend much of their time trying to figure out how to lift Americans out of their apathy and ignorance.
New Report Reveals Somalia’s Missing Millions
The report shows that over the period 2000-2011, the first Somali Transitional National Government and the subsequent Transitional Federal Governments received bilateral aid totalling $308 million that was given mainly by Arab countries, including Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Libya, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates. (This figure does not include funds that came through the Arab League. It also does not cover multilateral assistance to Somalia, which is managed entirely by the United Nations Development Programme.) Only $53 million was raised domestically during this period, mainly through the Mogadishu port and airport. However, successive governments have only been able to account for $124 million – or one-third – of the total bilateral and domestic funds they received.
Destroying the Commons
Down the road only a few generations, the millennium of Magna Carta, one of the great events in the establishment of civil and human rights, will arrive. Whether it will be celebrated, mourned, or ignored is not at all clear.
Sanctions Derail Diplomacy on Iran
Mohammad ElBaradei, former International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) chief, used to say using the so-called “carrot and stick approach” on Iran – simultaneous use of sanctions and incentives to induce cooperation – is doomed to fail, because “Iran isn’t a donkey”. Others would go further and say that Iran is a proud civilization, and an ambitious regional power, which will not give up an iota of its nuclear ambitions, no matter how painful the price.
Exactly Which “Terror Plots” Are Relevant to the Bulgarian Bombing?
Cypriot investigators believe the Lebanese they suspected of planning to harm Israeli tourists was acting alone, not working for Hezbollah.
Military Intervention in Syria: No
Whatever our humanitarian concerns might be, real decisions about direct military intervention will be made with little regard for Syrian civilians, Syrian civil society, or Syria’s national survival – all of which will suffer consequences that could last a generation or more. A U.S./NATO air war against Syria would likely not end like Libya’s – with no western casualties and a quick exit. Given Syria’s military, especially air capacity, it will look far more like Iraq than Libya.
African Migrants and the Israeli Apartheid Debate
The name of the neighborhood could not have been more symbolic. Located in southern Tel Aviv, the impoverished Hatikva quarter has always born the stigma of sharing a name with Israel’s national anthem, while playing home to some of the poorest, most marginalized Jews in the country—as well as a growing population of African asylum seekers, mostly from Eritrea and South Sudan.
Tunisia Culture Wars: Ruling Ennahda Party Refuses to Rein in Salafists
The growing Salafist influence in Tunisia can be explained by the refusal of the ruling Ennahda Party to rein it in, as well as financial and political support provided by Saudi Arabia and Qatar.
Impunity Returns to Peru
The Peruvian Supreme Court has handed down a highly controversial sentence in a case involving the members of the Colina Group death squad. According to human rights defenders and the victims in the relevant cases, the sentence is a major step backward in Peru’s tortured quest for truth and justice in cases of egregious human rights violations.