By Christophe Maroun | ( GlobalVoices.org) | – – As the world's nations met in Bonn, Germany for the 23rd annual conference of the parties (COP23) under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), 2017 was set to be one of the hottest years on record. COP 23 Logo. Source: COP 23 Website. Researchers […]
Archives for November 2017
MbS a la Trump: “Making Saudi Arabia Great Again”!
By Reese Erlich | ( 48hills.org) | – – I stood in front of a mosque in the city of Qatif, Saudi Arabia, interviewing people for a story. Suddenly, two city police cars pulled up. Several minutes later plain clothes officers from the secret police began questioning me. I had entered the country with a […]
Trump’s revival of ‘Tactical Nuclear Weapons’ Idiocy endangers World
By Michael T. Klare | ( Tomdispatch.com) | – – Maybe you thought America’s nuclear arsenal, with its thousands of city-busting, potentially civilization-destroying thermonuclear warheads, was plenty big enough to deter any imaginable adversary from attacking the U.S. with nukes of their own. Well, it turns out you were wrong. The Pentagon has been fretting […]
The Saudi-US war on Yemen is killing 130 Children a Day & Other Bleak Statistics
By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – The Saudi-led coalition is waging total war on Yemen in a bid to defeat the guerrilla group, the Houthis or the Helpers of God. The Houthis took power in Sanaa in fall of 2014 and consolidated it in early 2015. By March-April, Saudi Arabia’s Muhammad Bin […]
Republicans Admit Their Tax Plan Is All About Rich Donors
By Peter Certo | (Otherwords.org) | – – It’s unpopular. It’s expensive. But the donors want it. Sometimes I have to remind myself that people in “real America” with “real jobs” don’t while away their mortal hours reading about politics. But God help me, if you’ve suffered through any coverage of the Republican tax plan, […]
Militant Buddhism is on the march in South-East Asia; Why Now?
By Peter Lehr | (The Conversation) | – – Even ten years on, the first mental image that comes to mind with regard to Theravāda Buddhism is that of Myanmar’s Saffron Revolution of August-September 2007: thousands of Buddhist monks peacefully demonstrating in the streets of Yangon, Mandalay, Pakokku, Sittwe and other towns against the ruling […]
Is Saudi King Salman about to be pushed aside by Son?
TeleSur | – – Speculation has mounted that the King of Saudi Arabia, Salman bin Abdulaziz, will step down and pass the throne to Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman next week. The United Kingdom’s Daily Mail quoted a source “close to the royal family” by saying that the 81-year-old King Salman plans to abdicate and […]
Lebanese PM Hariri arrives in or Escapes to France
By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – Lebanese prime minister Saad Hariri arrived Saturday morning with his family in Paris, after a two-week stay in Saudi Arabia, where he is a dual citizen and has a mansion. Lebanese president Michel Aoun had charged that Saudi Arabia had taken Hariri hostage, but the latter […]
US-Led Bombings in Iraq Killed 31 Times More Civilians Than Reported: NYT
By Jessica Corbett, staff writer| ( Commondreams.org ) | – – New York Times reporters uncovered “consistent failure by the coalition to investigate claims properly or to keep records that make it possible to investigate” in what “may be the least transparent war in recent American history” An 18-month investigation by a pair of New […]