Arab World

By Omar Ahmed | – ( Middle East Monitor) – Saudi Arabia’s The Line has been lauded as the world’s most futuristic city plan, and for good reason. The vertical, walled smart city will run entirely on renewable energy and aims to revolutionise urban planning, putting humans first. Catering for some nine million residents, the […]

Tunisia

President Saied Derides the Economic and Social Rights of Tunisian Women

Human Rights Watch

By Kenza Ben Azouz, Middle East and North Africa Division | – Published in: Nawaat ( Human Rights Watch) – President Kais Said marked National Women’s Day in Tunisia on August 13 by sending his wife to make a celebratory speech in which she sang her husband’s praises. That didn’t sit well with many Tunisians […]

Arab World

Does Mideast Panopticon — Urban Surveillance and Digital Identities — foretell our Dystopian Future?

Middle East Monitor

By Muhammad Hussein | – ( Middle East Monitor) – It has forever been the dream of almost every state, intelligence agency, empire and totalitarian regime to oversee the doings of all of their subjects, to detect any hint of dissent, to control their movements, to influence their thinking and even to peer into their […]

Bashar al-Assad

Is US fight against Shiite Militias in Syria becoming entangled in Russia-US Ukraine Tensions?

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – AP reports that early today, Wednesday, the US military launched air strikes against Iran-backed Shiite militias in Deir al-Zor Province, eastern Syria. The bombings came in response to drone attacks on the US base at Tanf, Syria, allegedly by these militias, on August 15. Those drone actions did not result […]

Arab Spring

Digital Media and Sudan’s Revolution

Middle East Monitor

By Shafie Khader Saeed | – Industrial revolutions are defined as new scientific and technological breakthroughs and innovative ways of seeing and dealing with the world around us. They lead to a profound change in the economic and social dimensions in favour of improving human life, in addition to developing philosophical concepts and generalisations. It […]

Arab World

Opening of shipping Routes from Ukraine will not Lessen Commodity and Food pressure on the Middle East and North Africa

Global Voices

By Roman Shemakov | – Russia and Ukraine are two of the most essential pillars of the global food trade, producing 25 percent of the global wheat supply. More than 160 days after Russia invaded Ukraine, food, commodity, and energy shortages have plunged many economies across the world into recessions, particularly in the Middle East, […]

Climate Crisis

19 Years ago America Really Wanted Iraq’s Basra for its Oil, which is now Making it Uninhabitable

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Poet Robert Frost asked if the world would end by fire or ice. It turns out that it is both, the fire of global heating and the melting of earth’s surface ice and resultant biblical floods. Nowhere is this more clear than in Iraq. Not everyone will suffer equally from […]

Authoritarianism

How Trump helped Sportswash Saudi Arabia

Tomdispatch

By Robert Lipsyte | – ( Tomdispatch.com ) – Here’s the big question in Jock Culture these days: Is the Kingdom of Golf being used to sportswash the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia? Or is it the other way around? After all, what other major sport could use a sandstorm of Middle Eastern murder and human-rights […]

Afghanistan

Pact Act is Vindication for Vets after US Denied for Years that Burn Pits in Afghanistan and Iraq made them Ill

The Conversation

By Jason A. Higgins, Virginia Tech | – During a 13-month stint in Iraq that began in 2006, Heath Robinson served as a medic with the Ohio National Guard. Like thousands of others soldiers stationed there, he was routinely exposed to toxic smoke emanating from what are known as burn pits. Located near military bases, […]