United Nations

Brave New Films: “Since 1980, we have militarily intervened at least 35 times in more than 27 countries. We keep bombing, we continue spending trillions of dollars, but we’re no safer as a result.” Brave New Films: “How Does This End?”

Bashar al-Assad

Would a US/ NATO war in Syria be Legal in International Law?

Juan Cole

By Juan Cole Efforts are being made in Congress give to President Barack Obama the formal authority to conduct air strikes in Syria against ISIL. Vice President Joe Biden is now talking, as well, about a concerted and long-term NATO response to the brutal fundamentalist movement, which controls desert territory and some oil resources in […]

Israel

Gaza needs UN Peacekeepers, Now! How to Break the Israel/Palestine Stalemate

contributors

By John V. Whitbeck After the breakdown in the six-day “pause” to permit negotiations on a long-term Israeli-Palestinian ceasefire and the resumption of Israel’s onslaught against the caged people of Gaza, concerned people everywhere are wondering how the conflicting demands of the two sides can possibly be reconciled. Each side feels a compelling need to […]

Apartheid

UN on Gaza: Health System Collapse, 25% Displaced, 5% w/ Clean Water, Epidemic Threat, Generally Mad Max

contributors

By United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs Occupied Palestinian Territory: Gaza Emergency Situation Report Highlights • The Rafah area was subject to the heaviest shelling and fighting recorded since the start of the emergency, resulting in dozens of fatalities; many of the bodies could not yet be recovered or identified. • The […]

Apartheid

Unlike Iraq, Iran, Libya, N. Korea, Israel has Impunity from Defying UNSC (Gaza Ceasefire)

Juan Cole

By Juan Cole The United Nations Security Council is theoretically a sort of sovereign in international law. If it designates a regime like that of Gaddafi in Libya as a threat to international peace, it can deputize the nations of the world to remove it. One major exception to UNSC authority is Israel, which routinely […]

Apartheid

Now Palestinians must go to the Int’l Criminal Court, and US Should Back Them

contributors

By Bill Van Esveld via Human Rights Watch Secretary of State John Kerry called the collapse of the latest round of Israeli-Palestinian peace talks “reality-check time” for the peace process. That reassessment should include the self-defeating U.S. policy of opposing steps toward justice and accountability in the name of negotiations. U.S. officials claim that […]

Featured

Palestine’s Abbas finally says will Go to UN over Israeli Squatters

Juan Cole

(By Juan Cole) Palestine president Mahmoud Abbas on Tuesday signed a some 15 international treaties and UN legal instruments, including the Geneva Conventions, in preparation for going to the International Criminal Court over Israel’s illegal flooding of hundreds of thousands of Israeli squatters into the West Bank. These squatters have for the most part never […]

Human Rights

Israel Guilty of Apartheid, Ethnic Cleansing of Palestinians: UN Rapporteur

contributors

(By César Chelala) Richard Falk, United Nations rapporteur on human rights in the Palestinian territories accused Israel last week of “ethnic cleansing” of Palestinians. Speaking at a press conference, he said that Israeli policies bore “unacceptable characteristics of colonialism, apartheid and ethnic cleansing.” “Every increment of enlarging the settlements or every incident of house demolition […]

Islam

Crimean Tatars fear Russian Rule

Juan Cole

Crimean Tatars fear a future under Russia (via GlobalPost) BAKHCHYSARAI, Ukraine — Crimean Tatars know a few things about oppression. In the past two or so centuries, this tight-knit Muslim group has been colonized by the Russian Empire, deported en masse by the Soviet Union and denied the most basic of rights… ——– Related […]