( Human Rights Watch) – (Beirut) – Saudi Arabia recently announced a series of important and necessary reforms, but ongoing repression and a lack of respect for basic rights are major barriers to progress, Human Rights Watch said today. The repression of independent civil society and critical voices that can provide objective feedback decreases the […]
Archives for February 2021
Biden, Climate Change, and China: A New Cold War equals A Scalding Planet
( Tomdispatch.com ) – Slowing the pace of climate change and getting “tough” on China, especially over its human-rights abuses and unfair trade practices, are among the top priorities President Biden has announced for his new administration. Evidently, he believes that he can tame a rising China with harsh pressure tactics, while still gaining its […]
Facebook’s news blockade in Australia shows how tech giants are swallowing the web
By Jennifer Grygiel | – When Facebook disabled Australians’ access to news articles on its platform, and blocked sharing of articles from Australian news organizations, the company moved a step closer to killing the World Wide Web – the hyperlink-based system of freely connecting online sites created in 1989 by Sir Tim Berners-Lee. Though the […]
Biden’s New Mideast: In Nadir of US-Saudi Relations, release planned of CIA report Accusing Crown prince of Murder
Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – The Biden administration will release a Central Intelligence Agency report concluding that crown prince Mohammed Bin Salman, 35, of Saudi Arabia, masterminded the assassination on October 2, 2018, of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi. I’m not sure even an old foreign policy hand like President Biden understands how explosive this […]
Why Google’s Plans for a Saudi-Based Cloud are So Dangerous: Riyadh may demand Private Customer Data
By Dahlia Kholaif | – ( Global Voices ) – Tech giant Google plans to establish a new Google Cloud region in Saudi Arabia. Access Now, a nongovernmental digital rights organization, has raised alarm and requested the immediate halting of the plan, referring to the country’s “appalling human rights record.” The organization issued a statement […]
The Claudius Presidency
(Foreign Policy in Focus ) – Caligula was by all accounts a nasty piece of work. During the nearly four years that he ruled over the Roman empire in the first century CE, Caligula was notorious for sexual predation and extravagant spending. Never one to sell himself short, he proclaimed early on that he was […]
Texas blackouts show why energy should be a universal right
By Gordon Walker | – An unprecedented cold wave in the US state of Texas recently left several million households without power for days on end, as temperatures dropped well below freezing. Dozens of people died from hypothermia, car crashes, house fires or carbon monoxide poisoning from running cars or generators simply to keep warm. […]
Is Harvard denying Tenure to Cornel West over his views on Palestine?
Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Maximilien Alvarez writing at The Chronicle of Higher Education interviews eminent Black philosopher Cornel West on the latter being denied tenure at Harvard University. West is convinced that his views on the Palestine issue are the real reason for which Harvard will not give him a permanent job. Universities have […]
Imagining Palestine: Literature and the Language of Exile
( Middle East Monitor ) – For Palestinians, exile is not simply the physical act of being removed from their homeland and their inability to return. It is not a casual topic pertaining to politics and international law, either. Nor is it an ethereal notion, a sentiment, a poetic verse. It is all of this […]
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