Columns/Opinions

By Ramzy Baroud Imagine if an American presidential candidate made a plea to his supporters on election day with the following statement: “The Republican administration is in danger. Black voters are going en masse to the polls. Liberal NGOs are bringing them on buses.” Even in a country where Chris Matthews is a media celebrity and Pamela Geller is an …

By Ahmed A. Yousef Humans are funny creatures who refuse to learn from their own history. Canada has historically been viewed internationally as a country of peacekeepers. The blue helmets are widely respected and revered for their heroism and willingness to stand up and defend those who have nowhere to turn. However, the Harper government has changed all that. The …

Muhammad ibn Abd al-Rahman ibn Suleiman ibn Rabi al-Qaysi, known more conveniently to posterity as Abu Hamid Al-Garnati and so named after his hometown of Granada (“Garnata”), sailed, caravanned, traded and trekked from the Arab West to the northern- and easternmost reaches of the Islamic world and beyond. Born in the year 1080 under the last of the Zirid kings, …

By Jonathan Cook There is something deeply mendacious and cowardly about this ritual leaking by European diplomats of their annual report on Jerusalem. This year they’ve chosen to deposit the “confidential” report in the hands of the Guardian. Obviously, the Europeans – and Americans – want this information about how angry they are with Israel disseminated as widely as possible in the …

By Ramzy Baroud No matter how one attempts to wrangle with the so-called ‘Islamic State’ (IS) rise in Iraq and Syria, desperately seeking any political or other context that would validate the movement as an explainable historical circumstance, things refuse to add up. Not only is IS to a degree an alien movement in the larger body politic of the …

By Jonathan Cook Israel goes to the polls on Tuesday. In one sense, everything is up for grabs: this election could result either in another right-wing government led by Benjamin Netanyahu or in victory for a coalition of centrist parties distinguished chiefly by their hostility towards Mr Netanyahu. Whatever the outcome, one thing is certain: the next government will be …

By Jonathan Cook – 17 March 2015 Over the final fortnight of Israel’s election campaign, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu has gone from being celebrated for slaying President Barack Obama in the US Congress to looking and sounding more like one of Obama’s least-loved predecessors: Richard Nixon. Tired, confused, desperate and paranoid are just a few of the epithets that have …

Scenarios In The Arab Region During 2015 I agree with the view that the Middle East is the most dangerous region in the world. In recent years, the region has witnessed upheavals, revolutions, insurrections, wars, tensions and conflicts that preceded the onset of the Arab Spring in 2011. Salman Aldossary, Chief Editor of the Pan-Arabic Asharq al Awsat Newspaper, is …

By Ramzy Baroud This is not my geography teacher, or, more accurately it is not at all how I remember him. A series of APA images published by the British Daily Mail and other newspapers showed Hamad al-Hasanat lying dead in a mosque, surrounded by a group of Hamas fighters. On top of his lifeless body, as worshipers came to …

By Jonathan Cook The revelations last week by the Daily Telegraph’s former chief political commentator Peter Oborne that his newspaper spiked stories that upset advertisers to avoid losing lucrative ad revenue have apparently taken most journalists by surprise. It has been especially embarrassing for the Telegraph, because one of the advertisers it apparently placated was the HSBC bank, currently at the centre of a storm of …