Bahrain, Yemen, Libya, Syria, rumblings in Morocco and Algeria (and eventually Saudi?) even spreading south into sub-Saharan Africa such as Uganda, but the centre of this upturning of the old despotic order is Palestine. The tectonic shift in the latter has been little noticed, but is more momentous than any of the others. Palestine for […]
Posts Tagged ‘Bahrain’
The epicentre of the Arab spring isn’t Libya or Syria; it’s Palestine
Apr 30th, 2011 by Michael Meacher.
Time for an inquiry into the use of British arms in the Middle East
Mar 24th, 2011 by Owen Jones.Last Friday, over 50 unarmed protesters were murdered by Yemen’s Western-backed dictatorship. As growing unrest threatened to make Ali Abdullah Saleh the third tyrant toppled by the fury of the Arab street, the dictator opted for a shoot-to-kill policy against his own people:
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Libya: regret and reservations
Mar 22nd, 2011 by Michael Meacher.The mood in the Commons was sober, worried, passive and resigned – not welcoming the dawn of a new era in the Middle East, but fearful that this could be the start of a third, long Western war against a Muslim state. A bloodbath in Benghazi had been avoided in the nick of time, a […]
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Above all, Labour should refuse bipartisan support for Tories on Libya (UPDATED)
Mar 21st, 2011 by Jon Lansman.Libya posed a real dilemma for Labour and the Left. On one hand, we want to support the Libyan revolution, to offer any possible protection to the civilian population and are bound therefore to be sympathetic to much if not all of the UN Security Council resolution, as Darrell Goodliffe argued here. On the other, with […]
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The case against bombing Libya
Mar 20th, 2011 by Owen Jones.The Arab Spring has given way to a cold snap: Tiananmen Square-style massacres of protesters in Yemen, the Saudi invasion of Bahrain and full-blown Western intervention in Libya. Of course, it was never going to be easy. The Middle East is the most strategically important region on Earth, and also boasts the biggest concentration of brutal dictatorships: […]
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The Bahrain barometer
Mar 17th, 2011 by Michael Meacher.A thousand Saudi troops march into Bahrain and this intrusion into the sovereignty of another nation is met by a deafening silence in the Western media. Imagine what the reaction would have been if a thousand Syrian troops had marched into neighbouring Lebanon at the first sign of trouble to protect its government against demonstrators and had […]
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The West’s Faustian deal with Arab tyranny unravels
Mar 7th, 2011 by Michael Meacher.As Gadaffi totters and Saudi Arabia, the Big One, comes into the Arab revolution’s sights, the hypocrisy that has long held the Arab states in bondage is coming home to roost. The West’s deal with the Arab dictators is coming unstuck, big time. Despite all the Western pretensions about democracy, women’s rights, cracking down on […]
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Blair, Arab despots, and the ethical dimension of Britain’s foreign policy
Feb 21st, 2011 by Jon Lansman.It’s too easy to sneer at those photos of Blair and Gaddafi. It was far better to shake the hand of a despot than to bomb thousands of his country’s innocent inhabitants (though the credit for the rapprochement between Britain and Libya in the wake of the bombing of Pan Am flight 103 probably belongs […]
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Bahrain and Iran: compare and contrast
Feb 19th, 2011 by Owen Jones.There is a massacre going on in Bahrain. The regime has met the demands of peaceful protesters for basic, democratic freedoms with rounds of live ammo. Several have reportedly been shot in the head, demonstrating a clear intent to kill on the part of Bahrain’s despots. The lesson they appear to have drawn from Egypt is […]
