Articles

Watching the US's increasing pressure on Syria, it is difficult to escape the feeling of history repeating itself. The parallels with the feverish swirl of diplomatic manoeuvres that built up to the US-led war against Iraq are inescapable.

The presidential election in Egypt on September 7, which returned Husni Mubarak, who has ruled Egypt for 24 years, to a six-year fifth term, is widely seen by both Egyptians and non-Egyptian as having been heavily rigged. The non-Egyptians include foreign media and human-rights observers who condemned the thinly veiled fraud.

The Charter of Peace and National Reconciliation – approved in a referendum in early October – is ostensibly intended to lay to rest the aftermath of a conflict that lasted for more than a decade, in which at least 150,000 Algerians lost their lives.

Contrary to widespread belief, international institutions such as the UN, the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) etc., were not created to bring peace and prosperity to the world, but to serve the interests of the West. It is distressing to note, however, that the very victims of these institutions seem totally mesmerized by the high-sounding rhetoric of these organisations, and act as if their survival depends on them.

When Saudi king Fahd died on August 1, the kingdom made a fine show of an orderly succession. Nonetheless, his successor, Abdullah, faces enormous challenges and uncertainties. NASR SALEM reports.

Disasters, whether natural or manmade, bring out both the best and worst in people. The earthquake that rocked Northern Pakistan and Azad Kashmir on October 8 has brought out the generous spirit of Pakistan's people and exposed the ineptitude of Pakistan's government.

The decision of the European Union summit at Luxembourg on October 4 to hold accession talks with Turkey (over Austria's objections) was hailed by both Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the Turkish prime minister, and Jack Straw, Britain's foreign minister (Britain holds the current EU chairmanship), as “historic”.

President Bush and Condoleezza Rice, his Black secretary of state, are so desperate to defend their now-discredited campaign to establish democratic rule in the Middle East, and in Central Asia, that they are evoking the history of the civil rights movement in the US.

In some parts of Iran there is an "American problem." The so-called "upper classes" of Iranian society are infatuated with everything American, and that infatuation trickles down to the ‘lower classes', who then either succumb to the American temptation or resist it.

After the Empire: The Breakdown of the American Order by Emmanuel Todd. Translated by C. Jon Delogu. London: Constable, 2004. Pp. 243. £8.99. By Yusuf al-Khabbaz As American neo-conservative academics, policy experts, government officials and corporate media continue to proclaim the "new American century," those on the American left lament the emerging imperial power of the US. Although they are viciously opposed to one another on many points, both parties agree that America is "the sole superpower" in the world today, and that the emerging American empire is an inevitability to be either celebrated or decried.