By Omnia Amin | – Throughout the Middle East and beyond, the name Nawal El Saadawi is not one that can be received with indifference. During her lifetime and even after her passing on 21 March 2021, the Egyptian author, physician and activist evokes intense feelings that range from love and respect to hatred and […]
Suez canal: what the ‘ditch’ meant to the British empire in the 19th century
By Jonathan Parry | – The week-long blockage of the Suez canal by the Ever Given container ship has reminded us that the canal, though immensely important to the world’s commerce, is also very vulnerable. Since its completion in 1869, it has symbolised global interconnectedness. But it has also demonstrated how fears, rivalries and bottlenecks […]
Biden’s Commitment to powering 20 mn Homes with Offshore Wind is a US Energy Revolution
By Erin Baker and Matthew Lackner | – The United States’ offshore wind industry is tiny, with just seven wind turbines operating off Rhode Island and Virginia. The few attempts to build large-scale wind farms like Europe’s have run into long delays, but that may be about to change. The Biden administration announced on March […]
Israeli election: Fundamentalist Mansour Abbas emerges as possible first Muslim kingmaker in nation’s history
By John Strawson | – For Israel, this has been the “no change, all change” election. No change in that the result appears inconclusive – just like the three previous elections. It’s also all change, as we are seeing the beginnings of the political normalisation between Jews and Arabs for the first time since the […]
How the Imperial past set the Stage for Nile Dam Conflicts between Egypt, Sudan and Ethiopia
By Mahemud Tekuya | – Ever since construction began a decade ago, there’s been serious contention between Ethiopia, Egypt and Sudan over the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD), a huge project straddling the Blue Nile in Ethiopia. For Ethiopia, the project is meant to offer a solution to its severe power problem, providing electricity access […]
Nawal El Saadawi: Egypt’s grand novelist, physician and global activist
By Adele Newson-Horst | – Egyptian novelist, physician, sociologist and global activist Nawal El Saadawi died on 21 March 2021 at the age of 89. The author of more than 50 books, she told me in one of our many interviews, in 2007, that she self-identified as an African from Egypt, not from the Middle […]
Could Dominion and Smartmatic take down Fox News for Libel and Reckless Disregard for the Truth?
By Nancy Costello | – Free speech advocates have long believed that suing a news organization threatens free speech. Democracy needs a press to be free to report, without fear or favor, the facts as it sees them. But recent legal actions against news organizations indicate that the First Amendment provides sufficient free speech protection, […]
Ten years after the Arab Spring, Libya has another chance for peace
By Brian McQuinn | – Ten years ago, the United Nation’s no-fly zone over Libya marked the beginning of the Libyan revolution and the West’s bombing campaign. I spent much of the war embedded with the fighters in Misrata, Libya’s third-largest city, studying the insurgency. The fighting stopped with the death of Col. Moammar Gadhafi, […]
Turkey’s Erdogan abruptly pulled out of Convention on Violence against Women; Women aren’t going Quietly
By Devran Gule and Leïla Choukroune | – In a single-paragraph statement issued at around 2am on March 20, Turkey’s president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan pulled his country out of the Council of Europe’s Convention on Preventing and Combating Violence against Women and Domestic Violence. Thus, at a stroke – and going completely against Turkey’s constitution […]