What One Death Means
The photograph of an emaciated seven-year-old Yemeni girl named Amal Hussein was featured in a major New York Times article, published October 26, on the devastation of the humanitarian crisis in Yemen. On November More...
Is the Bombing of Yemen about to End?
The fallout from the Saudi murder of journalist Jamal Kashoggi in Istanbul has far-reaching consequences. Not only did the investment fair of Davos in the Desert see some major deserters, but Bin Salman actually More...
Kashoggi, Yemen and the War on Journalism
For the past week, the news cycle on the Middle East has been focused, for obvious reasons, on the murder of the Saudi journalist Jamal Kashoggi in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul on October 2. Turkish authorities More...
What makes Yemen a “legitimate” state?
The media, reinforced by a mischievous U.N. resolution, consistently refer to the exiled Yemeni interim president Abdo Rabbo Mansour Hadi as the “legitimate” leader of Yemen. The Huthis, who with the aid of More...
The Banana Republic with very few Bananas
The Saudis are feeling offended that another country might criticize their dismal record of human rights. Last August Canada’s Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland tweeted that a Canadian citizen, Raif Badawi, and More...
How many Children have to die?
The exact number of Yemeni children killed by Saudi bombing and malnutrition caused by the war has yet to be officially determined, but the number is certainly in the thousands. Overall the fighting and its consequences More...
Talking about Peace
One thing seems clear after over three years of an unwinnable war in Yemen that has created the worst humanitarian disaster in the world: it is past time to find a way out for all sides. The UN envoy Martin Griffiths More...
Socotra and Little Sparta
While the war on the Yemeni mainland drags on with daily deaths from violence inflicted from all sides and a largely ignored humanitarian crisis, there is a new twist in the overall dreadful scenario. The island More...
It takes a liar…
There is a saying, and a song by the American rock group “Taking Back Sunday”, that it takes a liar to know a liar. In the case of Oliver North, the newly elected president of the National Rifle Association More...
A Kingly look at Islamic Astronomy
All societies have star lore, using the movements of stars and other celestial phenomena to tell time and direction. The formal science of astronomy, with roots in ancient Mesopotamia and Greece, evolved in the More...