Right Side News
Chavez’s overwhelming victory in gubernatorial elections: a national and regional tsunami.. Chavez continues to be the hero in Venezuela and the region. In the last elections for state governors that took place on Sunday, December 16th, Chavez’s party, the United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV), won overwhelmingly and now holds 20 out of the 23 […]
GoV.Mohamed Shaheen is a secular-minded Muslim who was elected to the People’s Assembly of Egypt in the 2011-2012 election. He is opposed to President Mohamed Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood, and believes the Ikhwan is well on the way to establishing a Salafist dictatorship in Egypt. Last month Alain Wagner of the International Civil Liberties […]
According to the elite newspapers and journals of opinion, the future of foreign affairs mainly rests on ideas: the moral impetus for humanitarian intervention, the various theories governing exchange rates and debt rebalancing necessary to fix Europe, the rise of cosmopolitanism alongside the stubborn vibrancy of nationalism in East Asia and so on. In other […]
The state of Israel has a basic, inescapable geopolitical dilemma: Its national security requirements outstrip its military capabilities, making it dependent on an outside power. Not only must that power have significant military capabilities but it also must have enough common ground with Israel to align its foreign policy toward the Arab world with that […]
Events in Egypt continue to deteriorate. On Wednesday, rival groups of protesters clashed outside the presidential palace in Cairo, when Muslim Brotherhood supporters of President Mohamed Morsi confronted 300 opposition members who were staging a sit-in. The protesters were initially routed, but after a lull in fighting, hundreds of young Egyptians returned to the scene […]
Immediately following the declaration of a cease-fire in Gaza, Egypt was plunged into a massive domestic crisis. Mohammed Morsi, elected in the first presidential election after the fall of Hosni Mubarak, passed a decree that would essentially neuter the independent judiciary by placing his executive powers above the high court and proposed changes to the constitution that […]
In the past two weeks, Egyptian President Muhammad Mursi has accelerated the process of approval of the new Egyptian draft constitution. On December 1, 2012, following marathon meetings of the Constituent Assembly, he announced that the draft would be put to public referendum in two weeks’ time, on December 15, 2012. This was despite widespread […]
Late Thursday evening, Israel time, the UN General Assembly voted to confer nonmember statehood on the Palestinian Authority by a sweeping majority. Even Israel’s hopes of putting together a “moral minority” of Western-country nays had crumbled, with France and Italy pronouncing themselves in favor of the Palestinian nonmember state and Britain and Germany abstaining. Israel, […]
Last week was spent obsessed with Gaza. In the end, nothing changed. A war was fought without an Israeli ground assault but with massive air and rocket attacks on both sides. Israel did not have the appetite and perhaps the power to crush Hamas. Hamas did not have the power to compel Israel to change […]
Two Palestinian documents recently made public deserve attention: the Palestinian request for non-member state status at the United Nations General Assembly,[1] and the speech made by President Abu Mazen on November 11, 2012 at the ceremony marking the death of Yassir Arafat eight years ago.[2]
Hamas fires 275 rockets at Israel and is rewarded with de facto acceptance as a legitimate negotiating partner in the Middle East peace process, as well as with a relaxation of the Israeli blockade of the Gaza coast. Israel is prevented from exacting a price for Hamas’ actions sufficient to deter future attacks or degrade […]
President Barack Obama has won re-election. However, in addition to all of the constraints on him that I discussed last week, he won the election with almost half the people voting against him. His win in the Electoral College was substantial — and that’s the win that really matters — but the popular vote determines […]