Creating new perspectives since 2009
Items by Yvonne Ridley
-
We won't be fooled again, say people of Pakistan
Politicians in Pakistan rise to power and fall from grace with alarming regularity, so much so that not a single prime minister has ever completed a full term in office. The one constant has been the genuine love and affection ordinary people have for the military. However, that could...
-
Who will stand up for women against the Saudi regime?
No doubt emboldened by US President Joe Biden’s recent visit and matey fist bump with Crown Prince Muhammad Bin Salman, a Saudi judge has just handed out the longest ever prison sentence to a peace activist and women’s rights campaigner for posting a few critical tweets about the regime:...
-
Don't judge the Taliban after just one year in charge
The Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan has been in existence for one year now, but change has been agonisingly slow; early promises on women’s rights are as yet unrealised; and the closure of schools for teenage girls continues to be a running sore for the international community. The country is...
-
Barclays Bank must be held to account over its support for apartheid Israel
We never seem to learn from history, even from the most recent events during our lifetime. Just today, for example, I had a feeling of déjà vu as a press release popped up in my email from the anti-poverty charity War on Want. The charity is launching a campaign urging...
-
Israel’s killing of Palestinians in Nablus has triggered a backlash in British drone factories
I think most of us have heard of the chaos theory, commonly called the “butterfly effect”, which states that if one butterfly flaps its wings at just the right time in just the right place it can cause a hurricane thousands of miles away. I’m not sure how true...
-
American democracy has been turned into an illusion
These are troubling times for the men who claim to run the world’s greatest democracy. They have meddled so much in other countries’ democratic systems and undermined so many overseas elections that their treachery is beginning to backfire. I am talking about the United States of America, which has...
-
Before Israel alleges ‘anti-Semitism’ abroad, it should root out the plague at home
When Dr Deborah Lipstadt became America’s special anti-Semitism watchdog she decided to embark on an 11-day tour of the Middle East, making Saudi Arabia the first stop. As predicted, it wasn’t long before the US State Department’s anti-Semitism ambassador was confronted by an explosive episode of Jew-hatred. However, it...
-
The lonely Highland grave that links Scotland with Makkah
Rainswept and bleak, Gleann Fhiodhaig in the northwest Scottish Highlands couldn’t be more different from Jabal Ar-Rahmah, which shimmers in the baking heat and desert climes on the outskirts of Makkah, known to millions of Muslim pilgrims around the world as Mount Arafat. Despite the thousands of miles that...
-
Journalists beware — telling the truth should carry a health warning
It was no real surprise when Delhi police officers arrested Indian journalist Mohammed Zubair after he outed the media chief of Narendra Modi’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) for making derogatory comments about Prophet Muhammad (peace and blessings be upon him). Sadly, today’s political climate has made the business...
-
Israel's leading arms dealer is running scared
It must be rather humiliating when you claim to be a world leader in security and surveillance systems but have your own headquarters breached frequently by a disparate group of angry citizens armed with nothing more than red paint and innovative ideas about peaceful resistance to a brutal military...
-
The Prophet of Islam gives Muslim rulers a lesson on strength in unity
Many of the world’s Muslim rulers have come together in a powerful show of unity which could well bring the increasingly Islamophobic Indian government to its knees. There are many lessons to be learned from this. It may even bring an end to the genocidal tendencies within the world’s...
-
Rogue state Israel is licensed to kill
Israel has become a law unto itself and unless the international community stands up to the rogue state it will continue to use the world as its own backyard in order to plot against and kill its enemies. This was made clear on Sunday when Israeli Prime Minister Naftali...
-
Imran Khan could be up against spies, lies and black propaganda in Pakistan
Millions of Pakistanis are being asked to converge on the capital Islamabad by charismatic ousted Prime Minister Imran Khan and his supporters who claim that he was removed from office in a dirty tricks campaign run by US intelligence agents because his policies were against America’s regional and global...
-
The Scottish government is silencing Palestinians
Scotland’s First Minister Nicola Sturgeon is facing a backlash after a group of Palestinian academics criticised her decision to embrace the working definition of anti-Semitism prepared by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance because the definition clearly contradicts a hate crime review commissioned by her own government. The Holyrood government took...
-
Israel must be held to account for Shireen's murder
Like a worm on a fish hook, Tel Aviv is slithering and wriggling over the assassination of Palestinian journalist, Shireen Abu Akleh. Showing absolutely no shame, the Zionist State began spewing out lies and a false narrative the moment the iconic Al-Jazeera journalist hit the ground, taking her last breath. Be...
-
This runaway Afghan general should push his own off button
I read with some incredulity that a former three-star general in the Afghan National Army is planning to launch a new war against the ruling Taliban eight months after the movement’s victory which brought an end to a brutal 20-year conflict involving US-led NATO forces. According to defeated Lieutenant...
-
Springtime in Islamabad
Is Pakistan embarking on its own version of the Arab Spring? The incredible scenes of people power from Peshawar to Islamabad, Lahore to Karachi and beyond suggest that 227 million Pakistanis are on the brink of something momentous. If so, they could smash dynastic Pakistani politics forever. Recently ousted Prime...
-
We might be powerless to stop state-approved theft, but we should still call it out
The anniversary of the fateful day when US troops took the Iraqi capital Baghdad in 2003 will no doubt be marked this week with a deafening silence in Washington, because it was also the day when the so-called victors looted and plundered the country’s banks. The fact that such...
-
With one stroke of his pen, Joe Biden has condemned a million children to death by starvation
Economic warfare is the name of America's new revenge mission against the people of Afghanistan...
-
The makers of Israel’s deadly drones continue to evade British justice
It’s impossible to pick out one single act of brutality committed by Israel’s occupation forces over another, because there have been so many in eight decades of the Palestinian struggle for survival. Each atrocity bears the hallmarks of a crime against humanity: Deir Yassin in 1948 — at least...
-
Ruthless Abbas is following Putin's lead when it comes to seeing off his rivals
Is Russian President Vladimir Putin advising his Palestinian Authority counterpart Mahmoud Abbas on how to maintain his iron grip on power while seeing off political rivals? I only ask because Abbas, who is also the chairman of Fatah and the Palestine Liberation Organisation, has already postponed — yet again...
-
Charge Putin with war crimes by all means, but why stop at the Kremlin?
Former British Prime Minister Gordon Brown is spearheading an international initiative to launch a tough, new war crimes tribunal styled on the Nuremberg trials established after the Second World War when senior Nazis and their minions were brought to justice. Brown is keen to see Russian President Vladimir Putin...
-
Blinded by White Culture and privilege
The front page of a national newspaper in Scotland speaks volumes about the difference in the way that the media covers the war in Ukraine and the ongoing 70+ years of undeclared war inflicted on the people of Palestine from the Israeli-occupied West Bank to the Israeli-besieged Gaza Strip...
-
If Ukraine can have an international brigade, why can't Palestine and Syria?
Britain’s Foreign Secretary Liz Truss has said that she will support anyone who wants to go to Ukraine to join an international brigade of fighters against Russia. She described such a mission as taking part in a battle “for freedom and democracy”. I can’t help but wonder, though, about those...