Creating new perspectives since 2009
Items by Dr Yvonne Ridley
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The Palestinians are fishing for European justice
Had there been any genuine determination in the Arab world to deliver justice to the Palestinian people it would have been done years ago. However, many of the states and their rulers have proven themselves to be both incompetent and impotent when it comes to occupied Palestine. I’ve often said…
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When silence is the best diplomacy
If you poke a stick in a hornets’ nest then the results will become painfully obvious very quickly, which is why I am surprised at the headlines expressing shock at Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s decision to expel ten ambassadors from his country. His declaration that the ambassadors from ten…
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Here lies Colin Powell…
Following his death from Covid-19 earlier this week, former US Secretary of State Colin Powell’s legacy will be examined by many people for many different reasons. Some will eulogise him as one of America’s top diplomats and presidential advisers. Many more, I suspect, will remember him as the man who…
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Sixty years after the Paris Massacre, will the French finally accept that Muslim Lives Matter?
France’s Donald Trump wannabe is leading the country’s Islamophobic charge by promising to ban children from being named Muhammad if he becomes president. The meteoric rise of Eric Zemmour in the polls has sent alarm bells ringing among the country’s five million Muslims as they prepare to mark one of…
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Smartphone snitches are welcome in Saudi’s surveillance society
Smartphone technology has revolutionised our lives in many ways that go well beyond telephone calls for the millions who use them. Many of us have become amateur photographers, capturing those special moments which can be uploaded onto social networks within seconds. As is often the case these days, though, there…
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With malice and spite, the US has unleashed a cruel new war on Afghanistan
Tens of thousands of Afghan mothers will quite possibly not be able to wave their children off to school in 2022 because their youngsters will have starved to death in a crisis brought about by the US government’s decision to freeze $9.5 billion of Afghanistan’s reserves held in American banks.…
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Apologies and compensation are simply not good enough for the victims of drone attacks
Palestine Action is, as its name implies, involved in direct action against some of the arms trade’s most deadly production lines, notably Israel’s Elbit Systems. Since it burst onto the scene, quite a few members have been arrested at some of Elbit’s ten known factories and offices in Britain. Elbit…
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Bannockburn’s other battle over the reality of racist Israel
The site of Scotland’s most historic battle is at the centre of a war of words after a schoolgirl’s essay highlighted the injustices faced by Palestinians in the 21st century. Her words were used in an exhibition called General Change: Young People’s Participation in Protest, in which she wrote an…
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The media’s weapons of mass deception
Journalism is a powerful weapon, which is why most tyrants and despots like either to control or ban the media. Even in so-called democracies, governments are well aware of the power and influence that the media can have on voters. Critical front pages and commentaries can win or lose elections,…
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What can the Taliban offer the women of Afghanistan?
The hashtag #womensrights has been trending on social media ever since the Taliban swept dramatically into the Afghan capital Kabul in what was an almost bloodless takeover. Aside from anything else, the transition of power was much smoother than that in Washington earlier this year, when the Trump-Biden handover saw…
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America and its allies helped the Taliban on the road to victory
Most Western media outlets are carrying headlines and hype about the return of the Taliban to Afghanistan after the fighting force swept through the country at a blistering pace which has left military strategists gasping. Within 24 hours of making his “I am staying” speech, President Ashraf Ghani fled from…
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The African Union’s back door invite to Israel has betrayed the Palestinians
The plans to sneak Israel quietly into the African Union as an observer state appear to have backfired spectacularly. Israeli celebrations may be premature as Algeria, one of Palestine’s strongest supporters in Africa, garners support to oppose the colonial state’s affiliation. News began to emerge last week that Israel had…
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The Taliban is steering the ‘graveyard of empires’ towards a new era
Let’s stop all the hand wringing and angst over Afghanistan. Now. It’s fooling no one. America, Britain and their NATO allies have had 20 years to help put the country back on its feet, deliver human rights, female equality and a democratic government free of corruption. They’ve failed. Despite the…
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When winning at any cost is simply not worth it
There was a time when football was just a beautiful game with 22 players kicking a leather ball from one end of the pitch to another while supporters cheered on their team in the hope of victory. Now it’s become a complex, multi-billion dollar affair mired in greed, politics and…
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Israel carried out the world’s first airliner hijacking; the BBC needs to acknowledge this
The BBC has become embroiled in a fact-checking row with demands for an apology over a presenter’s claims that Libya was the first nation to carry out a state-sponsored hijacking of an airliner in the Middle East. According to the broadcaster’s flagship radio show, “The Long View”, the assertion was…
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Syria’s foreign fighters are told, ‘Go home or join HTS’
Hundreds of frontline foreign fighters have been told to fall under the direct control of the main rebel group leading the Syrian civil war in the Idlib region or get out of the country. The blunt order was issued by Hay’at Tahrir Al-Sham (HTS) amid some of the heaviest Russian…
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Palestinian lives do matter
Around the same time that international footballer Christian Eriksen collapsed on a football pitch on Saturday during Denmark’s opening Euro 2020 match against Finland, Ibtisam Kaabneh collapsed and lay dying at an Israeli military checkpoint in Qalandiya, north of occupied Jerusalem. Eriksen’s collapse was headline news, with dramatic real-time footage…
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British pro-Palestine activists prove that direct action and BDS are effective
Pro-Palestine supporters were celebrating victory last night after Scotland lived up to its reputation of being “enemy territory” for Zionists, with the country’s last local authority pension fund announcing that it has divested from the controversial Israeli Bank Hapoalim. Years of campaigning and pressure, led by the Scottish Palestine Solidarity…
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The ‘final’ downfall of Israel was predicted by Einstein
It doesn’t take a genius to see that the failing Zionist project called Israel is coming apart at the seams. It was a genius, though, who predicted the demise of the fledgling state when he was asked to help raise funds for its terrorist cells. Ten years before the state…
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Samira Mohyeddin: Remember her name
Samira Mohyeddin, the Palestinian woman known to millions as the widow of legendary Sheikh Abdullah Azzam, has died of Covid-19 in Jordan. She leaves behind a legacy of love, wisdom and kindness. Like her late husband (1941-1989), she had a great impact on anyone privileged enough to meet her in…
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The pro-Israel lobby fears that support could self-destruct over the bombing of Gaza
The influential pro-Israel lobby in America was reeling last night after it emerged that the US government may halt the $735 million sale of precision-guided missiles to Israel. US politicians, normally supportive of the Zionist state, are divided about giving their usual approval to such a deal. Anything less than…
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Heroic Palestinian resistance from the river to the sea
Israeli leader Benjamin Netanyahu and his generals have made a serious error of judgement by launching their latest military offensive against the people of Palestine. Far from terrorising the civilian population, they have galvanised the 73-year Palestinian struggle for liberation, freedom and statehood. In their hate-induced myopia, Netanyahu and Co.…
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Gifted Palestinian dreamers defy Israel’s occupation nightmare
Palestinian engineer Loay Elbasyouni is a remarkable man, not least because he is an integral part of the NASA team which made history last week by developing the technology to fly a helicopter on Mars. Born and educated in the Gaza Strip, like so many gifted students from the besieged…
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Macron’s double standards will come back to haunt him
The hypocrisy of one of Europe’s leading Islamophobes, French President Emmanuel Macron, appears to be without limits with his call for all mercenaries to quit Libya in a bid to help the fledgling Government of National Unity (GNU). Many of the mercenaries were sent there by France in the first…