Robert Scheer: Be Consistent—Invade Saudi Arabia

It’s the black gold that drives nations mad and inevitably raises the question of whether America and the former European colonial powers give a damn about human rights as the basis for military intervention. If Libya didn’t have more oil than any other nation in Africa would the West be unleashing high-tech military mayhem to contain what is essentially a tribal-based civil war? Once again an American president summons the passions of a human rights crusade against a reprehensible ruler whose crimes, while considerable, are not significantly different from those of dictators the U.S routinely protects

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Outlook for Democracy Dims Across Much of the Middle East

A poster depicting 15 Middle Eastern heads of state stood out among the other signs hoisted in the air Saturday by hundreds of protesters at a rally outside the Arab League meeting in Cairo.

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Saudi Arabia Police Open Fire on Protesters

Police in Saudi Arabia have opened fire to disperse protesters in the eastern city of Qatif, a day before planned countrywide anti-government protests.

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The Price of Food is at the Heart of This Wave of Revolutions

Revolution is breaking out all over. As Gaddafi marshals his thugs and mercenaries for a last-ditch fight in Tripoli, several died as protests grew more serious in Iraq. Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah tried to bribe his people into docility by splashing out $35bn on housing, social services and education. Across the water in Bahrain the release of political prisoners failed to staunch the uprising. In Iran, President Ahmadinejad crowed about chaos in the Arab world, but said nothing about the seething anger in his own backyard; in Yemen, the opposition gathers strength daily.

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William Pfaff: New Regimes Have Reason to Resent America

The political scholar Walter Russell Mead recently alluded to more than a half-century of American “world-order-building tasks,” a formulation that I think most Americans would accept as describing the international obligations Washington assumed in 1945-46, and the policy the United States has undertaken since 1941, when it entered the Second World War against Nazi Germany and the Japanese Empire.

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