Middle East

You'd better not mess with Muslim Brother Morsi. Straight out of "communist" China – where he secured a red carpet welcome from President Hu Jintao and vice-president Xi Jinping – the Egyptian president lands in "evil" Iran as a true Arab world leader. [1] Imagine conducting a poll in Tampa, Florida, among delegates at the Republican convention anointing the dodgy …

The ghost of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat is rising from his grave to haunt Israel and the Americans. A devastating investigation by Qatar’s al-Jazeera has found mounting evidence that Arafat’s death in 2004 was caused by the poisonous radioactive substance Polonium 210. Arafat’s widow, Suha, is now calling for his body to be exhumed and sent to the Swiss scientific …

Nine-month investigation by Al Jazeera discovers rare, radioactive polonium on ex-Palestinian leader's final belongings. It was a scene that riveted the world for weeks: The ailing Yasser Arafat, first besieged by Israeli tanks in his Ramallah compound, then shuttled to Paris, where he spent his final days undergoing a barrage of medical tests in a French military hospital. Eight years …

  More than 60 people died in a series of bomb blasts across Iraq on Wednesday. The endless violence indicates that Iraq’s problems are far from over though the United States withdrew its troops – at least on paper – six months ago.   That the victims of Wednesday’s bomb attacks were largely Shiite pilgrims indicates that the sectarianism created …

Saudi Arabia and its Sunni allies may right now be boosting oil production, aiming to plunge the market price to as low as US$60 per barrel. The ultimate goal is to cripple the economies of Shiite Iran and Iraq, an insider view suggests. The insight comes from Barton Biggs, hedge fund manager running Traxis Partners, who spoke with a Saudi …

The US government is the second worst human rights abuser on the planet and the sole enabler of the worst–Israel. But this doesn’t hamper Washington from pointing the finger elsewhere. The US State Department’s “human rights report” focuses its ire on Iran and Syria, two countries whose real sin is their independence from Washington, and on the bogyman- in-the-making–China, the …