“Our data show what needs to be done to improve the level and distribution of happiness” globally, the authors of World Happiness Report 2016 argue ambitiously in their latest assessment across nations and continents. “Increasingly, happiness is considered to be the proper measure of social progress and the goal of public policy.” With Ministries of Happiness springing up in Venezuela, …
Sarah Lazare – Have We Learned Nothing? 13 Years After America’s Disastrous Iraq Invasion, Obama Quietly Deploys More Troops
It has been thirteen years since former president George W. Bush sat in the Oval Office and announced [3] the invasion and large-scale bombing of Iraq to “free its people and to defend the world from grave danger.” That war and occupation would go on to take the lives of over one million Iraqi people, according to [4] some estimates, and leave behind decimated infrastructure [5], environmental poison [6], asectarian [7] political …
Michelle P. – The Dark Side Of Depending On Black Gold: Case Study, Qatar
The development of oil prices between 2014 and 2016 has seen a sharp decline from well over $100 in mid-2014 to under $30 in early 2016. While for most of us in the West, the impact of the dramatic dip in oil prices is limited to a pleasant reduction in the cost of filling up at the gas station, this article …
Pepe Escobar – EXCLUSIVE: The Secret Behind the Next Global Crash
Yet there will be. And the stage is already set for it. Selected Persian Gulf traders, and that includes Westerners working in the Gulf confirm that Saudi Arabia is unloading at least $1 trillion in securities and crashing global markets under orders from the Masters of the Universe – those above the lame presidency of Barack Obama. Those were the days when the House of Saud would as much as flirt with such …
Graham E. Fuller – Turning Change into Chaos
A renowned Arab religious scholar in the Fourteenth Century, ibn Taymiyya, is sometimes quoted as saying, Al-zulm afdal ‘ala al-fawda — “oppression is to be favored over anarchy.” Although ibn Taiymiyya was no establishment figure in his time, this perspective was welcomed by all rulers since it provided explicit religious justification in support of arbitrary and often oppressive authority.Maybe there’s …
Paul Craig Roberts – The 21st Century: An Era Of Fraud
In the last years of the 20th century fraud entered US foreign policy in a new way. On false pretenses Washington dismantled Yugoslavia and Serbia in order to advance an undeclared agenda. In the 21st century this fraud multiplied many times. Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, and Libya were destroyed, and Iran and Syria would also have been destroyed if the President …
Daniel Lazare – Will Reckless Saudis Seek War with Iran?
Now that Saudi Arabia has severed diplomatic ties with Iran and reportedly bombed Iran’s embassy in Yemen, the big question is whether the Saudis are desperate and unhinged enough to launch an attack across the Persian Gulf. While Saudi leaders insist they have no such intent, there are mounting pressures pushing them in that direction. The ruling family is under unprecedented strain. Its …
Patrick L. Smith – He’s made the Middle East worse: Let’s be honest, Obama bears as much responsibility for this mess as predecessors who shaped them
It is all there now for us to see. Decades of cynical, poorly devised policy in the Middle East, vacant of any principle our indispensable nation purports to advance, return as we speak to bite our president and his foreign policy cliques on their backsides. The shambles that now ensues serves them right, absolutely.Advertisement With the sudden ignition of smoldering …
Robert Fisk – Saudi Arabia’s Mad Head-Choppers
Saudi Arabia’s binge of head-choppings – 47 in all, including the learned Shia cleric Sheikh Nimr Baqr al-Nimr, followed by a Koranic justification for the executions – was worthy of Isis. Perhaps that was the point. For this extraordinary bloodbath in the land of the Sunni Muslim al-Saud monarchy – clearly intended to infuriate the Iranians and the entire Shia …
Robert Parry – How Obama Enables Atrocities
As the New Year dawns, the neocons and their liberal interventionist sidekicks remain firmly in control of Official Washington’s storylines – on Syria, Russia and elsewhere – even as their policies continue to wreak havoc across the Mideast and threaten the stability of Europe and indeed the future of civilization. The latest proof of this dangerous reality came when Saudi …