China, responding to United Nations criticism, academic and media reports, and an embarrassing court case in Kazakhstan, has come closer to admitting that it has brutally cracked down on the strategic north-western province of Xinjiang in what it asserts is a bid to prevent the kind of mayhem that has wracked countries like Syria and…

DAMASCUS, SYRIA — After over 400 members of the Syrian White Helmets were evacuated last weekend by the Israeli government, senior members of the controversial “humanitarian” group are now calling on the United Nations to oversee additional evacuations of the group. The plea comes amid media reports in the Western press that not all White…

NEW YORK — The Group of 77, a bloc of developing nations at the UN, has chosen Palestine’s delegation as its chair for 2019, a move that will likely be seen as a diplomatic win for Palestine and a loss for Israel and the U.S. The latter two countries have been arguing against increasing Palestine’s…

KHAN AL-AHMAR, PALESTINE — Israel has been preparing to demolish the Bedouin village of Khan al-Ahmar in the occupied West Bank. Activists and area residents have responded by boarding up buildings and blocking bulldozers set to demolish the village. On the left, a photo at the wonderful school in Khan al-Ahmar during my recent visit…

Just prior to a United Nations Human Rights Council meeting on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict this week, a UN legal expert has declared that Israel is moving closer to formal annexation of the West Bank. “After years of creeping Israeli de facto annexation of the large swathes of the West Bank through settlement expansion, the creation of…

HODEIDA, YEMEN — The United Arab Emirates Minister of Foreign Affairs, Anwar Gargash, announced on Sunday a pause in the U.S.-backed, Saudi-led attacks against Yemen’s port city of Hodeida. He claimed the halt is intended to allow United Nations efforts to resolve the conflict to take place. Despite the announcement, however, the Saudi-led coalition is,…

NEW YORK – The 22-year-old co-founder of a charity that advocates for victims of sexual violence was arrested on Tuesday in New York for possession of child pornography and for working to arrange sexual encounters with children as young as two years old. Joel Davis — who helped found Youth to End Sexual Violence, and…

AMMAN, JORDAN – The leader of the U.K. Labour Party, Jeremy Corbyn, officially announced on Friday that the U.K. would recognize Palestine as a state under a future Labour government. Corbyn, speaking in Jordan during his first trip to the region since becoming party leader in 2015, stated that the recognition of a Palestinian state…

Responding to Sen. Bernie Sanders’ (I-Vt.) call for the Trump administration take immediate action to address extreme poverty in the U.S. after a United Nations report found that tens of millions of Americans are suffering “massive levels of deprivation,” U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Nikki Haley declared in a letter to Sanders on Thursday that it is “patently ridiculous” for…

The government of Filipino President Rodrigo Duterte has fired off a stern warning to China regarding the natural resources in the South China Sea region. The Philippines foreign ministry vows that the country will not shy away from going to war over the disputed region. The official, on Monday, stated that there are several “red lines” or actions – if…

On 14 of May 1948 – Israel declared unilaterally her independence in a foreign land, called Palestine, supported by a UN Resolution sponsored by the UK (the United Nations “Partition Plan of Palestine” at the end of the British Mandate (euphemism for British ‘colony’), was adopted by the UN General Assembly on 29 November 1947 as Resolution…

DAMASCUS, SYRIA – According to corporate media reports as well as reports from some “independent” media outlets like Democracy Now over the past week, UN-backed investigators from the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) were being “blocked”  by Syria and Russia from reaching the alleged site of a chemical weapons attack in Douma, Syria…