Insights

An emerging defense of Joe Biden’s Democratic presidential campaign is that many of his questionable political acts occurred during a “different time.” When it comes to the 1994 “crime bill,” it is excused as a product of a time when the United States was more tolerant of racial injustice than it is today.
Biden wrote the legislation that became the law signed a few months prior to the first midterm election of Clinton’s presidency. It was not an organic response to public concern but a deliberate strategy to appeal to conservative white voters.

As predicted, the Sri Lankan Easter Day blasts which killed hundreds and injured hundreds more – have been connected to the so-called “Islamic State” (ISIS).

JERUSALEM — “Palestinians are being treated extremely unfairly.” This quote by Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) came to mind as I was watching the documentary film 1948: Creation and Catastrophe.

A recent statement made by the outgoing French Ambassador to the US regarding the nature of Israeli apartheid accentuates a larger ailment that has afflicted the European Union foreign policy.
The EU is simply gutless when it comes to confronting Israel’s illegal occupation of Palestine.  
Ambassador Gerard Araud was, of course, right when he told the US magazine, the ‘Atlantic’, that Israel is already an apartheid state.

When the history of our times is recorded, any volume on domestic political prisoners must, per force, begin with the legendary ones of conscience. To these icons of principle, determination and courage we owe much. It is, after all, not by mere default that they risked, and often paid, all to demand the gale of change sweep away generations of ignorance, hatred and greed that have long fed on communities of color and poverty, from coast to coast, in the United States.

JERUSALEM — There is a story about the Khalifa Umar bin al-Khattab, the Muslim leader who conquered Jerusalem in 637 C.E. It is said that upon entering the city he asked to see the site of the temple built by King Solomon, but could find no one who knew where it was. According to the story, he then came across a poor Jewish beggar sitting in the street. The beggar told the Kalifa that he could take him to the site where the temple once stood. When they arrived at the site Umar realized that the site had been used as the city trash dump.

Even though the Yellow Vest anti-government movement is historic in scope, duration and intensity, and even though Muslims comprise 5-10% of France’s population, there has been almost zero media coverage of the interplay between these two forces.
Check Google in French or English and you truly find almost nothing. I have been waiting and waiting to do a story on this angle for Iran’s PressTV – I am their Paris correspondent – but there is simply no “news peg” from which we can start any report.

As the 300-foot spire of the Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris tragically came tumbling down on live television, my thoughts ventured to Nuseirat Refugee Camp, my childhood home in the Gaza Strip.

An extraordinary chapter in the ongoing saga of Venezuela has been taking place, virtually unnoticed, at the Venezuela Embassy that lies in the heart of swanky Georgetown in Washington DC.
A group of us, all activists opposed to the prospect of the Venezuelan opposition taking over the Embassy, have been living inside the building for the past two weeks, working side-by-side with the skeletal Venezuela diplomatic staff that has been told by the State Department that they must leave by April 24.

POLAND SPRING, MAINE — Nestlé is facing a class-action lawsuit from consumers in eight states in New England, based on claims that the Poland Spring brand is “100% Natural Spring Water.” The plaintiffs, from Maine to Pennsylvania, are alleging deceptive labeling.