Brett Wilkins

Human rights defenders this week accused U.S. President Joe Biden of empowering Saudi oppression after an activist was sentenced to 34 years in prison for tweeting about the fundamentalist monarchy’s repression of women. Salma al-Shehab, a 34-year-old Saudi mother of two and graduate student at the University of Leeds in England, was on holiday in … Continue reading “Saudi Arabia’s Enablers Condemned as Woman Sentenced to 34 Years for Tweets”

Relatives of Shireen Abu Akleh, the Palestinian-American journalist shot dead by Israeli forces in occupied Palestine in May, followed up a Tuesday meeting with U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken by imploring the Biden administration to pursue justice for the slain Al Jazeera reporter. “Our family just finished meeting with Sec. Blinken,” Lina Abu Akleh, … Continue reading “After Meeting Blinken, Shireen Abu Akleh’s Family ‘Still Waiting’ for Justice”

Progressives this week decried the Biden administration’s approval of a nearly $1 billion weapons support deal with the United Arab Emirates – a move that came days after an Abu Dhabi court controversially sentenced a Virginia civil rights lawyer to three years in prison. The U.S. State Department’s approval of the $980.4 million agreement for … Continue reading “Biden Ripped for $1 Billion UAE Arms Deal Days After Khashoggi Lawyer Sentenced”

As President Joe Biden prepares to visit Saudi Arabia this week, peace and human rights campaigners on Monday decried a report that his administration is considering lifting its amorphous ban on the sale of “offensive” US weaponry to the repressive monarchy. According to Reuters, the US administration has come under pressure from Saudi officials to … Continue reading “Outrage as Biden Reportedly Considers Lifting Ban on ‘Offensive’ Arms Sales to Saudi Arabia”

Progressive Middle East watchers on Wednesday condemned the Biden administration’s targeting of 15 firms and people in at least five countries allegedly linked to the sale and shipment of Iranian petroleum products in violation of US economic sanctions. In announcing the new sanctions, the US Treasury Department cites an executive order signed in 2018 by … Continue reading “Biden Denounced for Imposing New Sanctions as Iran Nuclear Talks Falter”

Human rights advocates on Monday derided the Biden administration’s assertion that Palestinian-American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh was “likely” – but unintentionally – killed by an Israeli soldier, with one group accusing the US State Department of complicity in a “whitewash” of the reporter’s death. In a statement released on the July 4 holiday, US State … Continue reading “‘Organized Whitewash’: US Claims Israeli Military’s Murder of Journalist Not Intentional”

No U.S. personnel will be held accountable for a March 2019 airstrike that killed scores of Syrian civilians including women and children, the Pentagon said Tuesday in announcing that an internal investigation into the massacre found that no laws of war were broken and that there was no cover-up of the incident as alleged in … Continue reading “US Military Clears Itself of Blame in Syria Strike That Killed ‘Piles’ of Women and Children”

One of the psychologists paid tens of millions of dollars by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency to oversee the interrogation of prisoners in the so-called War on Terror provided new details on Monday about the torture of a Guantánamo Bay detainee at CIA “black site” in Thailand. The New York Times reports James E. Mitchell … Continue reading “‘All of These Guys Belong in Prison’: CIA Torture Described in Vivid Detail by Psychologist”

U.S. corporate media outlets are saturated with pundits – many of them ex-military or national security officials – who take to the airwaves to promote hawkish policies and actions in Ukraine and elsewhere without disclosing their own ties to the arms industry, according to a report published Tuesday. Analyzing punditry across a range of outlets … Continue reading “New Reporting Details Corporate Media’s War Industry Pundits”

Human rights advocates were stunned but not surprised Thursday after a Turkish prosecutor asked a court to move the trial of 26 Saudi men accused of murdering journalist Jamal Khashoggi to Saudi Arabia – whose Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman is widely believed to have ordered the assassination. The Washington Post – where Khashoggi worked … Continue reading “‘Travesty of Justice’: Turkey Seeks Transfer of Khashoggi Murder Trial to Saudi Arabia”