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14th July 2016
By: Brian Whitaker
Britain's continuing political upheaval resulted not only in the appointment of a new prime minister yesterday but also a new foreign secretary, Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson – referred to by almost everyone simply as "Boris" or "BoJo".  In some ways, Boris and the Foreign Office ought to be… Read more
13th July 2016
By: Brian Whitaker
A visit to Syria last weekend by three members of the European Parliament has given the Assad regime a useful propaganda boost. Ahead of the visit the Syrian government news agency, Sana, reported: "A delegation from the European Parliament headed by Vice-President for the Committee on Foreign… Read more
9th July 2016
By: Ayman Fares
Iraq’s law on how local parties are funded and founded has the potential to change the political landscape for better. But various parts of the new act seem to contradict one another. It is less than a year before Iraq holds the next round of significant elections; the provincial elections, which… Read more
9th July 2016
By: Brian Whitaker
A British MP who recently went on two trips to Bahrain paid for by the repressive Gulf kingdom's rulers is due to return the favour next week by hosting a reception in the House of Commons "celebrating" 200 years of Bahraini-British relations. Last October, Bahrain's foreign ministry splashed out… Read more
5th July 2016
By: Brian Whitaker
One of the world's strangest human rights organisations, the Emirati-funded Global Network for Rights and Development (GNRD), was declared bankrupt by a court in Norway yesterday. The case was brought by an employee, Thomas Bechmann, who claimed he was owed NOK 250,000 ($30,120) in unpaid wages… Read more
30th June 2016
By: Sami Oussama Filali Naji
"Millennials are the first generation to grow up with the internet ... our minds do not operate within a nationalist space but within a globalised or internationalist space." A view of Brexit from a young British-born Moroccan. The article was first published on the Arab Millennial website… Read more
29th June 2016
By: Brian Whitaker
The dissemination of hate speech on Twitter is an obvious cause for concern. Until recently it seems to have relied mainly on the efforts of bigoted individuals and – although there is a lot of it – the need for manual posting has set some limits on how many offensive tweets there might be. But now… Read more
23rd June 2016
By: Brian Whitaker
A few months ago I began to feel that something odd was happening whenever I posted a tweet about Bahrain. My tweets, usually critical of Bahrain's government, rapidly disappeared from view – pushed down the #bahrain live Twitter feed by lots of newer tweets, mostly supporting the Bahraini… Read more
22nd June 2016
By: Brian Whitaker
Twitter announced yesterday that it has suspended hundreds of apparently fake accounts that have been posting sectarian tweets directed against Shia Muslims. Marc Owen Jones, who lectures in Gulf politics at Tübingen University in Germany, began investigating when he noticed a series of identical… Read more
23rd May 2016
By: Helen Lackner
There is no doubt that the military stalemate is a major reason leading to the Kuwait negotiations. After 14 months of full-scale war, the military situation is largely unchanged. Thirteen months into the full scale war which has encompassed the country, negotiations started in… Read more