Middle East

The state system at its worst: trading insults and threats, sanctions, readiness to use extreme violence, forward deployment of US troops in Israel as hostages to guarantee US involvement, disregard for common people and the effects of warfare in the Middle East and the world.

The UN General Assembly strongly condemned the continued “widespread and systematic” human rights violations by the Syrian authorities and demanded that the Government immediately cease all violence and protect its people.

The present powers calling the shots in Israel want a Jewish State saying the Palestinians can live there freely. Given the state of affairs in Israel vis a vis the Palestinians which has Israel as an apartheid state, that claim does not generate any good vibrations. Here we have the other side’s offering of a secular Palestinian State.

New York – UN General Assembly (UNGA) President Nassir Abdulaziz Al-Nasser is committed to convening an international conference directed at establishing a nuclear-weapons-free zone in the Middle East.

Israeli policies on Palestinian residency have arbitrarily denied thousands of Palestinians the ability to live in, and travel to and from, the West Bank and Gaza, Human Rights Watch said in a new report.

Finally, there is some argumentation in the West supportive of a nuclear free zone for the Middle East. Such thinking is still treated as politically marginal, and hardly audible above the beat of the war drums.

Dubai – Oil rich United Arab Emirates (UAE) harassed, arrested, and jailed activists, and disbanded the elected boards of two of the country’s most prominent civil society organizations, says [Human Rights Watch](http://www.hrw.org/) (HRW) report “[UAE: Free Speech Under Attack](http://www.hrw.org/news/2012/01/25/uae-free-speech-under-attack)”

Geneva – Almost 1,100 Palestinians, over half of them children, were displaced due to home demolitions in the West Bank by Israeli forces in 2011 – over 80 per cent more than in the previous year – according to a [United Nations new report.](http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=41051&Cr=palestin&Cr1=)

Cairo, 26 January – It started as a day of celebration, with tens of thousands of Egyptians converging on Tahrir Square to mark the first anniversary of Egypt’s revolution, 25 January. The morning crowd — dominated by bearded Islamists — waved flags and strolled peacefully in the Square — flashpoint of the eighteen day uprising that toppled Hosni Mubarak last year.

So yes, this larger-than-life psychodrama we call “Iran” may turn out to be as much about China and the US dollar as it is about the politics of the Gulf, or Iran’s nonexistent bomb. The question is: What rough beast, its hour come round at last, slouches towards Beijing to be born? [We took permission from Mr Escobar to run his story on Pressenza, appeared Asia Times.