Unemployment among young males in particular provides a receptive audience for extremist messages.
Trouble Brewing in Egypt
With U.S. attention toward the Middle East being recently focused on such matters as warfare in Syria and Iraq and on the relationship with Saudi Arabia, little attention span is left over for the relationship with the most populous Arab nation. But developments in Egypt have, in multiple respects, significant capacity for creating attention-grabbing problems for Washington in addition to problems to which Egypt already is contributing in significant though less salient ways.
The regime of Abdel Fattah el-Sisi has become increasingly harsh, illiberal and downright brutal—much more so than the last previous Egyptian general-turned-president, Hosni Mubarak. The State Department's official human rights reporton Egypt says that the most significant human rights problems there have been “excessive use of force by security forces, deficiencies in due process, and the suppression of civil liberties.
Defending Democracy To the Last Drop of Oil
The Sauds are furious that Obama has refused to attack Iran, Hezbollah in Lebanon, and Syria’s Assad regime. They are also angry as hornets that the US may allow relatives of 9/11 victims to sue the Saudi royal family.
How US covered up Saudi role in 9/11
The kingdom’s involvement was deliberately covered up at the highest levels of our government. And the coverup goes beyond locking up 28 pages of the Saudi report in a vault in the US Capitol basement. Investigations were throttled. Co-conspirators were let off the hook.
Hoover-Era American Plan For War Against Britain and Canada Uncovered
Its aim was to dismember the British empire on the grounds of "competition and interference with American foreign trade." It was envisaged that British, Australian, New Zealand and Indian forces would quickly overwhelm American bases in the Philippines and Guam. Out of concern that British forces might take the American-run Panama Canal, Plan Red called for a US naval and air assault against British possessions in the Caribbean, including the seizure of Jamaica, the Bahamas and Bermuda.
Prepare for the worst: Venezuela is heading toward complete disaster
THE POLITICAL drama in Venezuela, where a populist, authoritarian government is attempting to cling to power despite losing a legislative election by a landslide, tends to obscure a deeper crisis. Though it is awash in oil, the country of 30 million people is facing an economic collapse and a humanitarian disaster.
Venezuela already suffers from the world’s highest inflation rate — expected to rise from 275 percent to 720 percent this year — one of its higher murder rates and pervasive shortages of consumer goods, ranging from car parts to toilet paper. Power outages and the lack of raw materials are forcing surviving factories and shops to close or limit opening hours. According to a local surveycited by the Economist, the poverty rate is 76 percent, compared with 55 percent when Hugo Chávez, the late founder of the regime, took power in 1999.
