Saudi Arabia

Saskia Jaschek — It is impossible to understand the war in Sudan without accounting for the regional and international interests involved.

Adam Hanieh — A major shift has taken place in the control of world oil over recent decades: the seemingly unstoppable rise of national oil companies run by governments in the Middle East, China, Russia and others in the Global South.

Harald Etzbach — While the states of the Global South publicly proclaim solidarity with Palestine, the reality is more complicated.

Claudio Katz talks about the need to avoid looking at imperialism in purely economic terms, the rise of what he terms an “imperial system” and the complexities of anti-imperialism in the 21st century.
 
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By Tony Iltis

February 27, 2017 — Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal — Since the Syrian civil war began in 2011, the US has been involved, at first, through arming and supporting groups opposing the dictatorship of Bashar Assad, and supporting allies in the region doing likewise; and since 2014, through its direct involvement in leading an international coalition in an air war against ISIS.

Small numbers of US Special Forces and CIA operatives are also in Syria, supporting different, mutually antagonistic groups in the multi-sided conflict.

The US role in Syria often appears confused and contradictory. This seems set to increase under the new US administration.

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By Santiago Alba Rico, translated from Cuarto Poder by Sean Seymour-Jones August 4, 2016 — Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal — What many of us feared on the night of July 15 has occurred in the most sombre way possible. If a victorious coup in Turkey would have been terrible, its failure looks set to be no less so. In barely a week, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has detained or purged more than 40,000 public officials: army officers, police, judges, teachers, and journalists. He has declared a state of emergency for three months - which can be extended indefinitely - and has suspended the European Convention of Human Rights, which could open the way – as the government has already insinuated - to the reestablishment of the death penalty and, in any case, normalise repression against all forms of opposition, particularly against the Gulenist forces and the Kurds, who have once again, following the reinitiating of the military conflict a year ago, been converted into the “internal enemy”. In short, to stop or avenge a coup - real and manipulated - Erdogan and his party have at the same time carried out a coup.