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Costa Rica On Strike, EU, Bloody Syria, Mass Protests in India, Irish Options, Nigerian Left, Iranian Kurds

There is a new ménage-à-quatre in the region, bringing Israel, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), and the United States ever closer. And...an unexpected fifth player lurking in the shadows: Russia.

In the middle of a war zone, despite constant attack and a Turkish and Iraqi-Kurdish economic blockade which has cut off access to sufficient food, medical supplies, and electricity, the four million people of Rojava are trying to build a new kind of feminist democratic politics.

Not so far back, those who opposed the Iraq War were smeared as supporters of Saddam Hussein, a charge that honest anti-war activists easily dismissed. Defending Syria from foreign aggression and advocating the right of Syrians to choose their own future apparently makes one an “Assad apologist"...

Trump is asking Middle Eastern governments to build a military force to replace US troops in northeast Syria, and notorious war profiteer Erik Prince has been contacted for help. Medea Benjamin says the plan is scandalous.

Moscow says Syria’s Soviet-era systems downed majority of US, UK and French missiles

America’s security depends on defeating oligarchy abroad and at home.

Turkey's war on Afrin is an attack not only on Kurdish self-determination, but on democracy and women's liberation in the Middle East.

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Saudi Arabia's puzzling effort to blacklist its tiny neighbor Qatar begs the question of who's really isolated in the Gulf. The attack on Qatar is part of Saudi Arabia’s aggressive new foreign policy that is being led by Crown Prince and Defense Minister Mohammed bin Salman. As Saudi Arabia’s “monarch in waiting,” Mohammed has launched a disastrous war in Yemen that’s killed more than 10,000 civilians and sparked a country-wide cholera epidemic there.