When it comes to Libya’s year-old civil war, the international community has all but openly admitted that it’s out of ideas. The UN-led negotiations, which are formally aimed at reaching a peace deal by mid-June, have produced no positive developments or even meaningful cease-fires. They are presently on the brink of collapse. On Tuesday, the Libyan Prime Minister Abdullah al-Thinni barely escaped an assassination attempt, and a parliamentary session was stormed by gunmen. Yet despite how dire the situation has become, many Western officials reject the very idea of a plan B, arguing that the current talks represent the only way forward…

The field of Republican presidential contenders does not want for hawks. Marco Rubio is alreadytalking about attacking Iran. Jeb Bush has stacked his foreign policy team with his brother’s neoconservative advisers, including Iraq war architect Paul Wolfowitz. Scott Walker wants to be “a leader that is willing to take a fight to them before they take the fight to us.” Even Rand Paul has proposed to increase defense spending. (As for the other side, Hillary Clinton has plenty ofquestions to answer about her support for military intervention.) Now the flock is about to get a candidate to out-hawk all the others: South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham,…

April is the cruelest month, apparently. Over the past four weeks an extraordinary cluster of dates has prompted a flurry of remembrance. The twenty-first anniversary of the genocide in Rwanda (April 7). The centenary of the Armenian genocide (April 15). Holocaust Day (also April 15). The fortieth anniversary of the start of the mass slaughter of Cambodians by the Khmer Rouge (April 17). So what is it about this particular time of year? That’s one minor mystery we’ll probably never get to the bottom of. But no matter – it pales into insignificance against the bigger questions that these commemorations…

French President Francois Hollande vowed Thursday to “show no mercy” against French peacekeeping troops if they are proven to have sexually abused displaced children in the Central African Republic. But there’s good reason to believe that won’t happen. For years, governments and multilateral bodies have promised to hold accountable those who abuse the world’s most vulnerable — the same people they are charged with protecting. Yet reports documenting decades of abuse by peacekeepers reveal a pattern of impunity. In 2005, when Jordan’s ambassador to the United Nations presented a damning report on the prevalence of sexual abuse in peacekeeping missions around the world, the…

مرة أخرى، العجوز الليبرالي بوجه دراكيولا شاكيّاً من أن كمية العنف والقتل التي تستخدمها الدولة القمعية ضد معارضيها لا تكفي لكي تروي ظمأه للدماء. يقول طارق حجي، الليبرالي المزيف والذي لا يخفي ولاءه لواشنطن وتل أبيب، تعليقاً على مقتل شيماء الصباغ على يد الشرطة، إنها أخطأت، ومن ثم تستحق ما جرى لها، ثم يضيف في حوار تلفزيوني "أعيب على الشرطة عدم استخدام القوة بالقدر الكافي". لم يجب الذي يطلقون عليه "المفكر السياسي" عن السؤال: كم يكفيه من قوة القتل والبطش لكي يرضى عن أداء الشرطة؟ وبالطبع، لن يجيب، كما أنه لم يجب عن سؤال مطروح عليه منذ سنوات بعيدة: إذا…