United Arab Emirates

people holding signs and banners

The COP28 climate summit in Dubai ended with an agreement that, for the first time, explicitly endorsed a move away from fossil fuels, but is so full of loopholes that the fossil fuel industry will be allowed to persist and thrive, reports Jake Johnson.

COP28 protest in Sydney for climate action

Expectations were never high for COP28, but as the climate deniers have managed to subvert the summit’s goals, Alex Bainbridge argues Australia must set its own climate transition plan.

US espionage

Secret United States government documents leaked onto social media platform Discord reveal how the US and its military is striving to reestablish hegemony — targeting adversaries and pressuring allies, report Malik Miah and Barry Sheppard.

Yemen

The eight year long Saudi war on Yemen looks, at long last, within reach of a resolution, reports Rupen Savoulian.

The cultivation of relations between the Emiratis (and the other Gulf nations) and Israel have been disguised as the promotion of Muslim-Jewish interfaith cooperation, writes Rupen Savoulian. But this cynical ploy cannot disguise the naked and brazen economic and geopolitical interests motivating both parties.

It is supposedly in our name that the PM would send Australians to kill and die in Iran. A war there would almost certainly result in a catastrophe that would compound and eclipse the regional destabilisation caused by the US and Australia during the invasion of Iraq and the ongoing war in Afghanistan, writes Hector Ramage.

March 26 marked four years of devastating war in Yemen. An estimated 50,000 people have been killed as a direct result of the war and 85,000 children may have died of hunger and preventable diseases.

As the brutal murder of a Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi by the Saudi regime dominates headlines, Khury Petersen-Smith takes a look at Show the US is backing Saudi war crimes in Yemen.

Twenty days after Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) bombed a school bus full of children in Yemen in August, United States Defense Secretary James Mattis hosted officials from the two US allies at the Pentagon.

As Yemeni journalists reported that at least 15 civilians were killed in Saudi airstrikes in the port city of Hodeidah on September 12, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo officially certified that Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE), whose three-year assault on the country has been made possible by US support, are doing all they can to avoid civilian casualties.

Washington DC was the converging point for some of the world’s most oppressive regimes on May 13 and 14, when President Barack Obama hosted a billionaire conglomerate known as the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC). The group consists of the Middle Eastern countries of Kuwait, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, UAE and Oman. The cosy US-GCC relationship exemplifies the twisted nature of US foreign policy, especially in regards to Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabia has been accused of human rights violations against its own citizens, including political activists, journalists, and women.
As US President Barack Obama continued his economic speaking tour, walkouts at fast-food restaurants rippled across cities nationwide in early August, calling attention to the nation’s growing wealth gap. At the franchise stores of McDonald’s, Taco Bell, Burger King and KFC and other grease-slinging corporations, thousands of people protested the low wages dished out by the biggest names in the industry and raised a common demand: US$15 (A$16.30) an hour and the right to unionise.
The pro-democracy movement in Bahrain has been severely weakened by the brutal wave of repression that began on March 15. Attempts to reignite pro-democracy protests have been broken up by government security forces and strikes have been called off. Troops from Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates entered Bahrain on March 14 to help the Bahraini government “restore order” by attacking thousands of pro-democracy protesters.