Robert Kelley: Latest IAEA report recycles old intelligence and is meant to bolster hard liners

Vijay Prashad, professor at Trinity College, Hartford, CT, USA comments on the latest developments in Yemen where unpopular ruler Abdullah Saleh has maintained his grip on power through recourse to support from Saudi Arabia. He also comments on US president Barack Obama's latest speech on the Arab Spring and the supposed "differences" between Israel and the United States following the Hamas-Fatah accord.

In his policy speech on Thursday, 19 May, US President Barack Obama said that with the eruption of the Arab peoples’ revolutions for freedom and democracy Al-Qaida lost its relevance.

Osama – dead or live was the slogan of successive US Presidents.

America presumes to know, and presumes to have a say equivalent to those of the millions who have thronged Egypt's squares, writes Vijay Prashad

The world has certainly changed in the past decade or so. Time was when Western dignitaries visiting India were always expected to give various things to India most of which would translate into money. Not any more.

The Obama visit has completely wowed the Indian media. 24 hour TV channels have spent at last 12 hours on the Obama visit – the other 12 hours of course going for ads, the reason why TV channels exist in the first place. Nothing has been left out – from dance moves to his and Michelle's good looks. When we tot up the positives and not the 10-12 billion dollar deals India signed that will produce 50,000 jobs in the US, there seem to be very little for India bar the atmospherics.

“International law is not an empty promise” – except for Palestinians

On 26 July, Wikileaks released thousands of secret US military files on the war in Afghanistan. Cover-ups, a secret assassination unit and the killing of civilians are documented. In file after file, the brutalities echo the colonial past. From Malaya and Vietnam to Bloody Sunday and Basra, little has changed. The difference is that today there is an extraordinary way of knowing how faraway societies are routinely ravaged in our name.