Hummus Wars: The Middle East’s Battle of the Palates

This is cultural genocide. It’s not Israeli food. It’s Arab (Lebanese, Palestinian, Syrian, Jordanian). First, the Israelis take the land and ethnically cleanse it of Arabs. Now they take their food and culture and claim it’s theirs too! Shame,

– James Zogby

Dr. James M. Dorsey
By Dr. James M. Dorsey
Lebanese chefs prepare hummus, during a bid to break a record previously held by Israel and reclaim ownership over the popular Middle Eastern dish, in Fanar, east of Beirut, Lebanon, Saturday May 8, 2010. Some 300 Lebanese chefs prepared the huge hummus plate weighing 22,046 pounds or 10,452 kilograms _ the size of Lebanon in square kilometers and doubled the record achieved by cooks in an Arab town near Jerusalem in January that weighed around four metric tons and broke a previous record held by Lebanon. A Guinness World Records adjudicator confirmed that Lebanon now holds the record. (AP Photo/Hussein Malla)

Nothing in a swath of land stretching from the Atlantic coast of Africa to China is undisputed. Food is often emblematic of disputes over identity, history and political claims that underlie an arc of crisis wracked by ethnic and religious conflict; clamour for political, economic, social, national and minority rights; efforts by states and ethnic

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Regressive German Definition Of Rape Highlights Entrenched Traditional Values

A regressive definition of rape highlights the country’s stubbornly traditional attitudes toward women.

Jason Overdorf
By Jason Overdorf
Germany

BERLIN — No means yes, at least in this country. When a rape court in the state of North Rhine-Westphalia acquitted the alleged rapist of a 15-year-old girl in 2012, women's rights advocates were outraged. The ruling found that saying no, or even screaming it, wasn't enough to merit rape charges. Now findings from a new study indicate that

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Banking On Banksy

As the enigmatic street artist closes his month-long ‘residency’ in New York, it’s unclear where genuinely incendiary art fits into the world of commerce.

Jeffrey Cavanaugh
By Jeffrey Cavanaugh

With Banksy’s month-long New York exhibition having come to a conclusion over Halloween, savvy New Yorkers now get a chance to reflect upon the tricks and treats the famously anonymous street artist served up for his adoring fans. It is doubtful, however, whether any will really appreciate Banksy’s art – ephemeral and transitory as the street he

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The Far Right’s Horrific Monster Bash

Who are the real vampires in America: the right-wing’s cartoonish portrayal of “illegal” immigrants, or the bloodsucking exploits of the corporate world?

Edward Rhymes
By Edward Rhymes

Some pretty ghoulish things have been taking place in our society, and in particular, in our nation’s capital. The terror of economic uncertainty – due in large part to the nightmarish games that are being played by the majority in our government’s House of horrors – continually grips us. We find ourselves in a real-life geopolitical H.G. Wellsian

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Zombie Nation

What collective neurosis is the American public trying to untangle with its ongoing obsession with the undead?

Jeffrey Cavanaugh
By Jeffrey Cavanaugh

With Halloween fast approaching and with events abroad and in Washington more than enough to scare the living daylights out of anyone, let us ponder for a moment the nation’s latest obsession: zombies. Yes, that’s right: the living dead have broken from the bounds of nerd memedom and burst -- or rather, have shuffled aimlessly -- into the American

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How The World Bank Funds Illegal Logging In Cambodia And Laos

Villagers have been sued and prosecuted, intimidated, threatened and shot at while trying to defend their livelihoods.

Denise Hruby
By Denise Hruby

PHNOM PENH, Cambodia — Five-months pregnant, Im Chanthy was told that her husband's body had been found in the trunk of his car, brutally hacked to death for reporting on illegal logging and land concessions in Cambodia. Many of these concessions, a new report by environmental watchdog Global Witness found, are owned by two Vietnamese rubber

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