AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL

• Regulators rubber-stamped casinos this year despite evidence of slavery and torture
• Survivors describe being trafficked to casino complexes and forced to scam
• Casinos linked to scamming compounds owned by major Cambodian companies

A new investigation by Amnesty International shows that a dozen casinos in Cambodia are directly linked to scamming compounds where torture, forced labour, child labour and human trafficking have taken place.

Analysis of official licensing documents issued by Cambodia’s Commercial Gambling Management Commission (CGMC) shows that casino owners are in direct control of buildings and sites where human rights abuses have been documented in at least 12 separate locations. The findings corroborate testimony from compound survivors who described being on casino property while they were confined and abused.

The casinos’ plans were recognized by the CGMC in December and January – during the country’s supposed nationwide crackdown on scamming compounds. The approved businesses include three Crown casinos owned by Anco Brothers Co. Ltd., one of the most powerful companies in Cambodia.

“This research establishes a clear link between Cambodia’s licensed casinos and its scamming compounds. At a time when the government says it is dismantling the scamming industry, the evidence shows it is simultaneously recognizing the plans for casino properties where abusive scamming compounds are run,” Amnesty International’s Co-Regional Director Montse Ferrer said.  

“This contradiction raises urgent questions about whether Cambodian regulators are legitimizing companies linked to grave abuses. The authorities must explain why casinos with documented links to trafficking and torture continue to receive official approval. Every day that these casinos remain licensed is another day in which people on casino property are at risk of human rights abuse.”

Casinos recognized by government despite scamming links

In December 2025 and January 2026, the CGMC reviewed and recognized plans submitted by companies operating casinos. These included Crown casinos in the cities of Poipet, Bavet and Chrey Thum, and the Majestic Two and Majestic Hotel & Casino in Sihanoukville, whose former chairman was charged in January 2026 with illegal recruitment for exploitation, aggravated fraud, organized crime and money laundering.

The CGMC published detailed maps of the casino complexes, which show casino buildings, rental buildings, guest accommodation, hotels and general facilities.  

By comparing the official CGMC maps with satellite imagery, analyzed alongside Amnesty International’s own visits to compounds and testimony from scores of survivors gathered for its June 2025 report on scamming compounds, Amnesty identified 11 instances where the compounds profiled in the 2025 report were within the casino complexes recognized by the CGMC.

Amnesty International for more

by JESMIN PAPRI

The country gets 95% of its fuel from abroad.

On a recent Saturday evening, a line of motorcycles stretched from a gas station in Dhaka. The queue snaked along the road for kilometers, its end out of sight. In the late afternoon heat, delivery and ride-hailing drivers leaned against their bikes, wiping sweat from their faces. Some scrolled through their phones; others waited in silence for fuel that might or might not arrive.

Among them was 25-year-old Rubel Malita. He had been standing in line since 1 p.m. Five hours later, he finally reached the pump. He was only allowed to buy 500 taka ($4) worth of diesel. 

“It’s not just less income; it’s lost time and energy. We spend hours in line instead of earning,” he said. 

Malita has worked full time in ride-sharing for the past two years, earning around 30,000 taka ($243) a month driving for Uber and Pathao.

Like many gig workers, he relies on daily trips for income, and without a fixed salary or benefits, any disruption quickly cuts into his earnings. 

The current fuel shortage, sparked by Israel and the U.S.’ war with Iran, has upended his income, exposing the lack of safety nets in platform-based work. Drivers say that during such disruptions, ride-sharing companies continue to take the same commission rates while offering no financial support when trips dry up. Last month, his income fell by almost half to 17,000 taka ($138), pushing him into financial strain. 

Like many gig workers in Dhaka, Rubel now spends hours every day searching for fuel — time that could otherwise be spent earning. Across Bangladesh, the shortage reflects a wider disruption in the country’s fuel supply chain, which depends heavily on imports for nearly 95% of its petroleum needs. 

Rest of World for more

by CHRISTOPHE JAFFRELOT

It has more to gain than to lose.

Last week, Pakistan delivered the Trump administration’s 15-point peace plan to Iran.  

This is not the first time an American president has got Islamabad to play a mediating role: in the early 1970s, Richard Nixon had persuaded General Yahya Khan to serve as an intermediary between Washington and Beijing with a view to the official recognition of the People’s Republic of China, which took place shortly after a visit to the Chinese capital by Henry Kissinger – who was supposedly ill in Islamabad while Khan was introducing him to Mao Zedong.

Why is Pakistan going along with this? Because it has more to gain than to lose.

First, helping Trump – as it intended to do last year regarding the deployment of Pakistani troops to Gaza, which was ultimately rejected by Israel – is a way to cultivate the White House’s trust, which has already manifested itself in the resumption of military cooperation in exchange for rare earth minerals from Balochistan and an agreement on cryptocurrencies. Strengthening ties with the United States thus allows Pakistan to somewhat emancipate itself from its immense dependence on China and to reconnect with a country that was, throughout the Cold War – and again after 9/11, for nearly 15 years – a very generous partner, particularly in waging the war in Afghanistan, first against the Soviets and then against the Taliban: Islamabad may even hope for a return to the “good old days” when Pakistani officers were trained in the United States.

Second, it is a way to prevent Trump from criticising the war Pakistan has been waging in Afghanistan since last month – which amounts to repeating the scenario of 1970–71: Nixon needed the Pakistanis too much in his dealings with the Chinese to speak out against the repression of the Bengalis who were demanding independence – and who eventually achieved it.

Third, by taking on the role of mediator, Pakistan enhances its international prestige, particularly in relation to India, a country whose reputation has long been built on this type of action under Nehru (following the Korean War and the Indochina War) and which, today, remains silent.

Fourth, Pakistan is as badly affected by the Iran war as India – if not more: for a country suffering from a chronic trade deficit and heavy debts, the shock caused by the rise of the price of oil and gas is bound to result in an economic crisis with disastrous social consequences.

Fifth, acting as an intermediary allows Pakistan to avoid taking sides in a war that directly or indirectly pits countries against one another with which Islamabad seeks to maintain good relations, particularly Iran and Saudi Arabia. In 2015, this was the reason Pakistan had already refused to join the coalition Riyadh had formed to wage war against the Houthis in Yemen.

Getting involved would have risked alienating the country’s roughly 20% Shia population and, above all, Iran.

The Wire for more

by SAHAR KHAN & DAVID VINE

Amid a seeming flood of terrible news, the string of countries that last week refused President Donald Trump’s request to help patrol the Strait of Hormuz is an encouraging sign. For the first three weeks of a war that many experts have characterized as illegal under both U.S. and international law, Spain was initially the rare country to stand up to Trump by refusing to allow the use of U.S. bases it hosts for attacks on Iran. Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez described the war as “reckless and illegal,” and continues to stand his ground.

Despite widespread global opposition to the attacks, the U.S. can wage the war in part because of its vast network of military bases in the Middle East, Europe, and beyond. Two U.S./Spanish bases in southern Spain are longstanding logistics hubs that have provided U.S. forces access to the Mediterranean Sea to launch military operations into Africa and the Middle East, including the 2003 U.S.-led war on Iraq. While Spain has said “no” to the U.S. using its bases in a new Middle East war, more than a dozen countries have allowed the use of U.S. installations on their soil as part of the conflict.

Given the role these bases are playing in enabling the fighting, host countries share responsibility for the war, along with the U.S. and Israeli governments. Which means they share some responsibility for the war’s killing and injury, displacement and destruction, for violations of international law, and for any potential war crimes, such as the killing of at least 165 civilians at the Minab girls school.

The Spanish government and others hosting U.S. bases during prior conflicts have shown there is another path by refusing to support war. Countries hosting U.S. bases should be emboldened by governments refusing to assist in patrolling the Strait of Hormuz. They can and must put a stop to the U.S. government using their territory to support any aspect of this war other that any legitimate defense of their citizens. They can go further to pressure President Donald Trump to stop the fighting, which has already caused so much harm and risks spiraling out of control into complete global economic calamity and a regional (or even world) war that could significantly eclipse the damage of past conflicts in the Middle East.

The Infrastructure for War

Military bases, by design, provide infrastructure for war, not peace. The reason the Iranian military has attacked many of its neighbors is that they host U.S. bases, which are launching and supporting the planes and ships bombing Iran, and providing surveillance, communications, and logistical support to sustain the war.

Counterpunch for more

by JONATHAN COOK

Netanyahu pitched the war as a repeat of Israel’s apparent ‘audacious feat’ of smashing Hezbollah. The US president should have noted instead Israel’s moral and strategic defeat in Gaza

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu must have persuaded Donald Trump that a war on Iran would unfold much like the pager attack in Lebanon 18 months ago. 

The two militaries would jointly decapitate the leadership in Tehran, and it would crumble just as Hezbollah had collapsed – or so it then seemed – after Israel assassinated Hassan Nasrallah, the Lebanese group’s spiritual leader and military strategist.

If so, Trump bought deeply into this ruse. He assumed that he would be the US president to “remake the Middle East” – a mission his predecessors had baulked at since George W Bush’s dismal failure to achieve the same goal, alongside Israel, more than 20 years earlier. 

Netanyahu directed Trump’s gaze to Israel’s supposed “audacious feat” in Lebanon. The US president should have been looking elsewhere: to Israel’s colossal moral and strategic failure in Gaza. 

There, Israel spent two years pummelling the tiny coastal enclave into dust, starving the population, and destroying all civilian infrastructure, including schools and hospitals.

Netanyahu publicly declared that Israel was “eradicating Hamas”, Gaza’s civilian government and its armed resistance movement that had refused for two decades to submit to Israel’s illegal occupation and blockade of the territory. 

Iran, which has been readying for this fight for decades, has plenty of surprises in store should they dare to invade

In truth, as pretty much every legal and human rights expert long ago concluded, what Israel was actually doing was committing genocide – and, in the process, tearing up the rules of war that had governed the period following the Second World War. 

But two and a half years into Israel’s destruction of Gaza, Hamas is not only still standing, it is in charge of the ruins.

Israel may have shrunk by some 60 percent the size of the concentration camp the people of Gaza are locked into, but Hamas is far from vanquished. 

Rather, Israel is the one that has retreated to a safe zone, from which it is resuming a war of attrition on Gaza’s survivors.

Surprises in store

When considering whether to launch an illegal war on Iran, Trump should have noted Israel’s complete failure to destroy Hamas after pounding this small territory –  the size of the US city of Detroit – from the air for two years.

That failure was all the starker given that Washington had provided Israel with an endless supply of munitions. 

Even sending in Israeli ground forces failed to quell Hamas’ resistance. These were the strategic lessons the Trump administration should have learnt.

MEE for more

by RALPH NADER

March 27, 2026

What should the American people, especially the hundreds of millions of their voters, expect Presidents Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, Barack Obama, and Joe Biden to do against the vicious, serial law-violating, violent, corrupt, agency-dismantling Donald Trump and the crony Trumpsters who are wrecking our government and our economy?

These former Presidents should mobilize the citizenry from the grassroots to the Capitol and take on the unpopular Tyrant Trump. Having sworn to uphold the Constitution and “…take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed,” they should strongly uphold their patriotic duty to resist tyranny and save our Republic and our besieged democratic institutions, and stop the assault on our civil liberties and civil rights.

Our former presidents all get along with each other. They have the stature to: (1) get mass media; (2) raise immediately large amounts of funds for strong IMPEACH TRUMP citizen groups in every Congressional district to increase and expand the present majority of Americans wanting to FIRE TRUMP; (3) stay the course as Trump keeps worsening his criminal dictatorship and destruction of our democracy; and (4) highlight the many programs they initiated that Trump has illegally destroyed or is dismantling.

Instead, they are living luxurious lives and are largely AWOL from connecting with the existing but overwhelmed civic opposition to Trump. Bush is painting landscapes as Trump has destroyed his AIDS program in Africa, and the Bush wing of the Republican Party. Obama has campaigned for Abigail Spanberger and Mikie Sherrill as governors of Virginia and New Jersey, satirizing Trump in some of his speeches. His present passion, however, is the March Madness basketball championships. Clinton has left it up to Hillary, who wrote a guarded New York Times op-ed back on March 28, 2025, taking Trump to task for jeopardizing our national security and not “preparing for real fights with America’s adversaries.”

Then there is Joe Biden, who received then President-elect Trump and Melania on the morning of January 20, 2025, with the gracious “welcome home.” In return, Biden got that afternoon and every day since hundreds of foul epithets from Trump, scapegoating him for almost everything he could fabricate, including solar energy and wind power projects. Delaware Joe managed a few critical replies at a Democratic Party dinner in Nebraska on November 7, 2025. “Trump has taken a wrecking ball not only to the people’s house but to the Constitution, to the rule of law, to our very democracy.” Unfortunately, Biden has mostly been silent.

Credit these retired Presidents with knowing the historic dangers and existing damages of the TRUMP DUMP in Washington and around the country. They also know their supporters would be very receptive to their organized, persistent leadership from them to send Trump back to Mar-a-Lago. Why are they AWOL?

First, they fear Trump’s retaliation, upsetting their comfortable lives. Trump is now deep in the QUICKSAND of the Middle East. He is being pilloried by a million stickers at gas pumps picturing Trump pointing to the booming price per gallon and saying, “I did that.” He is openly declaring there should be no elections in November and continues to send or keep his stormtroopers in America’s cities. An expanding police state is not exactly a credible perch for effective profanity. Show a modest bit of moxie!

A second excuse is that they have done some of what Trump is doing:

*Bush’s mass murder in the illegal war on Iraq.

*Clinton’s distracting raids abroad against innocents and his womanizing.

*Obama’s “signature strikes,” killing over three thousand mostly young men in places like Yemen.

*Biden’s illegal co-belligerence with Netanyahu’s genocide in Gaza, which has taken over 600,000 civilian lives.

True enough. But people live in the present and are most worried about what Dangerous Donald is doing NOW to their livelihoods, freedoms, health and safety, and the consequences in casualties and their tax dollars of another endless war.

Our former Presidents have no excuses. They simply lack a modicum of courage. Remember Aristotle declared, “Courage is the first of human qualities because it is the quality which guarantees the others.”

Ralph Nader for more

by ALI ABOU JBARA

Behind the polished image of Qatar’s flagship media project lies a tightening grip on dissent, where speech – and even silence – is increasingly policed in line with shifting regional alignments.

The choice of a cubic structure for the building in Education City was not incidental, nor merely an architectural decision. The project, launched under the umbrella of Northwestern University in Qatar and promoted as a global symbol of free media, was framed as a new “Media Kaaba” – a center around which narratives revolve, and a supposed beacon of free expression in the Arab world.

Yet this polished image has steadily unraveled with each real political test. The US-Israeli war on Iran proved decisive, stripping away what remained of the facade and exposing the “Media Kaaba” as little more than a soft projection masking far firmer policies aimed at controlling public opinion.

At a sensitive regional moment, Qatar did not confine itself to articulating positions in international forums. It turned inward. The public sphere began to be reshaped with visible force. The issue is no longer limited to dissenting voices – it now extends to those who remain silent. The emerging equation leaves no room for neutrality: align fully with the official narrative, or fall under suspicion.

This shift is reflected in a wave of arrests targeting dozens, even hundreds, of residents from various nationalities under vague charges such as “inciting public opinion” and “spreading rumors” – charges broad enough to capture virtually any speech deemed undesirable.

Baraa Rayan: a tweet and forced exile

The case of Palestinian academic Baraa Nizar Rayan stands as one of the clearest examples. Rayan, who is the son of a Hamas leader and professor at Qatar University, posted a tweet stating: “They paid Trump trillions to protect them, but instead he set their house on fire. So Learn from this, O people of insight.”

The tweet posted after the 12-day June war last year fell squarely within the bounds of political critique, pointing to the contradiction of massive financial outlays to the US alongside the outbreak of war in the region. But even that narrow margin proved intolerable.

Within less than 24 hours, Rayan was summoned, arrested, and subjected to intensive interrogation and pressure, including demands to unlock his phone and surrender personal accounts. His refusal – rooted in protecting his family’s privacy – was met with further escalation. 

The episode concluded with his deportation alongside his family, a ban on his return, and the loss of his livelihood. He was charged with “inciting public opinion,” an offense carrying a potential three-year prison sentence.

What deepens the case is what sources tell The Cradle: Qatari authorities allegedly asked Hamas to intervene and pressure Rayan to delete the tweet and close his account. 

According to the sources, the movement complied, pointing to a notable overlap between security coordination, political pressure, and influence networks.

When silence is treated as defiance

If Rayan’s case illustrates the limits of speech, the arrest of political analyst Saeed Ziad reveals something more fundamental: the criminalization of silence itself.

The Cradle for more

Is the United States on the verge of another financial crisis? Some top Wall Street executives fear the bankruptcies in the $3 trillion private credit industry could spread, as firms prevent investors from withdrawing their capital, in what resembles a bank run. Then there are problems with the AI bubble and Big Tech stock market bloat. Ben Norton explains.

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by N. R. MOHANTY

Iran, though a middle power, is possibly the only country in the world that has openly pursued an anti-Western agenda since the Islamic revolution in 1979. It will prove to be the US’ Achilles heel, like Afghanistan and Vietnam did before.

The war in West Asia has entered its second month. It’s difficult to surmise how and when this raging war will come to an end. But one thing is certain: at the end of this war, the politics in West Asia would undergo a sea change. United States (US) President Donald Trump has promised the world that he will bomb Iran into the ‘Stone Age’, but it appears that even a flattened Iran is likely to reorder how the US and its client state Israel operate with impunity in West Asia.

A war between Israel and Iran would have made it a West Asian war; but the active involvement of America, the world’s mightiest economic and military power, on the side of Israel has lent it a global character. Iran is clearly vulnerable to complete decimation. It could have taken on Israel on its own, but to fight the combined might of Israel and the US makes it like the proverbial David vs Goliath battle.

Like Trump and Netanyahu, the rest of the world had expected Iran to cave in on the very first day of the surgical bombings that killed top Iranian officials, including the Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. But that Iran has not only survived them but has been able to retaliate, and retaliate fiercely, despite being subjected to carpet bombing over the last several weeks tells us a different story.

In the last 80 years, since the Second World War, the West led by the US set the template for the world order. The former Soviet Union was a challenger to that order for almost four decades. After its disintegration in the 1990s, the US emerged as a unipolar arbiter of the rules of the international order.

China has evolved as a countervailing world power in the 21st century, both economically and militarily, but it has not yet engaged in any direct military battles against the West or any of its puppet regimes to establish its supremacy on the world map. China remains engaged with the West for economic reasons.

Iran, though a middle power, is possibly the only country in the world that has openly pursued an anti-Western agenda since the Islamic revolution in 1979. Many countries are highly critical of the Zionist state, but would not like to burn bridges with the US, of which Israel is the foster child. But there is no place for such hypocrisy in Islamic Iran’s foreign policy. It has called a spade a spade and it has paid a heavy price for it – it has faced severe sanctions ordained by the US, crippling its economy.

Countries like India, with a centuries-long relationship with Persian civilisation, have refrained from any trade with Iran in order to avoid the wrath of the US. Iran has survived largely thanks to China, which has defied the Western sanctions and continued its trade with Iran. China, in fact, accounts for more than 80% of Iran’s export of oil, which is a lifeline for Iran’s economy.

That leaves Iran in an unenviable position; it sups with the enemies of the West while all other countries of West Asia are not only client states of the US, they are also eager to break bread with Israel to remain in the good books of their common Master. In this West Asian power play, Iran stands out as a sore thumb.

Israel wants complete monopoly in the affairs of West Asia so that it can establish Greater Israel by killing or displacing all Palestinians from West Bank and Gaza and by partitioning Lebanon. Iran is the sole obstacle in this path. So long as it stands its ground, Israel cannot complete its colonial mission. Israel also knows that it could not militarily take on Iran alone. That’s why the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been soliciting US support in the venture to obliterate Iran.

Successive US presidents had refused to take the bait as Iran never posed any direct military threat to Israel, and it could not be a military threat to the US, located continents away.

In fact, Iran’s military preparedness has always been of a defensive kind, to protect itself from an openly aggressive and expansionist Israel. It militarily collaborated with resistance groups in Palestine and Lebanon only to help them defend themselves from the Israeli military onslaught.

But this time Netanyahu succeeded in doing a Winston Churchill. During the Second World War, the British Prime Minister had managed to persuade the US to break with its policy of isolationism and join on the side of the allied forces ranged against the military axis led by Nazi Germany. And that proved decisive in the victory of allied powers. The Israeli Prime Minister succeeded in enticing President Trump for a swift Iranian adventure that would assure him the top billing in American history as a decisive president.

But the script went awry. Iran, despite carpet bombardment by both Israel and the US, didn’t crumble. It not only stood firm but also gave back an eye for an eye. Its unique ballistic missile arsenal, buried deep inside mountain trenches, was beyond the reach of powerful American bombs.

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