The Zionist Israeli-Arab Palestinian conflict today is one of, if not the most significant, global security problems to be dealt with.[1] However, this conflict is historically not much old as it is a pretty modern issue, dating, in fact, since the First Zionist Congress in 1897. The focal question is: What is conflict about? In other words: What are those t...
Sukumar Sen, the first Chief Election Commissioner of India, wrote, “The main argument levelled in the past against adult suffrage was the magnitude of the task involved. It was felt that the number of voters under adult suffrage would exceed all reasonable bounds and that its adoption would involve too stupendous an administrative task for the governments. ...
An Israeli ground offensive in the southern Gazan enclave of Rafah is a question of when, not if. Not because Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu is oblivious to US and international pressure but because it could prove to be make or break for Israel’s embattled leader. Mr. Netanyahu has promised “total victory” in the Gaza war and to “finish the job” in Rafah....
If the mullahs’ rhetoric is clearly anti-Israeli, relations between the two countries are much more complex than we believe. There are in fact two opposing groups in Iran, one intends to do business by all means with the rest of the world, while the other aims to free people from colonization. The first has not stopped doing business with Israel, while the s...
After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the United States believed that a unipolar world would last forever: year after year, day after day, it became increasingly blatant in its disregard for the interests of others and the opinions of the rest of the world. Then the concept of an international “rules-based order” was born: a group of American scholars, for...
They have consequences, whether uttered by government officials, members of parliament, military commanders, religious figures, activists, or pundits. Words become part of a battle of competing narratives in which the narrative is a tool to achieve a political outcome. In the Israeli-Palestinian battle of narratives, they, more often than not, either are des...
In 2009, Russian President Medvedev (May 2008-May 2012) called for a new European security policy known as “Fourteen Points” as a new security treaty to be accepted to maintain European security as the ability of states and societies to maintain their independent identity and functional integrity (the Russian draft treaty was originally posted on the Preside...
Since October 7, 2023 it would appear a spontaneous chain of events is leading the Middle East deeper and deeper into conflict. From Israel’s ongoing military operations in Gaza to its strikes on Hezbollah in southern Lebanon and repeated strikes across Syria (including the recent strike on Iran’s embassy in Damascus), to the ongoing US-led confrontation wit...
It’s a six-minute read, or so Six Minutes of Time Magazine: The Deadliest Propagandists on Earth. Before I dove in, my first question was, “Who wrote this?” I guess you already suspect some would-be propaganda expert. And Peter Pomerantsev is the spurt in question. Now, if I may, allow me to poke holes like the Swiss in this cheesy bit of Putin-phobia. Befo...
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) and Pakistan reached a staff-level agreement in March 2024 for the release of the remaining $1.1 billion out of the total $3 billion bailout package. The 9-month bailout package was sought by the Pakistani government last year to avert the sovereign debt. The country has been dependent on IMF loans for decades to fuel it...
The anticipated Iranian retaliation had been widely announced 72 hours in advance and even calibrated, according to the Financial Times, for fear of soaring oil prices. Larry Johnson, a former CIA agent, noted that despite the West’s trumpeting about Iran’s failure - the song of Western lackeys, whose multimedia is largely controlled by the “Israeli lobby” -...
On December 28, 2022, President Hollande gave an interview in Paris to Théo Prouvost of the Kyiv Independent [2], which my opponents have confused with the sketch by Russian comedians Vovan and Lexus that he inspired [3]. In it, he claims to recognize himself in the remarks made a few days earlier by the former German Chancellor, Angela Merkel, to Zeit [4]. ...
Increased tension between Iran and Israel complicates efforts to pull the Middle East back from the abyss. With the two archenemies walking a fine line between waging covert or overt war, escalation between Israel and Iran has the greatest potential to push the Middle East off the cliff. That is not to say that multiple other conflicts - the Gaza war, hostil...
The term “citizenship” is usually used either in academia or news as a synonym of nationality and national affiliation (from the Anglo-Saxon, West European perspective followed by the New World, in fact, as a synonym of state). However, “citizenship” as a concept is essentially a product of and used in political philosophy and jurisprudence. In practice, the...
The Gaza ceasefire negotiations have all but broken down, with Israel and Hamas pursuing mutually exclusive goals. At stake in the negotiations is more than just a ceasefire and a second Hamas-Israeli prisoner swap. Israel and Hamas both see the negotiations as key to whether there will be a post-war credible Israeli-Palestinian peace process and what it wou...
Only this month, the near comatose US President, Joe Biden, made a casual, castaway remark that his administration was “considering” the request by Australia that the case against Julian Assange be concluded. The WikiLeaks founder has already spent five gruelling years in London’s Belmarsh prison, where he continues a remarkable, if draining campaign against...
Last Thursday [April 11-ed], Dr Ghassan Abu-Sittah, the British-Palestinian war surgeon, gave his first address as the newly-appointed rector of Glasgow University, chosen in recognition of his work at al-Shifa hospital in Gaza. The following day he flew to Berlin, where he had been invited to address a major conference about Palestine. On arrival he was tak...
The world’s attention has, rightfully so, been focused on the fallout from Iran’s retaliatory strike against Israel on April 13-14, 2024. Iran’s purpose in launching the attack was to establish a deterrence posture designed to put Israel and the United States on notice that any attack against Iran, whether on Iranian soil or on the territory of other nations...
Be serious now. If you woke up to Good Morning America and heard Vladimir Putin personally shot JFK with a Makarov pistol from the grassy knoll, would you be surprised? After all, Russia’s president surely rules the world already. And, he’s superhuman, too. He’s survived cancers, brain disorders, Russian uprisings and revolutions. Okay, the uprisings and rev...
I write this just after returning from Belgrade and the important international conference held there commemorating the 1999 War of Terror conducted by NATO forces against the people of the remaining republics of Yugoslavia, primarily Serbia, a conference organised by the Beograd Forum for A World of Equals and related organisations. In the West, the NATO at...