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...
The historical background of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict goes back to the 1917 Balfour Declaration and establishment of the British protectorate over Palestine (League of Nations Mandate) after World War I with its provision for a national home for the Jews, although formally not at the expense of the local inhabitants – the Palestinians. In practice th...
On 22 February this year, the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) issued an opinion from the Investigation and Identification Team (IIT) that found ISIL* responsible for the use of chemical weapons (CW) in the Syrian town of Mari in September 2015. Despite the fact that it took the OPCW more than 8 years to state a known fact, the con...
“Rabindra Mohan (Kar), a revolutionary up to his fingertips in all circumstances, lived and died in complete obscurity. No monument has been erected in his memory, nor any will be erected in future, I am sure, but he was a greater and nobler man than the men who make front page news in our country.” This is what Manmath Nath Gupta wrote in one of his books o...
The wars in Ukraine and Gaza have led several leading politicians to compare the current period with the 1930s, and to raise the possibility of a World War. Are these fears justified, or are they just fear-mongering? To answer this question, we’re going to summarize events that are unknown to everyone, though well known to specialists. We shall do so dispass...
Generations in war-wracked Palestine, Syria, and Yemen have little, if anything, to look forward to. Moreover, discontent is mounting and could explode anytime in countries like Jordan, Egypt, and Iran. Palestine is a pressure cooker. Gazan youth has known little else than two decades of wars and siege. Beyond the trauma of the latest six-month-old war, Gaza...
I needed some fresh mindful thinking on Türkiye a paradigm shift after the recent Turkish local elections, and what they mean, if anything. It is now clear that Türkiye’s Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has suffered an unprecedented defeat that represents more than an election defeat, and a win for the so-called more “progressive” West. This news may be a game changer,...
Israel violated numerous international laws and norms on April 5, 2024, through its multiple war crimes. It attacked Iran’s diplomatic building in Syria, targeted staff of a US NGO, the World Central Kitchen (WCK), working in Gaza, and destroyed Al-Shifa hospital, all on the same day. The Israeli Defense Forces have been incessantly committing war crimes in ...
The bloody terrorist attack on the Crocus City Hall caused an outcry in political circles, the media and social networks in the Middle East. Arab foreign ministries sent messages of condolence and solidarity to the Russian Federation over the tragedy. Cairo’s Al-Azhar, the world’s oldest Muslim clerical university founded in the 10th century, strongly condem...
Muhammad Manassara walked in late February into a gas station near the West Bank settlement of Eli. Armed with an automatic weapon, Mr. Manassara killed two people before he was shot dead by the owner of a restaurant at the station, the site of the killing last summer of four Israelis. Three weeks later, Mujahid Barakat Mansour, a father of two small childr...