By Conn M. Hallinan November 27, 2019 The fallout from the September attack on Saudi Arabia’s Aramco oil facilities is continuing to reverberate throughout the Middle East, sidelining old enmities – sometimes for new ones – and re-drawing traditional alliances. While Turkey’s recent invasion of northern Syria is grabbing the headlines, the bigger story may […]
By Richard Falk October 13, 2019 Prefatory Note: The following essay will appear as a chapter in Peter Burden & Klaus Bosselmann, eds., The Future of Global Ethics (Edward Elgar, 2018), with the title: Revisiting the Earth Charter 20 Years Later: A Response to Ron Engel Ron Engel has articulated an insider review of the Earth […]
By Chas W. Freeman, Jr October 9, 2019 There is currently a good deal of hysteria here in Washington about something called “authoritarianism” allegedly taking the offensive against democratic systems of government. A century ago, imperialists, colonialists, fascists and communists did indeed articulate theories about their superiority to democracy and seek to impose autocratic systems […]
By Richard Falk October 1, 2019 Prefatory Note: The post below of my remarks at the opening session of the Maker Majlis Conference, College of Islamic Studies, Hamed Bin Khalif University (HBKU) in Doha, Qatar on 22 Sept 2019. The theme of the three-day conference was on the role of youth in furthering the UN […]
Greta Thunberg … ‘I have always been that girl in the back who doesn’t say anything.’Photograph: Michael Campanella/The Guardian Perhaps Greta is a Gandhi-in-the-making? September 26, 2019 By Jan Oberg Greta Thunberg’s speech at the UN Climate Act Summit 2019 is likely to be seen by future generations as pathbreaking or, as they say today, […]
September 25, 2019 By Jan Oberg Look at this CNN online frontpage in the evening of September 24, 2019. It may well come to be seen in the future as an indicator of the beginning of the end. Earlier that same day, Britain’s highest court ruled PM Boris Johnson’s suspension of Parliament unlawful and in […]
By Sabena Siddiqui September 20, 2019 Facing an economic crisis in large part due to US sanctions, Iran soon may be aligning its policies toward China’s. Having recently updated the terms of a 25-year strategic partnership signed with Beijing in 2016, it looks like Tehran is indeed returning to its Look East foreign policy. Originally posted on […]
By People’s Daily Online July 28, 2019 This is an explainer from a Chinese perspective and it is the kind of information and perspective we get far too little of in the West – in spite of it being so diverse, so big and so visionary. What – one may ask – is the West […]
By Dr. Lawrence Wittner June 5, 2019 In late April, the highly-respected Stockholm International Peace Research Institute reported that, in 2018, world military expenditures rose to a record $1.82 trillion. The biggest military spender by far was the United States, which increased its military budget by nearly 5 percent to $649 billion (36 percent of […]
By Johan Galtung May 8, 2019 There is much diversity. Let us praise that mega aspect of our world as multipolar, passive but peaceful, coexistence of civilizations: Anglo-American; Latin American-Caribbean; Islamic; African pre-, post-colonial; European from Ireland to Russia Far East; West Asian Islamic; with Israel Jewish; Iran Persian; South Asian, SAARC, Hindu and Islamic […]