Marking the centennial Armistice Day, Emanuel Macron called nationalism the opposite of patriotism. Whatever his inspiration, his comment should spur Americans to consider what nationalism means to us. Macron may have been channeling historian Timothy Snyder, in his cite of novelist Danilo Kis: “… nationalism ‘has no universal values, aesthetic or ethical.’” Snyder quoted […]
The scope of the conspiracy, the magnitude of the savagery, the imbecility of the cover-up, and the subsequent cheap royal mea culpa were all appalling. Jamal Khashoggi’s death was a premeditated murder. The Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, insisted that this criminal act transgressed against both Turkey-Saudi relations and all diplomatic norms, and that this could […]
The Druze religion is a very ancient religion that is proven in the Bible and the New Testament. It started from the days of Jethro, the priest of Median in the Bible. At that period of time, the religion consisted of tribes and united ethnic groups. It wasn’t a religion that emerged of the boundaries […]
In the light of the present security crisis in Israel, where Israel just agreed to a cease-fire after facing a barrage of almost 500 rockets and mortars being fired into the southern part of the country, a group of Indians decided to demonstrate in support of Israeli victims of Palestinian terrorism. “Today’s demonstration in New […]
The Sheikh Hasina government recently declared that Bangladesh is an Islamic state and “anyone who pronounces offensive statements against it or against the Prophet Muhammed will be prosecuted according to the law.” Ahead of next month’s elections, Bangladeshi Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina has announced that she plans to get the Saudis to build 560 model […]
In the moral version of human history – expressed in the Quran, Bible, and Torah – corruption is considered the worst reckless impulse that caused men to fall from grace. It was the betrayal of trust and loyalty for purely selfish gains. From that perspective, the root cause of corruption is individual moral shutdown, derailment […]
(Photo from the Enough Project) The Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) has historically been the focal point of devastating internal conflict since colonial […]
American writer Andy Griffith once stated, “Whether a man is guilty or innocent, we have to find that out by due process of law.” For anyone who lives in a democratic society, these basic principles are a given but following Israel’s detention of Lara Alqasem, it appears as though the international media pushed those principles […]
United States foreign policy has lacked an aspirational guiding principle for a generation. One reason might be the historic volatility of political parties, unlike anything in the past century. United States foreign policy has a record of long-term trends that depend in part on the political parties in power. During the Cold War, for example, […]
In recent days, many have been critical of Israel for detaining Palestinian American activist Lara Alqasem. However, such criticism is not justified in any shape or form. Lara Alqassem was the president of the University of Florida’s chapter of the Students for Justice in Palestine, a radical group that supports the BDS Movement. According to […]
New hope is blowing across the African continent against the backdrop of toppled heads of government and state in South Africa and Zimbabwe and a rejuvenated government that is pursuing ambitious reforms in Ethiopia. Other recent examples of transitions from long-sitting governments have also played out in Burkina Faso and The Gambia where the sitting […]
The U.S. confirms that its trade war with China was just the opening salvo in a much larger geopolitical struggle, resulting in a new Cold War.
Black Wind, White Snow: The Rise of Russia’s New Nationalism. By Charles Clover. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2016. The Gumilev Mystique: Biopolitics, Eurasianism, and the Construction of Community in Modern Russia. By Mark Bassin. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2016. Eurasianism and the European Far Right: Reshaping the Europe-Russia Relationship. Edited […]
Imran Khan, elected on his good looks and apparent disagreement with the status quo, was going to bring with him sweeping change, transforming the country into what he called “Naya Pakistan,” or “New Pakistan”. His two-decade-long journey to the premier house in Pakistan has not gone unnoticed. After losing the last national elections in 2013, […]
Western comments on Russian domestic and foreign affairs have, during the last years, become more and more gloomy. Among other topics, this pessimistic discourse (to which I too have contributed) features Putin’s neo-imperial plans for the post-Soviet area, the many varieties of post-Soviet Russian ultra-nationalism, the fragility of the geopolitical grey zone between the Kremlin-dominated […]