The recent passing of Czech author Milan Kundera was a great loss to the literary world. Exiled to Paris for his anti-Soviet writings, Kundera’s novels explored the inner psychological effects on individuals living under Communist regimes. While focused on Czechoslovakia and the state of affairs around the time of the Prague Spring, Kundera influenced ideals […]
One of the biggest determinants on how the war in Ukraine will progress is closely tied to the amount of support each side in receiving by way of weapons and ammunition. While Russia is seeking allies to supply it with additional arms while pushing their arms producers to renovate and create more tanks and munitions, […]
In his famous 19th century work Democracy in America, Alexis de Tocqueville wrote that “… a democracy is unable to regulate the details of an important undertaking, to persevere in a design, and to work out its execution in the persistence of serious obstacles. It cannot combine its measures with secrecy, and it will not […]
The recent public execution of political correctness in the U.S. and elsewhere in the West had an unintended consequence: removing the curtain of hypocrisy.
On Nov. 29, an Egyptian court cleared charges against the country’s former president Hosni Mubarak, who ruled Egypt from 1981 to 2011, when he stepped down in the face of massive protests and the loss of his security services’ confidence.
The Egyptians may not be receiving fulsome applause at the U.N. this week for their diplomacy to date, but quietly, Israeli, Gulf, and American leaders are clapping, in large part due to Cairo’s reaffirmation of a hardline stance against Hamas this past summer.
Over the weekend, the New York Times published an article titled “In Cold War Echo, Obama Strategy Writes Off Putin.” It caught my eye because it used the catchphrase – Cold War – that politicians as policymakers, journalists as conveyers and we as an audience have grown familiar with. Literary devices go a long way […]
In Egypt today there remains only one Arabic language broadcaster that has not succumbed to the pressures of the military government and condemned the newly outlawed Muslim Brotherhood. Though Qatari based, Al Jazeera is one of the most influential news networks in the Middle East and was particularly praised for its coverage of the 2011 […]
The Chinese Communist Party has issued guidelines calling for tightened control of media and education in China, according to a report by the state-run Xinhua News Agency on Dec. 24. These guidelines were issued in the name of “bolstering core socialist values and pooling positive energy to realize the Chinese dream of national rejuvenation.” Included […]
Over the years, political journalism in Russia has gradually morphed into a new definition – one that blurs the line between politicized and honest journalism. Russian journalism blotched that line even more with Monday’s presidential decree to shut down the state-funded news agency, RIA Novosti, and merged it with a news outlet called Russia Today. […]
While the coup and the ensuing repressive bloody outcome was, by and large, propelled by indigenously Egyptian political dynamics, it is naïve to assume that there were no geopolitical dynamics at play. The monarchies that poured petro-dollars into Egypt to support the coup regime were nervous about the long-term effect of any democratically elected […]
While Julian Assange is the person with the rock star persona, Bradley Manning is the true center of this documentary. It was Manning who leaked information to WikiLeaks and who now faces trial for doing so. Army Pfc. Manning is portrayed in the film as a confused and somewhat naïve officer, a person who has […]
The recent terrorist attacks that took place in Mogadishu and Boston were not just intended to kill and mutilate many civilians, but to create widespread terror, disarray, and insecurity that would last far beyond the initial shock of these bloody events. It goes without saying — anyone who takes part of such acts of indiscriminate […]
Summer 2012 will be most likely be remembered for the London Olympics, the Republicans’ awkward, gaffe-prone run-up to the US presidential election and the situation in Syria. What also made Summer 2012 was the number of female-led stories the media picked up on and which got people talking. It feels like the floodgates opened…but for […]
In this week’s shameless FPA self-promotion, my piece about Pussy Riot somehow infiltrated today’s International Herald Tribune and got a few angry looks. So, is it hypocritical for Western mainstream media to champion a group of anarchist feminists over in Russia for behaviour that it would almost certainly not approve of at home? Read on […]