On February 9th a young Saudi journalist called Hamza Kashgari left Saudi Arabia in a hurry. He’d booked a flight to New Zealand which, unfortunately for him, stopped off at Malaysia instead of going to Wellington non-stop. The Malaysians detained him and, in response to a request from the Saudi authorities, sent him back to Riyadh where he is now in prison awaiting his fate, quite possibly death, for ‘blasphemy’ and ‘apostasy’. His crime? On [...]
Iran finds itself in the closing stages of election campaigning. Come the 2nd of March, Iranians will head to the polls to elect a new parliament. All is not well domestically, characterised by the norm of rallying the populous through vociferous anti-western rhetoric, deflecting from the reality that it is the regime, who are in fact architects of their own downfall. Without question, Iran’s pursuit and defence of its nuclear programme is the single major [...]
Many people felt that following the 1982 Falklands War between Argentina and the United Kingdom, the trouble between the two countries had reached its climax and would not appear again. However conflict has once again risen between the two nations over the rightful ownership of the islands, with the UK claiming its rightful ownership over the Falklands and Argentina arguing that Las Malvinas, as the islands are locally known, belong to them. But how much [...]
Once again in world history the UN, like the League of Nations before it, has been left paralysed and impotent when faced with blatant aggression and brutality. Earlier this weekend China and Russia, the two least democratic permanent members of the UN Security Council, exercised their veto to defeat a resolution calling for the murderous Assad regime to be politically isolated in an effort to bring an end to the horrific violence being carried out [...]
Barring the unforecastable, March 4th 2012 will witness the former President and current Prime Minister Vladimir Putin regain the Russian Presidency for an extended period of six years. Whilst his influence over incumbent Dmitri Medvedev has never truly abated, the double veto cast by Russia and China at the United Nations Security Council concerning the Syrian uprising, further reinforces a re-Putinization of Russian foreign policy. The double veto has rightly caused global outrage on a [...]
One of the curious features of our modern, urban age is that the epicentre of global power lies not in any large city but, perhaps, in an otherwise obscure Swiss town. Davos, with a population around that of Berwick-upon-Tweed, suffers annually from the infestation of politicians, lobbyists and other lice, who meet there to pontificate, gorge themselves and plot. This year, minds have been focused on the Euro and the economic woes it continues to [...]
For six months, the Commonwealth country Papua New Guinea has been in a political crisis. This has culminated in a failed coup d’état by a small section of the army led by Colonel Yaura Sasa. This small island country has been independent since 1975 and in the past has been relatively stable so what led to the mutiny? Due to ill health the Prime Minister, Sir Michael Somare, via his wife announced his retirement as [...]
My article is in now way intended to insult or denigrate any religion. I simply intend to observe and then analyse why so many extreme views exist within the world of religion and politics and how the two intertwined in regards to the three theist religions have been able to divide much of the worlds populous. The three monotheist religions of Judaism, Christianity and Islam share a great deal in common in regards to giving [...]
On Tuesday, Israeli forces demolished a Bedouin home near Jerusalem for the fifth time, despite it being described by The Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions (ICAHD) as a “peace centre”. Later that evening a further four structures were also destroyed, since according to a Civil Administration spokesperson, Guy Inbar – they had been constructed without Israeli planning permission. The previous night Israeli forces in the Jordan Valley had demolished ten buildings in the village of [...]