We've reached half-time in what has been a very eventful year. It's revealing to compare the stories that have made the headlines in the western media in the first six months of 2017, with those that haven't. There's been saturation coverage of alleged Russian interference in the US presidential election — and Russian state "hacking" in general — even though …
Continue reading The Top Ten Underreported News Stories of 2017
Less than a year into his role, Pakistan's new army chief, General Qamar Javed Bajwa, sets a fresh course for the country's defence diplomacy in the Middle East. News that Pakistan chief of army staff General Raheel Sharif was taking over the newly formed, Saudi-instigated, Islamic Military Alliance to Fight Terrorism (IMAFT) – nicknamed the …
Continue reading Pakistan Army to the GCC: No Longer Your Gun for Hire
The US' strategy has been to isolate Russia internationally. Evidently, it is Washington that is becoming more isolated on the global stage. This week in the run-up to the G20 summit in Germany, the reverse in fortunes could not be more glaring. While North Korea was openly defying Washington with a breakthrough ballistic missile test, …
Continue reading Putin, Xi Message to Trump: US Unipolar World is Over
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi thinks he is exploiting opportunities but increasingly it is the non-opportunities that are exploiting him and his country. The Cold War is long over, Russia and China are allies and the United States has given up trying to play Beijing against Moscow. Tragically, Yugoslavia is no more, ‘Nasserist’ Egypt is …
Continue reading Narendra Modi’s Version of Non-Alignment is Fooling No One and is Bad for India
The Pew Research Center released last week the results of one of its periodic surveys of global views of the United States and its leadership and policies. More than 40,000 people were polled in 37 countries across six continents, with the polling conducted between February and May. The most salient finding is a dramatic drop …
Continue reading The Plummeting of U.S. Standing in the World
On the anniversary of the military coup which brought Abdel Fattah al-Sisi to power, Egyptians are bursting with anger at his regime. Here are three ways this could boil over. “Sisi has failed himself and Egypt,” Bahey Eldin Hassan, director of the Cairo Institute for Human Rights, told me last night, the eve of the …
On 27 June the London Daily Telegraph newspaper, a sad remnant of its former admirable self, carried a piece captioned «Britain's new £3bn warship, HMS Queen Elizabeth, set to squeeze out of dockyard for the first time — and Russian spies are watching». The fact that this vastly expensive floating white elephant will not be deployable until 2021 — …
Continue reading Escalation of the Propaganda War — A Rerun of the Zinoviev Letter
There has been much disingenuous criticism of those, like me, who question why the western corporate media have studiously ignored the latest investigation by renowned journalist Seymour Hersh on Syria. Hersh had to publish his piece in a German newspaper, Welt am Sonntag, after the entire US and UK media rejected his article. There has still …
Continue reading The Useful Idiots Who Undermine Dissent on Syria
Archeologists in China’s Shandong province unearthed skeletal remains of ‘giant’ humans who lived 5,000 years ago. Since 2016, archeologists have been excavating a large site in the east of the country. The site contains the ruins of 104 houses, 205 graves and 20 sacrificial pits. Dating from the late neolithic period, some 5,000 years ago, …
Continue reading 5,000 Years Old Chinese ‘Giants’ Discovered by Archeologists
