February 16, 2018 – Astute News

February 16, 2018

Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani Assures Pakistan…While in India

Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani has addressed an audience of Islamic scholars in the Indian city of Hyderabad, during a wide ranging speech touching on pan-eastern resistance to western neo-imperialism, inter-sectarian unity among the wider Muslim Ummah (community) and the importance of Islam as a force of compassion and social moderation in modern society. Rouhani is currently in India on the...

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February 16, 2018

Political Сrisis in the Maldives

It seems as if the political temperature in the Indian Ocean region is not going to ‘settle down’, as we predicted a week ago, but has already started to rise. That is demonstrated by the worsening situation in the Maldives, which is taking on the character of an internal political crisis, although in this case there has been an external...

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February 16, 2018

China’s ‘New Silk Roads’ Reach Latin America

A sharp, geoeconomic shift took place last month in Santiago, Chile at the second ministerial meeting of a forum grouping China and the 33-member Community of Latin American and Caribbean States. The Chinese Foreign Minister, Wang Yi, told his audience that the world’s second-largest economy and Latin America should join efforts to support free trade. This was about “opposing protectionism” and “working...

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February 16, 2018

Gaddafi Returns Libya to Trilateral Power

The events in Syria on the eve of the Congress of National Dialogue in Sochi, the war against Russia on the diplomatic front, the operation of the Turkish Army in Kurdish Afrin and the cleaning up of the Jabat al-Nusra detachements, banned in Russia, in Idlib attract more media attention than anything else happening in the Middle East. Meanwhile, the...

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February 16, 2018

ISIS Is Almost Gone But the Fighting Continues: Who’s Still in Syria?

The battle against Islamic State in Syria may be nearing its end, but the conflict in this war-torn country seems far from over. Competing factions and old rivalries have created a complicated, uncertain future for Syria. With so many different warring parties wrestling for control of Syria’s fate, it seems prudent to review the conflict’s major actors – and where...

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February 16, 2018

When Former Spies Turn into TV ‘Experts’

Once upon a time in the United States there was a general perception that organizations like the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) were both apolitical and high-minded, existing only to calmly and professionally promote the safety and security of the nation. Directors of both organizations often retired quietly without fanfare to compose their memoirs,...

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February 16, 2018

Israel a Leading Tax Haven

Countless trillions of dollars are stashed in scores of tax havens worldwide – black holes of hidden wealth, much of it ill-gotten. Largely tax-free, they’re controlled by Wall Street and other powerful financial interests, part of a global tax injustice system, governments complicit with super-wealthy individuals and financial institutions managing their money. Taking advantage are corporate tycoons, real estate developers,...

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February 16, 2018

Poland’s on My Mind

A controversy surrounds the new Polish law just signed by Polish President Andrzej Duda that criminalizes Holocaust denial and Holocaust trivialization but also extends the prohibition to anyone who ascribes Nazi atrocities to the “Polish government or Polish nation.” Although I’m passionately opposed to all such efforts to muzzle open discussion (and have paid a heavy price for this stand...

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Daily Archive: February 16, 2018

Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani Assures Pakistan…While in India

Political Сrisis in the Maldives

China’s ‘New Silk Roads’ Reach Latin America

Gaddafi Returns Libya to Trilateral Power

ISIS Is Almost Gone But the Fighting Continues: Who’s Still in Syria?

When Former Spies Turn into TV ‘Experts’

Israel a Leading Tax Haven

Poland’s on My Mind