Damascus reportedly reached two pragmatic deals with so-called “rebel” groups in the northeast. Sputnik reported that the legitimate Syrian government receives one-third of all the revenue from the al-Rmeilan and Jabsah oilfields, while the Kurdish-run Rudaw said that the state had agreed to jointly run the Tabqa dam with the “Syrian Democratic Forces” (SDF). Both…
Long satisfied to attempt to dominate pan-Arab media and battle it out with Qatar’s state-owned Al Jazeera television network, Saudi Arabia has now set its hegemonic sights on influencing the media landscape of the non-Arabic speaking greater Middle East. In the wake of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s concentration last year of control of Saudi-owned…
Year on year the world’s economic divisions and sub-divisions deepen and the associated social ills increase: the rich, comfortable, and the very extremely rich keep getting richer, and the rest, well, while some may be raised up out of crippling poverty into relative poverty, the majority of people continue to live under a blanket of…
President Donald Trump launched a new verbal attack against Iran’s president Rouhani, vowing “consequences the likes of which few have ever suffered before” if Hassan Rouhani continues threatening America in a late-night Sunday all caps tweet. In the tweet, addressed to Rouhani, Trump said, “To Iranian President Rouhani: NEVER, EVER THREATEN THE UNITED STATES AGAIN…
China appears to be shifting gears in its multi-billion dollar Belt and Road initiative. Long projected as driven by economics and the benefit of infrastructure linkages, China appears to be increasingly adding a security component to the initiative against the backdrop of President Xi Jinping positioning of his country as a superpower rather than a…
Reuters ran a story at the beginning of this week that aimed to draw attention to the high amount of debt that Montenegro is carrying because of its plans for a Chinese-built highway connecting the coastal port of Bar with the Serbian-bordering town of Boljare. According to the report, the tiny Balkan country of just…
