The U.S. Department of Defense is reportedly still funneling billions of dollars’ worth of Soviet-era weaponry to anti-Islamic State groups in Syria, with questionable oversight. In a joint report published Tuesday, the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) and the Balkan Investigative Reporting Network (BIRN) allege that the Pentagon has given up to $2.2…
After the Ottoman Caliphate was abolished on 3 March 1924 and Mustafa Kemal Ataturk declared Turkey a secular republic, the country looked towards western Europe as a political model to emulate. During its formative years, the new Turkish republic saw a period of forced assimilation to secularism, and the censorship of Turkey’s innate Islamic identity…
A mysterious propulsion system that ‘defies physics’ may be close to reality in China, where scientists say they have finished work on the EmDrive. Much sought after by space agencies, the system could potentially allow for travel to Mars in weeks. Scientists in China claim to have developed a working prototype of the EmDrive, according…
Here we go again! Years after most Americans forgot about the longest war this country ever fought, American soldiers are again being deployed to Afghanistan. For almost 16 years now, at the command of three presidents and a sadly forgettable succession of generals, they have gone round and round like so many motorists trapped on…
However many twists and turns the crisis of Sunni leadership takes, one regional power always seems to come out on top. That country is Iran. Iran’s threat to intervene militarily was one of the factors that thwarted Saudi Arabia’s plans to invade Qatar at the very start of the blockade. I understand from informed sources that…
To a certain extent, Aung San Suu Kyi is a false prophet. Glorified by the west for many years, she was made a ‘democracy icon’ because she opposed the same forces in her country, Burma, at the time that the US-led western coalition isolated Rangoon for its alliance with China. Aung San Suu Kyi played…
