Australia-China tussle-2 on May 23, 2020I had ended my article, Australia-China tussle, (Daily Times, May 2, 2020) by observing that it would be interesting to see how it plays out. Well, both sides maintained their strong views. The Sydney Morning Herald, for instance, ran a long commentary by Pater Hartcher, who is both its political and international editor, titled: China […]
Trump and his ‘facts’ on May 12, 2020President Trump is ingenious-if that is the right word. If facts do not fit into the narrative, his approach is to change the ‘facts’. For instance, he doesn’t like the way his task force on COVID-19 tried to highlight the intensity of the crisis in the US in terms of likely fatalities. He was, therefore, […]
EU and COVID-19 on April 25, 2020The Covid-19 epidemic is a serious global crisis, affecting all countries. It is, therefore, not surprising, that it would create even more problems for the European Union, which is already a bit shaky. But before we discuss this, it might be useful to look at it in a historical context. European countries were at war […]
Geopolitics of Covid-19 on April 15, 2020Even as the pandemic Covid-19 is raging across the world, it has developed its own geopolitics, with all sorts of conspiracy theories circulating everywhere. China, where the virus struck in Wuhan, a city of 11 million people, took its own time to acknowledge its reality. Indeed, when a young Chinese doctor in a Wuhan hospital […]
Russia-Turkey tangle in Syria on April 3, 2020Will a recent ceasefire agreement between Russia and Turkey to halt the fighting in that unfortunate country work? If the past any guide, it is unlikely. Bashar al-Assad’s regime has been in a frenzied hurry to bring most of the county under his effective control. Turkey is not amused and got directly involved in the […]
US seeks to push back China on March 20, 2020Even though US politics is intensely polarized since Donald Trump became US president, there is one area, though, where both sides of the country’s divide, the Republicans and the Democrats, are united – Communist China. United States (US) Secretary of State Mike Pompeo says China has emerged as “the central threat of our times”. […]
US, Assange and WikiLeaks on March 10, 2020The fragility of the US, the world’s most powerful nation and said to be a model democracy, couldn’t bemore stark when one follows its hounding of Julian Assange, the founder of the WikiLeaks, who had the temerity to expose the ugly and brutal side of the workings of US power, for instance, the killings of […]
Syria is a mess on February 29, 2020Erdogan, indeed, would like to topple the Assad regime and replace it with its own version, but that would seem unlikely with Moscow so committed to Damascus The Arab Spring, which saw popular uprisings in some Arab countries like, for instance, in Egypt, starting early in the first decade of this century, were crushed and/or […]
Climate change is real on February 17, 2020The Australian government’s equivocation, if not outright denial, of the climate change is baffling, even more so after the worst season of bushfires in the country. Australia is a dry continent given to bush fires, but the intensity and the millions of hectares burnt should be an eye-opener. Indeed, it looks like a classic example […]
Trump, Israel and Palestine on February 8, 2020One of the hardest done people in the modern world is the Palestinians. Ever since the Balfour Declaration of 1917, which set out a homeland for the Jews in the already long settled lands of Palestine, their destiny seems to be always decreed by powerful countries and interests. And it is done in a way […]