Sometimes it seems we are living in different worlds — Vladimir Putin, 23 December 2021 There is another world, and it is this one — French poet Paul Éluard   The curtain was raised on 2022 with the stage set for not one, not two, but three major regional conflicts,Read More

“There was no shortage of resources to avoid the tragedy of a Famine. … Instead, the government pursued the objective of economic, social and agrarian reform as a long-term aim, although the price paid for this ultimately elusive goal was privation, disease, emigration, mortality and an enduring legacy of disenchantment.”–Read More

Never one to suffer subtlety gladly, or overpolish the written word, US President Donald J. Trump on January 3 ‘spoke’ to the world by tweet: an American flag, behind which, we soon learned, lay the body of Iranian General Qassam Suleimani (and seven other human beings), assassinated by drone inRead More

Last November I lamented ‘The Lost Art of Arms Control,‘ the abject failure to build on the platform left by the last leader of the Soviet Union, Mikhail Gorbachev, and US President Ronald Reagan, who famously urged Gorbachev to “tear down” the Berlin Wall dividing Europe into nuclear-armed camps. Nearly 30Read More

On March 22, President Trump tweet-sacked National Security Adviser (NSA) Lieutenant-General H.R. McMaster, naming as his replacement John Bolton, one of the most hawkish, controversial and unpopular officials in the trigger-happy administration of George W. Bush. Bolton learned the news while appearing on the Fox ‘News’ Channel, his soapbox inRead More