Although 2021 is now behind us, there are many issues that will linger for a while, or much longer, and will certainly dominate much of the news in 2022, as well. These are but a few of the issues. NATO-Russian Brinkmanship Exasperated with NATO expansion and growing ambitions in the Black Sea region, Moscow has decided to challenge the US-led[Read More...]
by Shobha Shukla & Bobby Ramakant The year 2022 began on a dismal note, with its first week reporting the highest-ever number of COVID-19 cases in a week globally. Since the pandemic began in December 2019, the reported number of people who contracted the virus has been over 306 million and 5.5 million people have died due to it worldwide.[Read More...]
Late January of this year will mark the first anniversary of the entry into force of the UN Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons. This momentous international agreement, the result of a lengthy struggle by the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) and by many non-nuclear nations, bans developing, testing, producing, acquiring, possessing, stockpiling, and threatening to use[Read More...]
The United States claims it is operating under a “rules-based order”—but the term is not the same international law recognized by the rest of the world. Rather, it is camouflage behind which American exceptionalism flourishes. U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and other members of the Biden Cabinet are fond of proclaiming the “rules-based international order” (RBIO) or “rules-based order” every chance[Read More...]
Yesterday, Joe Biden delivered a speech from the U.S. Capitol in which he told the population there had been an attempt to overthrow the Constitution and establish a dictatorship in America. Biden warned that the danger had not passed and that the conspirators were actively planning to overturn upcoming elections. January 6 was “an inflection point in history,” he said.[Read More...]
A French privacy watchdog accused the tech giants Google and Facebook of making it difficult for users to opt out of tracking their activity. France’s online privacy regulator has ordered Google and Facebook to cough up some €210 million ($237 million) between them, fining the firms for their questionable use of data-tracking ‘cookies’ on their sites. A report by The[Read More...]
Riots flared up in several cities of Kazakhstan on January 2. Later they erupted in other cities, including in Almaty, the largest city in the country, and on January 5, the riots snowballed into mass riots and violence, along with looting and attacks on state buildings. The rioters beheaded 2 police officers. At least 18 security officers were killed by[Read More...]
By 2025, American democracy could collapse, causing extreme domestic political instability, including widespread civil violence. By 2030, if not sooner, the country could be governed by a right-wing dictatorship. We mustn’t dismiss these possibilities just because they seem ludicrous or too horrible to imagine. In 2014, the suggestion that Donald Trump would become president would also have struck nearly everyone[Read More...]
Let me start 2022 by heading back — way, way back — for a moment. It’s easy to forget just how long this world has been a dangerous place for human beings. I thought about this recently when I stumbled upon a little memoir my Aunt Hilda scrawled, decades ago, in a small notebook. In it, she commented in passing:[Read More...]
Protesters have marched through the streets of Kabul over the past weeks demanding that the United States lift its financial blockade and end its illegal seizure of Afghanistan’s financial assets, which together are driving an economic meltdown in Asia’s most impoverished country. Women marched on December 29 carrying banners reading “Don’t kill us by hunger”, “Let us live” and “Joe[Read More...]
