Month: February 2016
There is a proverb in Afghanistan that goes, “patience is bitter, but it has a sweet fruit.” In the case of the Taliban, the ability to patiently endure a 14-year campaign waged by the most powerful countries on the planet ...
My work on the use of poetry as a recruiting tool is discussed in a recent article in The Guardian. Here is an excerpt: “Poetry may be a potent tool in recruiting militant jihadis, a new study by Oxford academic Elisabeth Kendall ...
The July 11 escape of the notorious Sinaloa crime boss, Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman Loera, from a maximum-security prison in Mexico has drawn considerable Mexican and international media attention. While the brazen and elaborate nature of the escape will add to the ...
As with many aspects of modern banking, the word “bankrupt” has its roots in Renaissance Italy. The original banks were Florentine merchants who would sit in the open street behind benches (bancas in Italian) upon which their money would be ...
The year ended dramatically in Georgia when Prime Minister Irakli Garibashvili announced on Dec. 23 that he was resigning. Garibashvili, who had held the post since Georgian Dream coalition leader Bidzina Ivanishvili voluntarily stepped down in 2013, said that he ...
December 4th marked an important occasion in Chinese-African relations, signalling, as it did, the 15th anniversary of the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC). This is a relationship that has been largely overlooked, and yet it is one of the world’s most ...
They called the First World War simply ‘The Great War’ until the start of the second truly global conflict erupted in 1939. Fortunately, despite a few proxy wars and more than a few close calls during the Cold War, the world ...
A positive approach to the drop in oil prices Oil prices have dropped the lowest since 2003 with a price under 27 dollars per barrel. Politically, it doesn’t look too tragic – The key here is to understand that oil ...
A growing culture of drug trafficking and use needs strong action. Along its western front, Pakistan shares a 2250 km long border with the war-torn country of Afghanistan. The fact that the border is porous and poorly managed has contributed ...
Cyber weapons are a game changer. At least, that is the case if we take at face value Marty Edwards’ – head of the control systems security program for the US Department of Homeland Security – assertions regarding Stuxnet. It ...