Tonight, the Democratic National Convention will conclude in a blaze of glory, but all the hype in the world cannot camouflage divisions within the party’s ranks that will not go away. The divisions are fundamental: between the party’s establishment represented by presidenti

The roots of radicalisation of Afro-Americans and North African Europeans are to be found in ghettos where young people, particularly men, face discrimination, poor schooling, unemployment, and, above all, racism.Afro-Americans have been enraged by police shootings of mainly unar

Politics is a deadly game with no rules. Players bluff, lie, cheat and pretend there are solutions for problems and remedies for crises where there are none. The use of pretence, in particular, often has disastrous results.US president George W.

British Prime Minister David Cameron’s unwanted Brexit tops, as the blunder of the 21st century, former UK premier Tony Blair’s 2003 decision to wage war on Iraq in the dubious company of US president George Bush.The Bush-Blair war and occupation killed tens of thousands, perhaps

The message 51 US diplomats and officials, many said to be Middle East specialists, sent via the “Dissent Channel” to State Department top brass shows that service in this region does not necessarily prove to be informative or promote understanding. In this message the signa

The shooting deaths of 49 night clubbers in the US by Omar Mateen, a US citizen of Afghan origin claiming to have Daesh inspiration, has, like recent Daesh attacks in Paris and Brussels, grabbed global headlines.World leaders have spoken out against “terrorism” driven by this dea

Poised for weeks on the boundary between Hama and Raqqa provinces, Syrian army troops bolstered by the Homs-based pro-government Falcons of the Desert militia, finally entered Raqqa to do battle with Daesh.Given air cover from Russian warplanes, the ground forces advanced on the

On May 26, holocaust survivor and defender of Palestinian rights Hedy Epstein died of cancer at 91 in her home in St Louis. A tiny, feisty woman, she was a tireless advocate for many causes.Hedy was born in 1924 in Germany shortly before Hitler came to power.

Fallujah was a centre of the Iraqi uprising against British occupation in 1920, the first city in Iraq to revolt against the US occupation in 2003 and the first Iraqi city to submit to Daesh rule in 2014.Consequently, Fallujah cannot be expected to capitulate without a fight to t