Showing 1 - 10 of 39
Taliban rule dims Afghan women's rights
News, John J. Metzler, Published on 17/03/2025
» The darkening rule of the Taliban regime over Afghanistan continues to dim prospect women's rights as well as any chances for the war-torn country to overcome an ongoing humanitarian catastrophe. Currently more than 50 percent of the population, some 23 million people in this South Asian land, require humanitarian assistance and that aid is now decreasing.
Time to let Afghan women lead
News, Palwasha Hassan & Shafiqa Khpalwak, Published on 10/03/2025
» This year's International Women's Day is marked by a sense of foreboding, even despair. Progress on women's rights and representation is stalling: the number of women in parliaments grew last year at the lowest rate in a generation, and the global financing gap for gender initiatives remains wide. At a time of widespread democratic backsliding -- and with US President Donald Trump freezing foreign aid, including for gender initiatives -- the prospects for improvement appear bleak.
What did we miss in run-up to Assad's ouster?
News, Slavoj Žižek, Published on 23/12/2024
» The downfall of Bashar al-Assad's regime in Syria surprised even the opposition, led by Abu Mohammad al-Jolani's Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, offering fertile ground for conspiracy theories.
Syria: It's those jihadis on the march again
News, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 04/12/2024
» One week in, the ceasefire in Lebanon seems to be holding, but everything is connected: only three days later, the civil war in Syria started up again after a de facto four-year truce.
Afghan women's rights draw little attention
News, John J Metzler, Published on 07/11/2024
» Afghanistan's tragedy continues. Since the chaotic end of the Afghan war in August 2021, the country is now again ruled by the Islamic fundamentalist Taliban, which has literally turned the clock back on any hints of modernisation and civil and human rights advancements. The rights of women, and especially girls, have plummeted into a medieval miasma.
Kabul collapse emboldened global despots
News, John J. Metzler, Published on 16/08/2024
» The collapse of Afghanistan to the Taliban three years ago on Aug 15 signalled an inflection point on the geopolitical scene. While the appalling stupidity of the Biden/Harris administration's botched and humiliating withdrawal of US forces from this South Asian land stained and sullied the reputation of the United States, the fiasco equally opened the floodgates to the deluge of refugees fleeing the toppled Afghan government in Kabul.
Has crunch time arrived for 'Bibi' Netanyahu?
News, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 24/05/2024
» It has not been a good week for Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin "Bibi" Netanyahu, chief decision-maker in the war in the Gaza Strip that has already cost at least 35,000 civilian deaths. (Some thousands of those 35,000 may have been Hamas fighters.)
‘Empower, Inspire, Transform’
News, Published on 11/03/2024
» Marking International Women’s Day this month, 10 extraordinary women from a wide range of fields who have empowered, inspired and transformed change in their communities through their pursuit of excellence have been named the Bangkok Post’s Women of the Year 2024.
A 14th century warning for the 21st century
News, Max Hastings, Published on 12/02/2024
» A history student told me recently that he loves researching the 20th century but can't see the point of the Middle Ages. I responded that it can be a big help to understanding our own times -- very troubled times -- to view them in the context even of the remote past.
Is Germany Europe's new defining military power?
News, Peter Apps, Published on 01/07/2023
» As pundits and Western officials speculated wildly this week on what the apparent exile of the Wagner Group and its chief Yevgeniy Prighozin to Belarus might mean, Germany announced it would move to base 4,000 troops -- an entire combat brigade -- in neighbouring Lithuania.