This is a sad day for America and democracy.  President Obama has opened diplomatic relations with Cuba without Havana making really meaningful concessions. Meanwhile, cowardly Sony canceled the premiere of a movie Pyongyang found offensive because of North Korean threats to repeat 9/11.  This will only produce more demands by the aggressive…

The hostage-taking in Sydney by an ISIS sympathizer, is a reminder that we are in a global war with international, Islamic terrorism – not only in the Middle East but also in North America, Australia, Africa, Asia, Western Europe, Russia and the U.S.  It is a much needed reminder in light of Senator Dianne Feinstien´s partisan Senate…

So the United States Senate has released its report highlighting extreme and supposedly ‘abhorrent’ techniques used on terrorist targets after 9/11 to glean greater intelligence and information. Since that release there has been an orgy of oscillating condemnation/hand-wringing with rationalization/chest-beating, depending on whom you…

After  Ferguson, the  Senate  report on the CIA use of “torture” in  interrogating terrorists, is likely producing more glee in the Kremlin.  KGB old-timers expect that like the famous Pike Repot in the mid-1970’s, it will be injurious to the CIA´s organizational mission.  Some legislators are…

Tassos Symeonides
(RIEAS Academic Advisor based in Seattle, USA)
Ever since April, and a much publicized re-entry in the capital markets to secure a loan, the Greek PM Mr. Samaras has taken no breaks from advertising his government's supposed "success" in leading Greece "out of her crisis." With the exception of Mr…

 
We are living under the conditions of new world system that is often referred to as globality. The system is characterized by a number of features.
 
1.    This is a period quite often accompanied with the uncertainty of international system. The uncertainty is predicated by the vulnerability of political institutions as…

Anyone who has worked through post-mortems on the Iraq war is familiar with the pitfalls associated with ‘groupthink’ and preconceptions. Indeed, it is perhaps one of the few modern examples of consensus across American partisanship. Some have argued such assumptions emerged from an administration not interested in counter-arguments and…

There is no state of denial that global inequality exists- commentators are daily quoting statistics on miserable state of poor countries. Still, morally, there is something here, that doesn’t correspond to our moral beliefs – that is, there is something wrong that some people can afford exorbitant lifestyles, whereas others are destitute…

With glee over Ferguson, Russian media is having a Schadenfreude field day. The photo of a black woman holding a Russian sign, "Americans ask Vladimir Putin to send troops" is no joke, however. Their attempt to link Ferguson with the Maidan uprising or what they call "colored" revolutions in the Ukraine, falls very flat…

Millennium goals, proclaimed by the UN were and remain an intrinsic feature of a mix of grandiloquent speechifying and idealistic intentions by the leaders of the  “free world” aimed at eradicating poverty, fighting health problems, improving education, further liberating female population across the world from the …

Why do YOU LET Bangladesh be Robbed and Humiliated by Foreign Aid Expatriates? People who behave like “Lords of Poverty”. And many who don’t even pay their taxes from the side business they do?  Over the last 2 and a half years I visited and lived in Gulshan 2 Dhaka, Bangladesh. During this time I also had the opportunity to…

The OPEC refusal to decrease oil production and a subsequent price fall to a 4-year low make the future of Russian economy tenuous. Since July 2014, the Russian ruble depreciated to the U.S. dollar by 45%, and the economic growth stalled. Falling oil prices together with western sanctions induce Russian experts to seek alternative sources to fill…