Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel has announced that in a month’s time he will start to annex the large-scale Jewish settlements inside Palestinian territory, a step as provocative as one can imagine. Not even President Donald Trump’s Administration which has supported Israel with many measures has not gone along with such thinking. Suppor...

Africa is suffering a double whammy after many years of success. The Coronavirus, while not taking down great numbers of people like in Europe, Asia and the Americas, has had a severe impact by curbing its exports in the face of the formers’ severe economic depression. For example, flowers grown in Kenya and Ethiopia have been particularly hit. Keny...

The world is supposed to be pulling together to defeat the Coronavirus and to some extent it is. Earlier on Russia sent special equipment to the US and recently the US has sent some to Russia. China has aided Italy and Africa with doctors and equipment. Tiny Cuba, with its deep pool of doctors, has also helped Africa. Around the world there is a sen...

The war in Syria has dropped out of the news, like almost everything else, in a time when the Coronavirus seems to dominate all discourse and reporting. But the regime of Bashar al-Assad continues to strangle its own country. The Russians continue to bomb on his behalf, terrifying civilians and hospitals. The Americans work semi-clandestinely to und...

With a bit more pushing and, after, unfortunately, a bit more killing the three remaining serious wars on the planet, in Syria, Afghanistan and Yemen, should come to an end. Then it will be time to take stock on what caused the killing, especially why so many innocents lost their lives and whether wars of this kind can be deterred in the future. The...

It might seem that the world is going to pot in a hand-basket. Not quite true. There are ways out. Asia has shown how to deal with the Corona virus and how to stay politically stable. Europe, with the exception of wise Sweden, has muddled along, following belatedly the conventional wisdom of its scientific community. As for the United States, Presid...

The greatest American foreign affairs columnist since Walter Lippmann was William Pfaff of The International Herald Tribune. He wrote in his path-breaking book, “Barbarian Sentiments” that the US political atmosphere was full of “exhausted ideas, like a dead star”. Nevertheless, “these ideas remain central to the way certain subjects are discussed a...

Joseph Biden for president! Yesterday his main rival for the Democratic Party’s nomination, Bernie Sanders, endorsed him. If the world could vote, the overwhelming majority would vote for Biden, despite some misgivings. My reservations would be on his foreign policy. Like President Barack Obama he would be good on domestic policy but mistaken on muc...

Let’s get death in proportion. True, Coronavirus is an appalling disease but the number of deaths it has caused this year is far lower than deaths caused by either common flue, car accidents, drug taking, alcoholism or cigarette smoking.  Governments don’t like these things and make an effort to combat them. But they don’t get themselves as worked u...

Julian Assange of Wikileaks languishes in a British jail during a too-long wait for a court to decide if he can be extradicted to the US where the government has made clear that it wants to put him on trial on charges that could land him in prison for the rest of his life, even though President Donald Trump was happy to quote from Wikileaks research...