Peace, Justice and the Ultimate Crime

By now, it is no secret that Russian strongman Vladimir Putin is making a major play to strengthen his country’s presence in the Middle East region. His stubborn diplomatic and devastating military defense of Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad alone provides clear evidence of this strategy. Putin has proven himself willing to bear the brunt of worldwide censure for the slaughter taking place under the Syrian regime, and even to take an active role in perpetrating it, rather than hand over the head of the current leader of the 40-year-old Assad regime. Obviously, this is not because of any particular personal love Putin might have for Assad (for the Russian leader, Assad is little more than a puppet, an instrument for execution of his strategy), but because Assad’s regime is the highest trump card Russia has in a game of ever-higher-stakes geopolitics. And, by this time, there can be little doubt in anyone’s mind that Putin’s goal is "to make Russia great again." The shin...

For months now, Aleppo has been in the grip of hell on earth. Indeed, it would be difficult to say whether or not what the people of Aleppo have experienced is worse than any hell imagined by the likes of Dante Alighieri. An evacuation effort that began on December 13 th , and that Russia had vowed to monitor and protect, was suspended on the 16 th , with both sides blaming each other for truce agreement violations. The government accused rebel militias of trying to smuggle out prisoners and heavy weaponry under cover of the evacuation, while each side accused the other of firing on evacuation and aid convoys. At one point this past week, prior to the evacuation attempt, bombs were falling on the shattered, ancient, Syrian city at a rate of one every twenty seconds. It was so dangerous to be on the ground there that war correspondents from major worldwide media were filing their stories from a safe distance outside the city or from neighboring nations like Turkey and Lebanon,...

I’ve been mulling over this month’s historic US presidential election for the past few days since its stunning result, and no matter how positive I try to be, I can only conclude that the United States and, by extension, the world are at the starting point of what can only be described as a “worst case scenario” for world peace, cooperation and understanding. To start with, President-elect Donald Trump is, arguably, the least prepared US president in history. His net training has been focused entirely on business—with only the slightest of pure economic studies—nor is he, like most politicians who eventually hold that country’s highest political posts, an attorney. That in itself wouldn’t necessarily be a fatally limiting factor. Former US President Jimmy Carter, for instance, was a proud honors graduate of the Annapolis Naval Academy and a farmer-businessman before launching his political career. But he was, arguably, one of the most committed of US presidents to human and civil ...

To read Parts I, II and III, please visit the following links: http://vivoonwarpeaceandjustice.blogspot.com.ar/2016/08/the-rise-of-nationalist-populism.html http://vivoonwarpeaceandjustice.blogspot.com.ar/2016/08/the-rise-of-populist-nationalism-part.html http://vivoonwarpeaceandjustice.blogspot.com.ar/2016/09/the-rise-of-populist-nationalism-part.html Although an undercurrent of populist nationalism has been surging toward the surface since the turn of the millennium, it is no coincidence that it has become a fully-fledged international trend in the years since the 2008 world financial crisis, the catalyst for which was the US mortgage debacle and the ensuing stock market crash that it triggered. Nor is right-wing populist nationalism the only manifestation of rage and frustration on the part of common citizens at what they perceive as a broken system and as a worldwide “game”—led by the West—in which the deck is definitively stacked against them. Trumpism in the US, Nigel...

“What is Aleppo?” asked third party libertarian presidential candidate Gary Johnson on nationwide US television. And everyone who is aware of the horrendous human drama unfolding in Syria gasped and wrote him off as too ignorant to run for dogcatcher let alone president of the most powerful nation on earth and leader of the Western world. US Presidential candidate Gary Johnson Devastated by the Syrian War over the course of the past five years, Aleppo will very likely be, for all intents and purposes, leveled within the next two months, under constant air attacks by the Syrian regime of Bashar al-Assad and those of his Russian ally and overlord Vladimir Putin. While many may know where Aleppo lies in the bitter war between Assad and nationalist rebels and in the proxy wars of regional and worldwide rivals, fewer know what Aleppo means in terms of world history and culture. Possibly in existence since as far back as the 6 th millennium before the Christian era, it has been i...