Whereas the government and security institutions of Egypt and Tunisia have remained intact, necessity being the mother of invention, a new form of governance has emerged in Syria. This in itself is worth celebrating and supporting.
Simply waiting until the fight is over looks like a realpolitik option, but it is a recipe to push Syria only further into disaster. The stalemate can last for years. Europe must act now – to prevent a humanitarian tragedy and to protect its vital interests.
Harsh measures imposed on Cypriot political and financial authorities to address bank failures reveal, once again, that the entire architecture of the EU is in tatters. The geopolitics surrounding the Greek Cypriot crisis is pulling the EU further apart and into the unknown.
Aid is ultimately dictated by the host government’s willingness to grant international access to a country. Martin Armstrong speaks to those who are trying to cope.
The rivalry between Saudi Arabia and Iran is at the heart of Syria's destructive stalemate. This proxy conflict, with Baghdad providing crucial help to Tehran, highlights the scale of the blowback from the United States's war in Iraq.
Before any elections, the first stone will have already been laid - with reconstruction. On which policies will Syria be rebuilt? Which checks and balances will be organized around an international aid campaign driven by vested interests? Who will plan it? What can work, and what doesn't, in Syria
Is Britain on the verge of another mass-migration, as with the Poles? Behind the rhetoric on Romanians and Bulgarians set to flood the country, sucking up jobs and benefits, the actual expected impact of the lifted restrictions has gone unspoken.
Rising xenophobia amongst the public has supported the impunity tacitly accorded by the state to far-right violence.
The only Arab country where protests started from rural areas might find itself facing an internationally funded reconstruction which will award money to urban centres, thus abandoning the very roots of the current crisis. The only solution is to build economic awareness. Starting from now.
The Syrian social movement has to be conscious of the necessity of establishing a just economy. Strong checks need to be built against the post-war government so that all Syrians understand the conditions of aid and consequences of reconstruction plans on their lives and the lives of their childre
EU accession in 2004 did little if anything to make runaway bankers accountable; on the contrary, the so-called institutional ‘independence’ of the Central Bank making the Governor accountable to the ECB rather than having any democratic accountability to the people who would be immediately affect
