Category: Global conflict

There have been extraordinary scenes in cinemas throughout the United Kingdom. People have leapt to their feet in standing ovations, and grown men have been weeping. The source of the emotion? The wartime speeches of Winston Churchill in the movie “The Darkest Hour.” It’s not just because of Gary Oldman’s tremendous performance as the former prime minister. The movie has touched something very deep in the British psyche: the call to summon all one’s courage and resolution to defend their nation. Showing how the nation’s previous prime minister, Neville Chamberlain,…

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The Iranian uprising and Europe’s silence In all the years of anxiety over what to do about the greatest sponsor of global terrorism, the Islamic Republic of Iran, the hope has been that the Iranian people would overthrow the brutal theocracy that has subjugated them. The past week has seen the most significant popular uprising in Iran since the regime took power in 1979. Mass demonstrations erupted in an unprecedented spread across the country. At least 22 demonstrators have been killed and more than 1000 arrested. Now the head of…

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What’s happening in Iran is of the greatest significance. Thousands of anti-regime demonstrators have taken to the streets now for four days in protest. Reports suggest that at least twelve people have been killed by government troops. It is hard to over-estimate the courage of those demonstrators. The scale and scope of these demonstrations across Iran is unprecedented: estimates suggest they have been occurring in at least 30 cities, including some places long deemed to be the regime’s power base. With President Hassan Rouhani acknowledging economic “grievances”, a “lack of…

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Many people are understandably baffled by the recent UN vote condemning President Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital. Since such a vote has zero practical effect, they ask, what was the point of it? Well indeed. As the American ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley said in her barnstorming response, America will still be moving its embassy to Jerusalem regardless of the UN’s opinion. The resolution didn’t need to have any practical import. It was merely part of the UN’s theatre of hatred, the malevolent campaign it has waged…

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According to the Turkish Anadolu news agency, reported here, the Grand Mufti of Saudi Arabia, Abdul Aziz al Sheikh, has issued a quite remarkable religious ruling. Answering a question on TV about the Palestinian Arab riots over Temple Mount last July, he didn’t merely denounce Hamas as a “terror organisation”. Much more significantly he actually issued a fatwa, or religious ruling, forbidding war against the Jews; and he said that fighting against Israel was inappropriate. How can this be anything other than highly significant? Sheikh Abdul Aziz is not exactly a…

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Crown Prince Muhammad bin Salman of Saudi Arabia has been making some remarkable comments. In an interview with The Guardian, the recently designated heir to the Saudi throne said the desert kingdom had been “not normal” for the past 30 years. He blamed the extremist Wahhabi form of Islam, which successive leaders “didn’t know how to deal with” and which had created a problem around the world. “Now is the time to get rid of it,” he said. Saudi Arabia would now revert to “what we followed – a moderate…

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I can scarcely believe the perfidy of America and the west in betraying the Kurdish people – the one beacon of hope in the Islamic world, warriors who have fought heroically and courageously alongside the west and a people who, unlike the Catalans or the “Palestinians”, really do have a legitimate claim to a homeland of their own. And yet America and the west have abandoned them – and for what? To preserve the hopeless illusion of a democratic and west-friendly Iraq that has actually been infiltrated, manipulated and suborned…

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According to the Labour party, Donald Trump represents a “real and present danger to world peace” over his decision not to recertify the Iran nuclear deal. Hello Labour party, planet earth calling! The real and present danger to world peace is Iran. The Iranian regime has been in a state of self-declared war against the west since it came to power in 1979, is the principal sponsor of world terrorism, has committed numerous attacks against western interests and murdered many innocent folk in the process, was behind the killing of…

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The acclaimed Chinese artist Ai Weiwei has been repeatedly persecuted in China over his human rights activism. Having previously suffered a brain haemorrhage as a result of a police beating, he was arrested in 2011 and imprisoned for 81 days in solitary confinement in a tiny unventilated cell. His art tells us about the importance of free speech, the oppressive reality of a true surveillance society and life as a struggle for freedom against tyranny. The best of his creations are as imaginative and creative as they are moving. To…

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German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s decision to fling open the doors of Germany to more than a million migrants from the developing world baffled many. Although only a minority of these migrants were refugees fleeing persecution, with most of them seeking instead the chance of economic opportunities in Europe, it is widely believed that Mrs Merkel saw the presence of at least a proportion of Syrian refugees amongst their number as an opportunity finally to shake off the spectre of her country’s belligerent past and recast its reputation as a nation…

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