Mahir Ali   There was no doubt a considerable degree of schadenfreude in social media activity from official sources in nations such as Egypt and Iran in reaction to the events of recent weeks in Ferguson, Missouri. The United States, after all, is seldom backward in offering condescending advice in relation to how other governments deal with dissidence (inevitably...

(Areeba Rashid)   Starting from educational system in Pakistan, commenting on it might seem to be good and nothing new to everyone but concluding this article might bring a nation-wide condemnation on this but despite of all the resistance, hopefully this article would prove as one step forward towards broadening of people’s minds and thoughts. Education! Instead...

Osama Al Sharif For the first time since the Syrian crisis broke out in March 2011 there are indications that policies toward the Damascus regime are about to change drastically. But it is not because President Bashar Assad has altered his position from the uprising against him or from the Syrian National Coalition (SNC) in exile. And it is not because Assad’s forces...

Nadeem M. Qureshi As Israel continues to rain terror, death and destruction on innocent civilians the world needs to act. The traditional approach encouraging the two parties to ‘negotiate’ has not worked. And those who thought it would, were either deceiving themselves, or the world. Negotiation is possible if the two parties are on equal footing. When the power imbalance...

Marwan Bishara President Barack Obama, who by any measure is a smart and shrewd politician, must be feeling rather foolish nowadays. Not only have his predictions proved wrong about Iraq and al-Qaeda, but, under his watch, America is also being drawn back into the Iraq quagmire three years after it withdrew. The president was all optimistic when he secured US withdrawal...

Christine Mehta The Indian armed forces enjoy high levels of support at home. Indians regularly speak of their army in glowing terms and express pride in their efforts to secure India and contribute to international peacekeeping efforts through the United Nations. While the Indian public and media often take other state agencies like the police, judiciary and the bureaucracy...

Abdel Aziz Aluwaisheg Australia is home to a sizable number of Muslims, who number about 500,000, just over two percent of Australia’s population. Fifty percent of Muslims live in the state of New South Wales (Sydney) and a third in the state of Victoria (Melbourne). Most Muslims are fully integrated in the fabric of Australian society, which includes people hailing...

David Owen The meeting of the presidents of Russia, Belarus and Ukraine, as planned in Minsk yesterday, inevitably recalled the time leaders of those same republics met to dissolve the USSR at the Belavezha hunting lodge in Belarus on December 8, 1991. Then, the key figure was the president of the Russian Federation, Boris Yeltsin. Now it is Vladimir Putin. In 1991, former...

Jamal Doumani Samuel R. Berger and Stephen J. Hadley were at one time influential honchos in the White House, both as national security advisers, respectively to President Bill Clinton and George W. Bush. Both these worthies operate out of think tanks now. And both have an idea they want to share with you, which they did already on the Op-Page of the Washington Post last...