“What is a fanatic,” Churchill said, “one who can’t change his mind and won’t change the subject.” The massacres taking place in the Caucasus remind us of that fanaticism that is more than a century old: the Armenian genocide in 1915.
At a time when we are wondering about the consequences that the pandemic will have on our lives and children’s lives. At a time when the challenge of getting our economy back on its feet is obsessing our fellow citizens and our leaders, in the Zaatari camp in the Jordanian desert, 80,000 Syrian refugees try to survive in appalling conditions.
Turkish President Recep Erdogan wants to show the great powers that he has his say in the redistribution of the cards in the Middle East and in the resolution of conflicts in the region, at a time, moreover, when the world order that emerged from 1945, the end of the Second World War, has become obsolete.
After 4 years of Trumpism, with their succession of repetitive tweets, fads, unpredictabilities, inconsistencies, the new American president should be called Hercules Biden, as the files that Donald Trump left him, in foreign policy, are so many colossal challenges to be taken up. These files are named: Iran, Russia, Turkey, China, North Korea, Afghanistan & Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
In early March, Tariq Ramadan demanded the dismissal of a court-appointed expert to analyse the control he could exercise over young women with whom he had violent sexual relations. The preacher’s defence for the dismissal of Dr Daniel Zagury refers to “manipulation”. In fact, the main reproach levelled at this doctor is that he is… Jewish!
Everyone thought they knew Tunisia when the revolution broke out in January 2011, sweeping away the experts’ reassuring analyses of the “Tunisian exception”. In 2021, the same experts, or their emulators, woke up with a start after having served us for years the same ideological broth, seasoned to the taste of the day. The new “Tunisian exception” would thus allow the country of jasmine to escape the fate of other Arab revolutions, thanks to the famous “democratic transition”, guarantor of the political wisdom of Carthage. Now, if it did indeed exist, at a time when intelligence held the reins of the revolutionary chariot, particularly with the great jurist Yadh Ben Achour, who chaired the High Authority for Political Reform, the “transition” has seriously slowed down over time.
Chinese President Xi Jinping displayed his expansionist ambitions within a year of taking over as General Secretary of the Communist Party of China (CPC) when he launched the ambitious Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) that traverses through Asia, Europe and Africa, connecting dozens of countries. The first country that partnered with China on the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) was Pakistan, when the US$ 62 billion China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), comprising of a wide range of infrastructure projects, was signed with much fanfare in 2015. Due to its expanse, the CPEC, often referred in Pakistan as the flagship project of the BRI, provides the observer with a ringside view of the actual objectives and expectations of Xi Jinping from his dream initiative.