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By webmaster, on May 13th, 2012
The Gulf Today
May 13, 2012
Buttons, every single moment of our waking lives is controlled by buttons. When we wish to be entertained we click a button and on comes an onslaught of channels designed to keep us transfixed for hours. When we are running low on energy we push a button and out pops our replenishment in whatever form we desire. At the end of our hectic day and after having pushed, pressed and clicked our way through a thousand buttons we flick the all important one, the button that allows for darkness to fall and envelop us as we lay our weary heads to sleep.
Yet we have not restricted buttons to controlling our lives for they control our death as well. Just as we have created buttons to push us forward we have created ones that could bring us to a complete stop. Man has waged war for the pettiest of reasons and from the beginning of time, yet in the past winning wars was measured by the amount of blood spilled in attack and defence of the so-called cause. It meant armed men going face to face with whoever the enemy may be, looking him in the eye and pulling the trigger. Continue reading Earth wars: Attack of the drones
By webmaster, on May 13th, 2012
The Gulf Today
May 06, 2012
In the mid-1990s, the German social scientist, Gunar Heinshon, coined the term “Youth Bulge Theory,” to describe a trend in demography. The theory will eventually be developed by American political scientists, Garry Fuller and Jack Goldston. They argue that “developing countries undergoing demographic transition or those moving from high to low fertility and mortality rates, are especially vulnerable to civil conflict.” As we know since the great Ibn Khaldun , the conjugated effect of social and economic oppression and political repression is the gravedigger of any regime. Continue reading Revolutions and Counter-Revolutions
By webmaster, on May 13th, 2012
The Gulf Today
April 28, 2012
Israel and Egypt officials are both downplaying the decision to cancel the gas deal contract, claiming that it has nothing to do with politics. Thus, they probably think it is the best way to ease the tensions between them.
However, the realities are there, and the denial may turn out to be self-delusion. The fact is that Israel is unhappy about the revolution that toppled Hosni Mubarak, while Egypt is unhappy about so many Israeli attitudes that their listing could make a whole book. Continue reading Is business apolitical?
By webmaster, on April 28th, 2012
The Gulf Today, April 21, 2012
Some observers noticed a particular increase in the number of American experts from the defence and foreign affairs who went on television in the aftermath of September 11, 2001. Indeed, these members of think tanks were significantly solicited to provide their responses to the problems about which the American public was most anxious.
The fact that think tanks became so publicised in the wake of a major crisis is not surprising. Moreover, it has been a long time since their fellows stopped refraining from accessing the media. Several of them, in fact, maintain a more or less regular presence in the press, and their participation in public life is no longer in the shadows.
Apparently, the experts do not agree on a specific date that would signal the birth of the first think tank nor even on what it might consist. But we can point out some reference marks: Continue reading Think tanks industry story
By webmaster, on April 21st, 2012
The Gulf Today, April 14, 2012
The old conflict in Sudan known as “North/South” is not isolated from an area of overlapping conflicts, exacerbating problems of tribalism and ethnicity and religion, mineral resources, and political claims. Sudan has been engulfed in almost continuous internal conflict since independence. The devastating South-North conflict, which resulted in almost 2,000,000 casualties, is now regaining steam.
Khartoum accuses South Sudan of supporting rebel insurgencies in its territory. The South accuses Khartoum of stealing its oil. Continue reading Sudan versus Sudan
By webmaster, on April 15th, 2012
The Gulf Today, April 07, 2012
Apparently, it is not Bashar Al Assad and the Baath Party that are ruling what remains of Syria today, but Vladimir Putin and Russia. From the moment Moscow decided that the protesters in the streets of the Syrian cities are a threat for its stranglehold on this Arab country, it became obvious that the struggle is not opposing Al Assad to the Syrian revolt any more, but opposing the latter to Russia.
Russia has no solution for the crisis. It simply wants the Syrian protesters to give up their claims, to forget their dead, and to accept the man Russia imposed on them. Left to himself, without Russian political and military support, how long could he survive? Is Assad more powerful than Ben Ali, Hosni Mubarak, Muammar Al Qadhafi, or even Ali A. Saleh? All of these men were professional military officers. They relied on a complicated intelligence and security apparatus. They had powerful allies among the most powerful nations of this world. Until the eve of the revolution that toppled them, they were downright untouchable. Moreover, they have accumulated the experience of a very long rule that made them believe they were uncrowned kings who could leg their “conquered territories” to their offspring or relatives. How could a greenhorn, with no political experience, no military or intelligence knowledge, no particular talent, outrun them and stay in his palace despite the raging country outside? Is that possible thanks to his own resources and talents? Would anyone of those reasoning bass-drums who relay on the TV channels the voice of their master, explain to us, by the power of what mystery, what magic, Al Assad is still “triumphing” on his people, while much more powerful and experimented Arab presidents were unable to resist the same groundswell that devastated their respective countries? Continue reading Moscow fighting Arab Spring
By webmaster, on April 10th, 2012
A Re-analysis of a Recurrent Sociological Proposition with Contemporary Data
In an article for the internationally well-known social science journal SOCIOLOGIA – Slovak Sociological Review (website:http://www.sav.sk/index.php?lang=sk&charset=&doc=journal-list&journal_no=36&lang_change=en) Tausch* and Heshmati* reconsider the effects of direct foreign investments on the host countries around the globe. A number of sociological analyses (Bandelji 2009 and Mahutga – Bandelji 2008), . . . → Read More: The Effects of Multinational Corporation (MNC) Penetration on the Global Political Economy
By webmaster, on April 7th, 2012
The Gulf Today, March 31, 2012
It seems that Iran has enormously profited from the upheaval in the Arab countries at least on one aspect: it has delivered it momentaneously from the international pressure regarding its nuclear programme. Iran has officially welcomed the revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt while trying to recuperate them ideologically, pretending they were “Islamic” or “pro-Islamist” revolutions, “anti-imperialist,” “anti-American” revolutions. This kind of discourse was probably intended for domestic consumption. Yet, those very uprisings the Mullahs have welcomed would boomerang reminding the Iranians that they have not been less abused by their government than the people of Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Yemen, and Syria: On February 2011, thousands took to the streets in Tehran and other major Iranian cities, demanding democracy and freedom…The protests were quickly silenced. Iran is today the main supporter, with Russia, of the Syrian regime – a position that reveals the duplicity and the irrationalism of its policy. Continue reading Iran and the regional changes
By webmaster, on April 4th, 2012
The Gulf Today, April 01, 2012
Never before has the world been as interconnected as it is today. Entire populations all tangled up in an invisible web, one that holds them captive indefinitely. Each virtual string binds one stranger to the other making friends of some and foes of the rest. The virtual world where people feel safe under the false security of illuminated screens has provided the lonely being with a mirage, one that promises at the end of it the fulfilling sense of closeness and the death of loneliness. Continue reading The secular state of social networks
By webmaster, on March 30th, 2012
The Gulf Today March 24, 2012
We live in the wake of two important revolutions that unleashed a wind of freedom that observers everywhere have dubbed “the Arab Spring”: Tunisia and Egypt. Something happened in this region that cannot be undone, denied, ignored, forgotten; and we cannot continue to live as if it does not concern us, “because it is in the other countries.” The Arab League, with its monumental bureaucratic spirit, has fortunately been quick to understand what was at stake and how to adapt to it. The efforts made to help Yemen and Syria get out of their “crisis” are, in this context, honourable, although not sufficient. The situation in Yemen may reverse, because of the continued meddling of Ali Abdullah Saleh and his cronies where they should not meddle. Saleh was offered immunity against judiciary prosecution, against the will of many people in his country, for whom he still must face trial. Yet, he is not satisfied with such a “luxurious exit” and he shows it around. Shouldn’t they have subordinated such an “exit” to the condition of abstaining from any political activity in Yemen? I think they should. Continue reading Options for Syria
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