Author: M Barbu

Iran’s Crisis of Legitimacy

An Embattled Regime Faces Mass Protests—and an Ailing Supreme Leader

Early this month, the Iranian rumor mill cranked into overdrive amid reports that Iran’s 83-year-old supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who survived prostate cancer surgery in 2014, was again gravely ill. On September 16, the New York Times reported that emergency bowel surgery had left Khamenei bedridden and too frail to sit upright, citing four anonymous sources said to be “familiar with his health situation.” In the wilder corners of Persian-language social media, claims that Khamenei was on his deathbed gave way to speculation that he had already died. As has happened for more than a decade, such rumors quickly morphed into feverish conjecture about how Iran’s Assembly of Experts, the body of 88 Islamic jurists who choose the supreme leader, would select Khamenei’s successor and lively debate over the relative merits of the clerics jockeying for the role.

Northern Syria: Turkish Shelling Kills 2, Injures 8, Russian Airstrikes Injure Others

Two people were killed and eight were wounded on Tuesday by Turkish artillery targeting homes and workshops controlled by the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) in the countryside of Syria’s northern province of Hasakah, the state-run Syrian Arab News Agency reported. SDF retaliated by shelling villages controlled by Turkish troops and Turkish-allied rebel forces in Hasakah, the London-based war monitor Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported.

L’insurrection islamiste aux portes de Bamako

La violence des groupes islamistes militants s’accélère au Mali. Une insurrection complexe avance dans le nord, le centre et de plus en plus dans le sud du pays, menaçant sa stabilité.

La situation sécuritaire s’est fortement détériorée au Mali depuis la prise du pouvoir par la junte militaire en août 2020. En effet, les groupes islamistes militants menacent maintenant Bamako.

Europe’s Unsolved Energy Puzzle

How the Quest for Resources Has Shaped the Continent

Russian President Vladimir Putin’s war against Ukraine has laid bare some uncomfortable truths about Europe’s energy future. For one thing, it has demolished the presumption in Germany that Russia would be a reliable fossil fuel partner. The war has also blown apart Europe’s claim to moral leadership on climate change. At the UN Climate Change Conference in Glasgow in the fall of 2021, the European Union unsuccessfully demanded that China and India commit to a timetable for phasing out coal. Now that demand appears almost hypocritical, because countries such as Germany are keeping open coal-fired power stations that were due to close to deal with their present energy woes. In doing so, these leaders have demonstrated that coal is still the primary energy source of last resort for generating electricity.

What Mobilization Means for Russia

The End of Putin’s Bargain With the People

Last week, Russian President Vladimir Putin announced a “partial mobilization” intended to shore up his faltering war against Ukraine. The pretense that there is anything partial about this move, however, is about as convincing as Putin’s claim that Russia is merely carrying out a “special military operation” in Ukraine. After Putin’s announcement, Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said that 300,000 men with military backgrounds would be drafted. But some reports indicate that is not the number stated in official documents authorizing the mobilization, and the parts of Putin’s decree that were made public do not include any restrictions on the Defense Ministry’s authorization to draft people. According to some reports, as many as one million men might be conscripted, and some military commissariats already appear to be drafting men indiscriminately.

Introducing Giorgia Meloni: How the US Opened the Door for Fascism’s Return to Italy

The Italian Parliamentary election has concluded and the neofascist, Giorgia Meloni, is ready to emerge as the new prime minister of a divided country with no clear mandate from around 60 percent of eligible voters, in one of the lower voter turnouts in history. The choices were quite grim and the system rigged along the lines of the anti-democratic US election model after years of CIA influence in working to create a bipolar schizophrenic and easily destabilised political system.

Defying Warning, Iranians’ Anti-hijab Protest Continues For 10th Night: 57 Deaths

Demonstrators burn a scarf at a protest against the Iranian government on Sunday. (David Bates/CBC)

Iranians took to the streets for a 10th consecutive night Sunday, in defiance of a warning from the judiciary, to protest the death of young Kurdish woman Mahsa Amini in morality police custody.

Images circulated by IHR showed protesters on the streets of Tehran, shouting “death to the dictator,” purportedly after nightfall on Sunday.

Al-Qaeda Still Potent

A terror group which globalised the concept of Jihad and have existed for more than three decades is not dependent on just one leader for its survival

With the recent killing of Al-Qaeda (AQ) chief Ayman al-Zawahri in Afghan capital Kabul a lot of speculation is happening on the future of this terror outfit.

The UN Launches a High-level Panel on Security in the Sahel

“If nothing is done, the effects of terrorism, violent extremism and organized crime will be felt far beyond the region and the African continent,” Guterres said.

On Saturday, the Independent High-Level Panel on Security and Development in the Sahel was launched during a high-level event on the margins of the United Nations General Assembly.