Author: M Barbu

The EU’s latest proposed sanctions against Russia did not, as anticipated, include additional steps to halt pipeline imports of Russian oil and natural gas. However, the intransigence of Hungary and Slovakia over the issue is looking increasingly untenable.

In the Middle East, climate activism is often intertwined with public grievances over perceived governance failures and ongoing regional and national conflicts. Not only are Iraq and Yemen among the countries most vulnerable to climate change,1 compounded by apparent endemic state corruption, but they have also become key arenas for the ongoing regional confrontation between Israel and Iran’s axis that began in October 2023. In Iraq, for example, clashes between Iran-backed militias and U.S. and Israeli forces—a symptom of wider instability and governance failures—have enabled Türkiye and Iran to exploit the country’s water resources.2 In Yemen, Ansar Allah (commonly known as the Houthi movement) has disrupted international shipping in the Red Sea and attacked Israel, deepening the country’s isolation and insecurity. Both countries also grapple with fragmented political authority: Iraq’s federal structure includes a semiautonomous region, while Yemen remains divided among competing factions.

In the Arab states of the Gulf, Islamic institutions have long existed at the intersection of local and regional space. Before the twentieth century, local rulers tended to rely on specific scholars who were part of regional religious networks for rudimentary needs in adjudication and education. The emergence of complex bureaucratic states in the middle of the twentieth century changed this picture in a way that renegotiated the terms between global and local Islam differently for each state.

Les récits médiatiques, un complexe de supériorité et des batailles psychologiques façonnent l’avenir de l’Europe. L’image que l’Europe se fait d’elle-même comme un «jardin» l’aveugle face aux réalités mondiales, tandis que des récits irrationnels sur la guerre risquent d’accélérer son propre déclin.

Israel’s strategy in recent weeks has been to disparage the decision of several countries to recognize the state of Palestine. Yet when France, the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, Portugal, and Belgium, took such a step at the United Nations early this week, or indicated that they would, the Israeli and American reaction was anger. How strange, and telling, that a decision the Israelis and their advocates had ridiculed as “childish” and “performative,” even “an absurdity,” could provoke so excessive a response.