(25 October 2023) (Cairo, 19 October 2023) With essential supplies running out in Gaza, UN Secretary-General António Guterres on Thursday appealed for humanitarian access to the besieged enclave.
by Jeffrey D. Sachs,* USA
(18 October 2023) Following Hamas’s heinous attack on innocent Israeli civilians, senior Israeli military strategists are threatening the ethnic cleansing of Gaza. This would be another Nakba (Arabic for catastrophe), akin to the mass expulsion of Palestinians from their homes and land in 1948. If Israel commits massive war crimes in Gaza in the face of global calls for restraint, Israel would put its fundamental national security at risk.
by M. K. Bhadrakumar,* India
(4 October 2023) (Edit.) Renowned American military historian, strategic thinker and war veteran Colonel (ret.) Douglas MacGregor (who served as an advisor to the Pentagon during the Trump administration) predicts that a new “Biden phase of the war” is coming. [See video link at the end of the text in footnote 6.]
Michael von der Schulenburg,* Deutschland
(4 October 2023) At the end of August this year, four highly respected German personalities1 presented a peace proposal2 for ending the war in Ukraine through a ceasefire and subsequent peace negotiations. It is arguably the most comprehensive and groundbreaking peace proposal made by any government, international organization or, as in this case, any private party since the war began 18 months ago.
by M. K. Bhadrakumar,* India
(26 September 2023) India being the host country, the triumphalist tom-toming that G20 summit on September 9-10 was a “success” is both understandable and probably justifiable. Certainly, Indian diplomacy was in full cry. The negotiation of the G20 Declaration1 is no mean achievement in a highly polarised environment.
by Guy Mettan,* Geneva
(26 September 2023) In my last article, I showed how the enlarged BRICS constituted the largest integrated coalition of primary energy producers, mainly of fossil origin, and end consumers with the gigantic Chinese and Indian markets. So what? you say. Why would this vision of the past matter to us, since we, the Westerners, are banking on the energies of the future, electricity, renewable solar and wind power, hydrogen, and once the transition is over, a bright energy future, environmentally friendly, resource-saving and climate-neutral, will available to us.