First Independent Mena Newspaper
While Syria is tumbling deeper into the abyss with the participation of Lebanese Hezbollah in the fierce combats waged by the Syrian army to drive back the rebels and seize the strategic city of Qousseir, the international community seems time pressured to find a solution to this conflict in which over 94,000 persons have reportedly […]
Empirical studies show that the international monetary system is already tripolar. The Chinese currency, the renmimbi, has increasingly become a reference currency, as one which exhibits a high degree of co-movements with other currencies. In the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, the renmimbi has accelerated its standing as the East-Asia exchange rate reference currency […]
North and West Africa are facing a complex set of challenges in terms of democratic transition and consolidation, a growing prominence of Islamist influence, and potential knock-on effects of recent socio-political transformations. Adding to this complexity is Africa’s raising geopolitical importance that is evident in the growing interest of other extra-territorial powers, such as China, […]
Ever since the Syrian uprising began, the West has quietly been rooting for the opposition. And while the opposition has made some progress in chipping territory away from regime control, the conflict is far from over. Having passed the two-year anniversary, the conflict is now putting the West in a difficult dilemma. After years of […]
The United States has for years voiced support to the settlement of the Western Sahara in the context of the United Nations and when in 2007 Morocco proposed a plan providing to grant a large autonomy to the disputed territory, Washington has expressed in unequivocal terms backing to the Plan and subsequently to the Moroccan […]
The January 14 ouster of Ben Ali’s regime in Tunisia set off a wave of popular uprisings in the Middle East, the most significant change in more than thirty years. The last time the Middle East saw such monumental shifts was in 1979, when the ouster of the Shah in Iran, the Soviet invasion of […]
By international standards, extreme poverty or destitution is relatively low in the countries of North Africa. According to the World Bank, the number of those living below 2 USD a day was 13.9 percent in 2008, which would make the region of Middle East and North Africa (MENA) the fourth poorest region in the world […]
In the mid of the 2008 financial meltdown, countries from the periphery injected their hard-won money into the rescue of Western financial institutions and near-defaulting governments. Those events have definitely cleared the way for the arrival of new powers on the international scene, showed in the rush at calling up an enlarged G-20 in early […]
Globalization is generally viewed as the inevitable solution to many of the world’s inequality issues, especially where access to education and educational resources are concerned. Technology as a facilitator of educational equity through increased access to education and educational resources is also viewed as an inevitable leveler of the proverbial global playing field. Technology is […]
Western Sahara was front and center in CNN’s latest edition of Amanpour, marking a rare instance in which the oft-overlooked and stalemated conflict has been treated as more than a peripheral issue in the Western media. Amanpour hosted and plugged a new documentary film on the Western Sahara that claims to shed light on the […]