World News Insights: Opinion Articles

When President Biden announced the withdrawal of US forces from Afghanistan last year, one of his main justifications was that Al Qaeda had been so “degraded” that the United States no longer needed to maintain a military presence in a country once used as a Qaeda sanctuary. Mr. Biden also vowed to…

In 1978, Czech playwright Vaclav Havel smuggled a long text he had written, “The Power of the Powerless,” in which he discusses life and forms of civil resistance under the communist regime in former Czechoslovakia. In the text, the eventual leader of the revolution tells the story of a grocer who…

There isn’t much good news in the world these days, so it’s worth taking time to appreciate the delightful implosion of soon-to-be former Prime Minister Boris Johnson. His 2019 landslide victory against the hapless Jeremy Corbyn of the Labor Party seemed to be ushering in a long period of right…

Joseph told Pharaoh to use his seven years of plenty to prepare for the lean times to come. In Aesop’s fable, the grasshopper danced away the summer while the industrious ant prepared for a harsh winter. Western leaders don’t lack for good advice from the classics, but clearly they don’t always…

Ibn Khaldun, the 14th-century North African scholar, wrote that empires tended not to last beyond three generations. The founders of the first-generation are rough men united by hardship, grit and group solidarity, a concept he called asabiyyah. The next generation preserves the achievements of…

Should demanding the establishment of an Environmental Criminal Court be considered a step too far, then it might be necessary to review this stance based on the facts, which prove that environmental crimes are expanding more rapidly than other types of organized crimes, and are generating profits…

The most popular depression drugs taken by millions don’t work by fixing an “imbalance of the brain’s neurotransmitters,” as many drug advertisements claim or imply. That’s because depression isn’t caused by a chemical imbalance, according to a new analysis published in Molecular Psychiatry…

Walt Disney Co.’s streaming strategy appears to be shifting ever so subtly away from subscriber growth toward profits, dealing another blow to customers who have become accustomed to low-price, ad-free viewing. While Wall Street showed its delight with the 14.4 million new Disney+ subscribers…

In Donald Trump’s quest to sustain his dominance over the Republican Party, his claim to have been robbed of victory in 2020 has been a crucial talisman, lending him powers denied to previous defeated presidential candidates. By insisting that he was cheated out of victory, Trump fashioned himself…

It has been a good week on the inflation front. First we had a flat month for the Consumer Price Index — zero inflation in July. Then we saw an actual decline in the Producer Price Index. Naturally, there is a lot of pushback against the good news. I’ve been seeing many warnings against…

Imagine living the life of every human being who has ever existed — in order of birth. Your first life begins about 300,000 years ago in Africa. After living that life and dying, you travel back in time to be reincarnated as the second-ever person, born slightly later than the first, then the…

Since announcing that his parliamentary bloc would resign, the leader of the Sadr Movement, Muqtada al-Sadr, has been playing tug of war with his rivals in the Coordination Framework. The latter were recently deprived of the constitutional legitimacy they had obtained in the courts, not through…