Category: TRENDS IN GEOPOLITICS

As reported in last week’s Trends Journal, a U.S. Air Force Bombardier E-11A jet was either shot down or crashed in Afghanistan. The Pentagon said two American Air Force pilots were the only ones on the plane. The Pentagon said the crash was caused by a mechanical failure. Both the Taliban and Iranian news sources...

The evidence claimed by Washington that Iran-backed Iraqi militia fired rockets last December on an Iraqi military base, which housed U.S. troops and killed an American contractor and wounded several others, may have been false. In response to the attack, the U.S bombed three Iraqi-Shia military sites, killing 25 troops. Following the U.S. strike, hundreds...

The anti-government demonstrations that began last October continue, as eight more protesters were killed this past week. Millions of Iraqi citizens, outraged at entrenched government corruption, a dismal economy, and lack of basic living necessities, have taken to the streets in their fight for a decent life. The Iraqi Human Rights Commission reports that some...

At his State of the Union address last Tuesday, President Donald Trump honoured one of his special guests, Juan Guaidó, the self-anointed President of Venezuela. Since January 2019, Guaidó, backed by the United States, has tried and failed to overthrow the presidency of Nicholas Maduro, who won the election last May, which international observers rated...

On 27 January, a Taliban spokesperson reported that the group had shot down a U.S. military aircraft. Later that day, General David L. Goldfein, the Chief of Staff of the U.S. Air Force, identified the plane as an E-11 military plane, one of the Pentagon’s most advanced communications aircrafts. The crash site, about 70 miles...

In response to the U.S. assassination of General Qasem Soleimani on 3 January, Iran responded with a missile attack at the Ayn al Asad Air Base in Iraq, which housed U.S troops. Following the 8 January missile strike, President Trump boasted that Iran appears “to be standing down… and the American people should be extremely...

Now in its sixth week, millions of Indian protesters continue taking to the streets despite harsh police retaliation and repression by the government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). The key target of the demonstration is the anti-Muslim Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA), which cites religion as a basis for citizenship...

Last Thursday, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo declared that the Chinese Communist Party is “the central threat of our times.” Pompeo’s statement comes in the wake of Washington exerting pressure on European governments to ban the 5G networks of Huawei, China’s most powerful telecommunications company. Recently, the British government permitted Huawei to be among the...

Since 5 December, millions of French union workers and citizens have been protesting President Emmanuel Macron’s plan to revise the popular pension system, creating the largest strikes and protests since 1968. As reported last week, union members are feeling the financial pressure of being off the job for months, and, among them, those from the...

As reported in last week’s Trends Journal, on 19 January, nations including the U.S., Russia, UK, France, China, the United Arab Republic, Turkey, Italy, Egypt, and Algeria met in Berlin in an effort to negotiate a truce in the escalating Libyan civil war. The Government of National Accord (GNA), Libya’s current, interim government headed by...