Tag: XXVII64

This Mediterranean nation created by French Mandate in 1920 under the Sykes-Picot Agreement of 1916 following the defeat of the Ottoman Empire in WWI has long been a key hotspot for regional tension and conflict, due in large part to a French attempt to carve up the region along ethnic and religious lines. Full-scale sectarian...

The devastating Syrian Civil War has had a large impact on global politics and social issues. It is largely responsible for an influx of refugees in Europe, The war against Syria followed the United States, France, UK, the Arab League and NATO partners overthrow of Muammar Gaddafi’s Libyan government in 2011. The CIA then sent...

Following the Islamic Revolution of 1979, the US and later the EU imposed a series of sanctions on Iran, most targeting its energy sector. In addition, more than $12 billion in Iranian assets were frozen. By 2012, international sanctions resulted in Iran’s rial reaching a record low against the US dollar and losing 80 percent...

The Kim dynasty has ruled North Korea since 1948. This hereditary cult of personality survived the Korean War which left much of the North decimated. The US dropped 635,000 tons of bombs and 32,557 tons of napalm on the Korean peninsula, more than during the entire Pacific campaign against the Japanese during World War II....

This South American nation on the Caribbean is currently mired in an economic collapse, due in part to economic failures compounded by economic sanctions. Venezuela has the largest oil reserves in the world, but due to sanctions imposed on its energy sector and a drop in crude oil prices it is now a failed state...

Fidel Castro’s Cuba has been in the crosshairs of US regime change efforts since the Cuban Revolution in 1958. After the US-supported failed Bay of Pigs military operation in 1959, the CIA partnered with the Mafia, who had a dominant presence in Havana, to assassinate Castro. The plots were revealed in the mid-1970s by the...

The Central American nation of Nicaragua is the second poorest country in Latin America, followed by Haiti. Forty-three percent  of the population live in rural areas and 68 percent survive on a little over $1 per day. 46.2 percent of the population lives below the poverty line, according to the Borgen Project. Nicaragua underwent a...

Over the next two decades, the need for petroleum-based motor fuels – now half or more of the oil industry’s market – will shrink faster than the Antarctic’s ice sheet. The oil industry has acknowledged this looming reality but, as a whole isn’t terribly concerned. But why not? There’s a lot for oil producers to...

Many of the world’s top scientists see nuclear fusion as the clean, affordable, nearly inexhaustible future source of energy which has the best chance of neutralizing the looming devastation of climate change. “If any research project ever met the definition of high-risk, high-reward, this would be the one,” says Yet-Ming Chiang, Professor of Science and...

Alzheimer’s disease kills more people in the U.S. than breast cancer and prostate cancer combined. It’s now the number one killer in England and Wales. There’s a new case in the world every three seconds. And while there are no treatments that can reverse or even stop its progression, recent research has shown that certain...