Current Affairs

analysis of world events

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  • Is Lebanon close to having an economy again?

    Lebanon is in a mess, but is it close to getting out of this mess? Lebanon’s economy decelerated by 37 percent between 2018 and 2021, real gross domestic production (GDP) has fallen by 2.6 percent in 2022. But the most pressing question for the Lebanese is whether the economy is starting to build an element…

  • Part two Egypt’s political conversation

    Egypt is opening the door to the political possibility of an open discussion about where the country goes next. The opposition parties who have members in jail are negotiating with the Egyptian government of Abdel Fatah el-Sissi, and among their demands is the release of dissenters. So Egypt’s political opposition are preparing for a national…

  • Is Egypt a basket case?

    Is Egypt the next economic failure in the Middle East, that seems to be the worry among the investors in Egypt. The Egyptian pound has devalued by thirty percent, black market rates are higher and international rates are forty five percent. There have been IMF loans, which should amount to US$6 billion in the past…

  • Turkey’s presidential election

    The elections held in Turkey this month were for the Parliament and Presidency, they demonstrated that with all the problems that Turkey has, there is still powerful support for the AKP. And after twenty years of the AKP being in power there is a recession, monetary policy that has been skewered through eccentric beliefs that have led…

  • The Cold War 2 and the global South

    In an interview with the Hoover Institute, Niall Ferguson argued that Cold War 2 had begun. In the interview he quoted Henry Kissinger, who three years ago argued that the technical arguments that had evolved meant that the West was in foothills of a cold war, but today, because of the war in Ukraine and…

  • BRICS and the war in Ukraine

    On 24th February 2022, Russia invaded Ukraine, yet the world as a whole did not react. The BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa), took a position of non-alignment, they argued that the war in Ukraine was determined by Russia reacting to the West’s encroachment on their territory. India in particular argued that Western hegemony…