By Samata Biswas* KOLKATA. India | 24 February 2025 (IDN) — In January 2022, four members of a family, from the western Indian state of Gujarat, froze to death at the US-Canada border. The couple and their two children had paid a hefty amount to traffickers to be smuggled into the US for what they […]
Italy Under Meloni at A Crossroads: Pragmatism or Populism?
By Valerio Alfonso Bruno* MILAN, Italy | 23 February 2025 (IDN) — Global and European political shifts could push Italy, under Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, towards a more radical stance. Since 2022, her government has combined hardline domestic policies on immigration and justice with a pragmatic foreign approach. But rising instability in Europe and the […]
Life Punishes Those Who Come Too Late
By Marc Saxer* This article was issued by IPS-Journal. BERLIN | 20 February 2025 (IDN) — At the Munich Security Conference, two starkly opposing visions of order collided. Future historians may mark this moment as the definitive end of the US-led liberal world order and the point when the erosion of liberal hegemony within Western […]
To Bomb or Not to Bomb Iran
By Jonathan Power LUND, Sweden | 18 February 2025 (IDN) — The talk is talk. Or will it walk? President Donald Trump has raised the stakes once again, repeating the threats against Iran in his first term. It all goes back many years. Mitt Romney, the US Republican candidate for the presidency, said that on […]
The Upcoming Test Launch of a Nuclear Missile Is All Waste – and Dangerous Folly
By Ryan Black* FORT WAYNE, Indiana, USA | 17 February 2025 (IDN) — If President Trump and Elon Musk want to cut federal waste, they should listen to activists who’ve been targeting the land-based leg of the nuclear triad for decades. At a press conference with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Thursday (12 February), […]
The Need for U.S. Action in the Democratic Republic of Congo
By Kate Hixon* WASHINGTON DC | 16 February 2025 (IDN) — On 18 January, the M23, a Congolese Tutsi-led, Rwandan-backed rebel military group, launched a military operation to expand the territory it had gained over the past three years. The operation violated an August 2024 ceasefire agreement between Rwanda and the DRC established through the […]
Navigating a Low-Carbon Future: Maritime Decarbonisation on the 2025 Global Agenda
By Pascal Lamy and Geneviève Pons* BRUSSELS | 15 February 2025 (IDN) — Ten years ago, at COP21 the Paris Agreement was adopted as a global response to the threat of climate change, aiming at limiting the temperature increase to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels. In the same year, world leaders also committed to thriving the […]
Ukraine War: Despite European Concern, Trump’s Peace Initiative is a Gamechanger
By Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J. S. Davies* NEW YORK | 15 February 2025 (IDN) — As we approach the third anniversary of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, a monumental shift is taking place that might just lead to the end of this calamitous war. This is not a breakthrough on the battlefield, but a […]
Realization Of Trump’s Gaza Plan Will be Crime of the Century
By James E. Jennings* ATLANTA, USA | 14 February 2025 (IDN) — The stark alternatives facing people in Gaza are both equally bad: stay in their little strip of Palestine and die or try to leave and die. It’s like choosing between the devil or the deep blue sea. They face death either way. Even […]
Military Infiltrations Undermine Thailand’s Democratization
By Jan Servaes* BANGKOK, Thailand | 14 February 2025 (IDN) — Since the abolition of the absolute monarchy in 1932, Thailand has alternated between periods of relatively democratic rule and military coups. Officially, there have been 13 successful coups, but the attempted coups, which have been extensively gossiped about in the media, are countless. The […]