*Among the remarkable news and reports I followed up during the holy month of Ramadan, is that the number of shops selling personal weapons in the United States outnumbers grocery stores and famous hamburger shops in the country (!), In fact, the number of personal weapons stores amounted to about 65 thousand, while the number of grocery stores hardly exceeded 38 thousand, which imposed on the US authorities a major internal challenge, not least than facing the challenge of terrorism abroad, especially in light of the adoption of the “Daash” terrorist group of what is known as individual wolves, in the implementation of its operations in various countries around the world. These “wolves” need only a signal, such as that made by the organization recently, and then everyone becomes in the face of the disclosure of sympathizers and “sleepers” among cells and elements that follow the organization!
*An overwhelming anxiety gripped the financial and economic European markets awaiting a referendum on Britain out of the European Union, and warnings heaped of officials, experts and specialists, about the consequences of this potential move, so much so that some people are talking about a “tsunami” coming in the global capital markets. The President of the European Parliament warned against “the end of Western civilization” if Britain gets out of the European Union. In any case, the 24th of June (the day of the referendum), will not be an ordinary day for the European political and economic circles. There is a wave of concern for the fate of the European Union and a fear of huge economic losses to the British economy due to the voters’ approval to get out of the mantle of the Union, not to mention the decisive battle that awaits “the ECB” to preserve the European single currency in the face of pressure from speculators. In general, this referendum will direct the compass of politics and economics in the whole world during the coming years and decades, either toward conglomerates and mergers or towards pushing for a different direction, which means the decline of the fusion wave which prevailed in the last two decades.
*There is almost a complete stumble in all the political settlement paths to the crises in the Middle East, a fact worthy of study and contemplation to look at the causes and motives leading to understand what is behind the phenomenon because this stumbling represents one of the entrances to the continuation of chaos and unrest in many countries in the region. The common denominator between all the parties to the negotiations is the absence of policy and its tools, and this has a real relation to the fact that most of the negotiating parties are only representatives of external forces that have strategic interests in the areas of crisis, and that mostly, these parties do not represent peoples who are suffering and groaning and paying for adventurism.
*The Syrian file is witnessing accelerated paradoxes. President Bashar al-Assad moved from concern for his future in power to a sense of increased security with the support of the Russian air raids and the Iranian militias, and then prospects for a political settlement have become relatively blocked, because politics work when the parties acknowledge the difficulty of the military solution, but what is happening now is that there is a belief on the part of the Syrian regime that the balance of military power is in its favor, therefore there is no need to seriously negotiate with opposition groups, and if the latter had gone to Geneva under the weight of Russian air strikes and after modifying the balance of power on the ground, the situation has changed now, and the other side has no longer any strong motivation to make negotiation concessions, which constantly threatens that the conflict will continue in Syria, and we have no choice but to pray for Syria and its people.
*The talk about the division of Iraq has become very frequent in the Middle East, as the remarks made recently by Massoud Barzani, president of Kurdistan region, on the need to divide the country into three states, Sunni, Shiite and Kurdish, have raised considerable debate among Iraqis, while Michael Hayden, the former CIA director repeated his statements that confirms the disappearance of several Arab countries of the Middle East roadmap soon! He did not stop at that this time, but stressed that two Arab countries at least would disappear, and he pointed to the states of Syria and Iraq as two “previous” states, as he put it, pointing out that the state of regional instability will continue unchanged during the coming years, and God, there is no might nor power except in Allah!
A poll conducted by “Reuters” after the Orlando massacre showed that the running for office for the next presidential elections by the US Democratic Party candidate, Hillary Clinton, has declined in the face of Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump after the massacre and the statements of Trump, which considered Democrats policies to be responsible for the deadliest shooting incident in the modern history of the US. The results of the survey, which ended on the fourteenth of June, have shown that Clinton surpasses Trump with 11.6 points compared to the previous difference of 13 points in the days before the terrorist crime. This means that those who are in a hurry to hail for Trump’s victory in the US presidential elections in November need to understand the dynamics of this process and examine the figures carefully before gasping behind wishful analysis.
I have only a sense of empathy towards those who still look positively to the traditional press in the Arab region. A recent report by “Reuters” Foundation revealed that social networking sites have become the primary source of news for young people, according to what is stated in the British newspaper The Guardian recently, as a study of 26 countries concluded that 50% of Internet users get news through social networking sites before any other source, while others said that these sites are their main source of news. Smart phones as a source of news also jumped from 37% to about 53% within just two years, but the good news for reading lovers is that only 24% of the survey sample preferred getting their news via videos, while the largest proportion felt that reading is still the fastest medium to get the news.
