Turkey’s nuclear question: has the Iran war changed the calculus?
The most dangerous lesson of the war with Iran may not be about Iran.
It may be about the bomb.
Would the US and Israel have attacked Iran if Tehran ...
Giving the world economy a dose of bleach
Recently I have been writing about financial matters and the risks associated with rising interest rates in the US. For sure, the phenomenon is not limited to the United States. ...
Cyprus’ ‘garrison state’ has become a governance crisis
Decades of emergency governance, patronage and institutional barriers have weakened civic participation and left Cyprus facing a deepening crisis of political legitimacy.
The collapse of civic participation and institutional authority ...
Earl Spencer’s claims about Charles do not add up
His book raises questions about chronology, memory and motive
Earl Spencer’s Swan Song: Diana, My Sister was published last Tuesday after it was trailed in an interview he gave ...
Cyprus has the climate for abundance. So where is the public fruit?
By Dina-Perla Portnaar
The summer continued to be a parade of hidden defects within my home. A man with a detective device had to be summoned to trace the invisible ...
Cyprus’ competitive electricity market one year on
Cyprus’ competitive electricity market completes its first year of operation on October 1. Technically, it is functioning. Electricity is traded through day-ahead, intraday, forward and balancing arrangements broadly aligned with EU’...
Geopolitics of the Mediterranean in the aftermath of Hormuz
The return of acute geopolitical risk to global energy markets is changing the way energy security is understood. The central question is no longer simply how to deliver energy as ...
The tragic geography of frontline alignment: restraint, denial, and Cypriot security
In an anarchic international system devoid of overarching authority to guarantee collective security, small states situated along the maritime perimeter of a regional power inhabit an inherently perilous universe. Because ...
Marlon Brando was right
In May 1968, weeks after the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., Marlon Brando appeared on NBC’s The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson. Brando – arguably the most influential dramatic actor ...
Space war and other completely unnecessary distractions
When Troy Meink, the chief of the US Space Force, announces for no obvious reason that the United States “now has on-orbit space-control weapons”, people naturally assume that something is ...
World is rethinking strength of US dollar
For decades, international markets treated US government bonds as a zero-risk asset and safe haven during times of crisis. However, the escalating US national debt is causing concern, broadly affecting ...
Market economies are failing society
Democratised market systems in most Western countries, including the diverse economies of the United States and Cyprus, are failing society in that wealth has become increasingly concentrated among the very ...
‘I cannot destroy humanity,’ AI tells the Cyprus Mail
There has been much doomsday talk recently following a claim by AI experts that unless its progress is curtailed there is a 10 per cent possibility it could destroy humanity in ...
From Troy to Trump: the ancient lessons we still refuse to learn
Dolly Parton and Donald Trump are same generation American entertainers. Self-made, a generous philanthropist, Dolly was smart, prolific musically, warmly loved. Trump, born to wealth, a wily taker, a prolific ...
Not AI doom
Somebody was bound to sound the alarm eventually. In this case it was a young British artificial intelligence researcher called Jacob Coxon, who quit his job at the AI company ...
Great Sea Interconnector ties Cyprus to regional volatility
The geopolitical contest for strategic primacy across the Levantine Basin has now converged upon the seabed, centred on the execution of the Great Sea Interconnector.
Conceived as a 1,208-kilometre high-voltage ...
Netanyahu’s expansionist obsessions have become mainstream in Israel
It has been a year since Canada, France and the United Kingdom officially recognised the State of Palestine (under Israeli occupation, final border to be determined). The killings by Israelis ...
Trump’s foreign policy: unconventional methods, traditional goals
What if Donald Trump’s foreign policy is not as chaotic as it looks?
Last year, I argued that beneath the spectacle, contradictions and unpredictability, Trump’s foreign policy had ...
Revisiting Cyprus’ doctrine of necessity
Like an old dog barks now and again to remind himself he is a dog, an old Cypriot scribbler feels the need to write about the Cyprus problem now and ...
Cyprus’ prison crisis: why new capacity can’t wait
By Dina-Perla Portnaar
A society reveals its moral temperature through the order it imposes when the guilty are placed behind bars. Justice doesn’t rise from the ashes of neglected ...
Climate: “No good outcomes”
“El Niño is being supersized before our eyes,” said United Nations Secretary General António Guterres. “The science leaves no room for doubt: the planet is in uncharted waters, ...
Cyprus solar power: where the money really goes
The debate over Cyprus’ high electricity prices has increasingly focused on renewable energy producers and, in particular, whether commercial solar parks are earning excessive returns. This is a legitimate question ...
Skipping tough economic choices now will only make them harder later
Last week I wrote about the possibility of a financial crisis in the United States. Given that the three indicators I identified were grounded in fact rather than speculation, I ...
Global economy is increasingly shaped by geopolitics
Traditionally, economics and political science were regarded as distinct disciplines. Economic analysis was grounded primarily in the benefits of free competition and countries’ comparative advantages in determining patterns of trade, ...