Saudi Gazette/ Opinion/ Editorial

Opinion

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April 20, 2018

The Trump-Kim nuclear talks

It is shameful that many in the US liberal establishment are genuinely hoping that President Donald Trump will fall flat on his face when he actually has face-to-face talks with the North Korean leader Kim Jong-un. They would rejoice at the humiliation of their president, even though if Trump can pull off this audacious piece of summitry and persuade Kim to ditch his nuclear arsenal, the United States and the ...

Theresa May

April 19, 2018

Theresa May’s blunder

The law of unintended consequences has hit home with a vengeance in the UK. The political victim is Prime Minister Theresa May but the real victims are up to half a million people living in Great Britain who came to the country before 1971 from the British Commonwealth, the independent states that emerged from much of the old British Empire.These people fell foul of a get-tough policy on immigration May ...

April 18, 2018

Beware World Cup ticket touts

For football fans who travel to Russia for the World Cup starting this June, heartache may not just come because their teams have lost; they may not have managed to get in to see the match because their tickets are invalid.FIFA, the sport’s world governing body, is currently issuing tickets and insists it is the only authorized seller. Considerable measures have been taken to stop fraud. Each ticket has a ...

April 17, 2018

Cutting emissions at sea

FOR most people, unless they live near a port, seeing an ocean-going vessel is a rarity. Around 90 percent of world trade is carried by merchant vessels which spend the greater part of their time operating far out to sea. But when a ship is close to shore, it is not unusual to watch a plume of black smoke rising from its funnel.The burning of heavy fuel oil by ships’ ...

April 16, 2018

Powell and right-wing populism

IT is a measure of the dramatic changes in the thinking and attitudes of people in the West that some leaders are making huge electoral gains for expressing anti-immigrant views for which British politician Enoch Powell was removed from his party’s shadow cabinet. A brilliant academic and a decorated soldier, Powell was an MP for 37 years, first for the Conservatives and then the Ulster Unionist Party. He also served ...

April 15, 2018

Israel changes tack

When compared to the 34 Palestinian deaths of the past two Fridays, this week’s casualty toll at the Israeli-Gaza border is, though still unacceptable, fortunately much less: one dead and the injury of hundreds more.Although as many as 10,000 Palestinians massed along the dividing fence, this time the deaths were kept to a minimum. Israeli Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman attributed the low body count to “the other side” having understood ...

April 14, 2018

OPCW in high demand

The Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons is traveling an awful lot these days. From Salisbury in the United Kingdom to Douma in Syria, the people of OPCW are racing from west to east in the search for possible chemical weapons that have, if all the reports are true, been used on civilian populations. In attempting to confirm the recent findings of the parties concerned, the organization has had ...

April 13, 2018

The tragic farce in Myanmar

The world is clearly now supposed to believe that the wicked campaign of ethnic cleansing in Myanmar is not the policy of the government of the deeply-tarnished Nobel Peace Laureate Aung San Suu Kyi. A military court has just jailed seven soldiers, including four officers, for the murder of 10 Rohingya Muslims. The killers have each been given 10 years hard labor.The trial has clearly been forced to take place ...

April 12, 2018

The risks of social media

The rapid growth in the use of social media has had a lot to do with the almost effortless way in which friends and family can keep in touch. A big part of its popularity rests on the fact that it costs nothing to use. But there is no such thing as a free lunch. As has become startlingly clear in recent weeks, the hundreds of millions of social media ...

April 11, 2018

The real costs of corruption

There is always a tendency to focus on the financial costs of corruption. Money is syphoned off by greedy individuals who have some power over deals where bribes are either offered or demanded. Generally bribes go to politicians. But payola is not confined to them. At a corporate level, executives may demand kickbacks for choosing a particular supplier.However, there are two other costs of graft, which in their different ways ...