JWT Desk

A strategic shift

By Hussain H Zaidi President Donald Trump has pulled the US out of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) on his first day in the White House. If for nothing else, Trump deserves a round of applause for being as good as his word. Compliments aside, the decision taken by the man who presides over the globe’s largest economy and trading nation …

Read More »

The Doomsday Clock just advanced, ‘thanks to Trump’: It’s now just 2½ minutes to ‘midnight.’

By Peter Holley, Abby Ohlheiser and Amy B Wang It’s now 2 ½ minutes to “midnight,” according to the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, which warned Thursday that the end of humanity may be near. The group behind the famed Doomsday Clock announced at a news conference that it was adjusting the countdown to the End of it All by moving …

Read More »

Donald Trump’s Mexico Tantrum

Less than a week into the job, President Trump on Thursday raised the specter of a trade war with America’s third-largest partner, Mexico, as the White House warned that the United States could impose a 20 percent tariff on Mexican imports. This absurd threat, issued as a proposal to cover the cost of a border wall, came just hours after …

Read More »

What was destroyed must be rebuilt

BY Mary Scully Perhaps what is most puzzling about the Donald Trump presidency is why US policymakers – those who really run the country – allowed him to take the election when Hillary Clinton won the popular vote by an indisputable margin. That is not to endorse Clinton’s candidacy as preferable to Trump because her actual policies contradict her populist …

Read More »

How to handle the enabling conditions for extremism and terrorism

Tehran, Dec 30, IRNA – Iran’s Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif has elaborated on the issue of extremism and terrorism contaminating the present world and suggested ways to struggle with the evil phenomenon. In an article published in the Iranian Review of Foreign Affairs, the senior diplomat wrote: ‘Much is being articulated today about the formidable challenge presented to the …

Read More »

Globalisation: beginning of the end?

By Dr Pervez Tahir “A nation without borders is not a nation,” asserted the newly installed President of the United States. Does that bid farewell to globalisation, viewed in simple terms as a world without borders, not in physical terms but in the form of freer movement of goods, services, investment and people? I always thought that with Trump, you …

Read More »

A vision of connectivity

Muhammad Amir Rana PRESIDENT Donald Trump of the US has shaken the geopolitical landscape of the world in such a way that many nations are struggling to adjust. At present, world politics are quite fluid, which has created more space for Chinese President Xi Jinping to materialise his dream of regional connectivity. America’s withdrawal from the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) has …

Read More »

Fata reforms

By Farrukh Saleem Capital suggestion Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif deserves the credit for this one. The Federally Administered Tribal Areas (Fata) constitute an area of 27,224 square kilometres and a population of around four million – roughly three percent of Pakistan’s area and two percent of our population. Former US president Bush described Fata as “one the most dangerous areas …

Read More »

The politics of Fata-KPK merger

Aasim Zafar Khan In its report published in August 2016, the Fata Reforms Committee (FRC) recommended that the tribal regions be integrated into the province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KPK) over a transition period of five years. This time is to be used to prepare the tribal regions for integration and to accomplish what the report calls, important objectives and pre-requisites. …

Read More »