NICOSIA “FORTY YEARS AGO I was supplying Stinger missiles to these guys, to help them fight the Soviets. Then, they were freedom loving patriots. After 9/11 they were mad dogs only good for putting down and so for the past twenty years I’ve been helping to hunt them to the ends of the earth. Now,…

TEHERAN SO WHO WAS in on the downfall of Bashar Al Assad? Well, neither the Russians nor the Iranians came to his help. For the Iranians, his departure means their use of Syria to supply their proxies, Hezbollah, in Lebanon is pretty much gone. One nil to Israel. Hezbollah will remain immobilized for the moment.…

KYIV AS BASHAR AL ASSAD and his family buy winter clothing in Moscow, news from those surrounding current Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy suggests that a small band of Ukrainians played a part in the overthrow of the Syrian tyrant. “There’s been a Ukrainian community in Syria for decades,” insisted a close confidante of the Ukrainian…

DAMASCUS “THIS HAD TO have been arranged. It looks an awful lot like Afghanistan. It’s fun for Western intelligence in the short term. It’s a sign of Russian and Iranian weakness. I don’t know what season they’re going to label it. Arab revolutions are always seasonal, it seems. But in the longer term, there an…

DAMASCUS “IT LOOKS LIKE ANOTHER GRUBBY COUP masquerading as a rebellion. People around him obviously wanted him to go. And there was no Russia or Iran to help him. They’re busy. So now Syria is in the hands of freedom-loving Islamic fundamentalists. Yippee!” Mike Viper-Aynus, CIA Agent, gun runner, counter-terrorist whistle-blower and one-time lead tenor…

DUBLIN A LITTLE UNDERSTOOD by-product of the Good Friday Agreement in 1998 was a secret protocol that said Atlantic storms which hit the Emerald Isle would be designated all-Ireland weather events. This was later extended to the Irish Sea when the recent Brexit Agreement left Northern Ireland inside the European Union’s economic regime with a…

DUBLIN A SMALL PIECE of grit is beginning to upset the previous state of harmony that existed between Irish Government parties Fianna Fail and Fine Gael: how long will each party’s leader be Taoiseach in any new administration given the disparity in seats won by the former allies. “Fianna Fail won 48 seats, to Fine…

MELBOURNE UNABLE TO EMULATE Argentina any more, because that South American state appears to have woken up to the shambolic policies it has been pursuing for decades, the Australian state of Victoria has been advised, instead, to follow the path of another South American disaster, Venezuela, if it is to continue its own economic decline,…

LOS ANGELES CALIFORNIANS RUNNING from a potential tsunami following a magnitude 7 earthquake, are being warned that the emergency is not a movie. “Californians are so used to movies about natural disasters that every time a warning is issued, the first thing they think of is another catastrophe movie being filmed,” says Pedro Hercules, an…

KYIV LONG FEARFUL OF what a Donald Trump presidency would mean for their chances of victory in the war with Russia, Ukrainians are now hoping the MAGA Man will be able to end the war on half-reasonable terms for them. “They’re hanging on now, on all fronts,” says Ulrich Hasselbruiser, a human rights lawyer from…