There are many disturbing signs that the West is creating conditions in the Middle East and Asia that could produce a wider war, most likely a new Cold War, containing, as well, menacing risks of World War III.

Bizarre as it is, this fanatical and reactionary movement is bent on chasing the imperialist West as well as Russia out of Arab lands. From the midst of the millions of Arabs brought to Europe as workers, the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIS) has been able to recruit a few to bring the war home to the West.

There is no question that wars and military threats have replaced diplomacy, negotiations and democratic elections as the principal means of resolving political conflicts. Throughout the present year wars have spread across borders and escalated in intensity.

Hopes for the future are always about the same: courageous people, often under severe duress, refusing to bow to illegitimate authority and persecution, others devoting themselves to support and to combating injustice and violence, young people who sincerely want to change the world.

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is currently in a process of collapse. So says Jeff Halper, an American-born anthropologist, Nobel Peace Prize nominee, co-founder and director of the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions (ICAHD). Speaking in 12 Canadian cities from January 17 to February 13 as part of his fundraising tour, Halper explained the conflict in Israel-Palestine and where it’s headed.

Managing and conducting what are always called merely “operations”, it is impossible to draw any informed conclusions about the relationships between these people, the institutions they represent and the interests vested in those institutions—the progenitors of the war against Vietnam and the wars for the control of land and population that have continued since.

The first war in Vietnam the one fought for credibility, to oppose communism, to defend the American way of life or “freedom”—this was a crusade in the most medieval sense of the word. It was a summons to white folks to punish heretics, to bring salvation to Vietnam by subjecting the entire country to an auto de fé.

The U.S. is not a neutral mediator in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict; it is an active participant and is guilty of the crimes being committed by Israel against Palestinians, most recently, the mass killings and destruction Israel wrought on the Gaza Strip during the summer.

More than three years have passed since protesters took the streets in Syria. What began as a call for democracy, a mass movement to end Bashar al-Assad’s 43 years of family rule, has turned into a foreign-funded proxy war without a foreseeable end.

The great Farley Mowat passed away this week. We bring you his first article for CD, published in 1967 about the Vietnam War. “The American presence in Vietnam and the undeclared war being waged there by the United States constitutes one of the most blatant acts of aggression the world has seen since the destruction of Hitler’s Third Reich,” Farley wrote in this powerful piece.