World Wars I and II and the Cold War did not erupt out of the blue. The rise of the US as the world s sole superpower was not just an accident or merely the consequence of the collapse of Soviet Union alone. Nor were the events of 11 September 2001, which marked the end of the American epoch in world history, just a kind of nightmare. All these historically pivotal events were preceded by precursors, indicators and portents that all observers and politicians chose to ignore, whether due to interests vested in the status quo or because no one can dictate the course of fate.

The pyramids still excite the imagination of people all over the world, and generate fans who obsess over them day after day! Many, especially in the USA, believe there are space creatures who came from Mars and built the Pyramids. This is not scientific at all. The theories even feature in a show broadcast and produced by America s History channel, titled “Ancient Aliens.” Many citizens from the US and other countries send me emails (as anyone is able to through my website). They accuse me of blurring all the facts I discover which, in their point of view, show that the Egyptians are not the builders of the pyramids! They mistakenly believe that under the Sphinx are evidences of Atlantis! All these lies raise many false ideas about the pyramids, and the associated real facts and tales.

Some of us are still dealing with the issue of “terrorism targeting Egypt” as if it were in a battle with the targeting of the Copts. The reality tells that the Copts have been targeted more with extremist incitement speech than others, and they have been subjected more to terrorist attacks than other civilian groups in the society. The situation of targeting Copts does not change due to the terrorist attack that targeted a mosque in Rawda village (North Sinai) and killed 310 martyrs, the highest number of martyrs in the history of terrorist operations in Egypt. As the Islamic State did not declare responsibility for this incident as it does for attacks against Copts, it is more likely that those who carried out this operation are stray terrorist elements who came from outside the border.

In these times of so much civil strife, internecine wars, and racial and political intolerance, it is good to remember an episode involving Turkey, Australia, and New Zealand. It shows the power of words to console the grieving, and to bring closure to a painful history. Usually, in April, Turks, as well as people from Australia and New Zealand gather in north western Turkey to render homage to their ancestors, brave young soldiers, who lost their lives on the fields of Çanakkale, in what is known as the Gallipoli Campaign during World War I.

When a language dies, its death is final. The rapid extinction of languages has serious repercussions for human history. It results in the impoverishment of our cultural heritage and the loss of a large amount of information that represents an essential part of humanity s unwritten archives. Any language in its gramma

When the world came to its closest point of nuclear annihilation in October 1962, the leaders of the two superpowers, the US and the former Soviet Union, realised that steps had to be taken to eradicate the threat of igniting a nuclear Armageddon by either of them. Despite averting the threat in 1962 after the 13 days of the Cuban Missiles Crisis which had seen the Russians placing nuclear missiles in Cuba only 40km from American shores, the nuclear arms race did not stop there but continued throughout the 1960s and 1970s until US president Ronald Reagan and his Soviet counterpart Mikhail Gorbachev signed the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF) in 1987 that banned the deployment of intermediate-range ballistic missiles from the European theatre by the US and the former Soviet Union.

The “Trump era” has posed special challenges for Arab Americans not only in foreign and domestic policy, but also in confronting the hostile political culture the president has nurtured. As a result, we ve been busy, especially in this election season; forced to work on many fronts, all at the same time. Not since the 1980s have we seen so many Republican campaigns using anti-Arab or anti-Muslim bigotry against Democratic opponents, with most instances tied to charges that the Democrat has received financial support from questionable sources (from the Arab sounding names on their donors lists); is supported by individuals who are opponents of Israel or supporters of the BDS movement; are themselves linked by family ties to Palestinian terrorism; or are just not sufficiently supportive of Israel or Trump s moving the US Embassy to Jerusalem.

Saudi Arabia is facing an unprecedented crisis where both its international image and reputation are greatly tested. It has found itself in the centre of an international storm with serious implications in terms of the Middle East and a possible regional realignment that would benefit its main competitor Turkey and its archenemy Iran.

The horrific killing of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul in Turkey has sparked an unprecedented wave of condemnation of Saudi Arabia and its security apparatus. The latter has caused a major upheaval in Saudi Arabia s international relations and one that it will take years to rectify. Even with Saudi King Salman announcing measures to investigate the incident on 20 October when Khashoggi was killed, the damage has already been done.

The October 1973 War went down in history as the first Egyptian military victory over the Israeli entity. Its documented events were the product of an Egyptian military undertaking that enthralled the world. The excellence of Egyptian commanders was evidenced at every phase, from preparation for the war to its unconventional and, indeed, unparallelled execution. It is little wonder that it is studied in most international military academies, particularly in light of the element of surprise that caught the enemy off guard and stunned the governments that supported it at the time and continue to do so today.

The Seven Pillars of Egyptian Identity, a book by the late Coptic intellectual Milad Hanna, will be a main reference at the World Youth Forum held in Sharm El-Sheikh from 3 to 6 November. The organisers want to study the main characteristics of Egyptian identity, because of its effective role in many civilisations. The book by Hanna stresses the importance of the unity of society and its “seven pillars”.

After 16 days of denial, Saudi authorities released an official statement that said the Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi had died in the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul in a botched interrogation 2 October. On that fateful day, he went into his country’s consulate to get a certificate to the effect that he was divorced. He needed it to marry his Turkish fiancé, according to news reports. His family back in Saudi Arabia denied that he had a fiancé.

On June 16, 2015, Donald Trump announced his candidacy to the presidency and set the tone of his priorities. The elimination of illegal immigration to the United States, mainly from refugees fleeing from poverty and violence in Mexico and Central America was one. He didn t say at the time that his policies included separating children from their parents, some of whom might never meet again. Immigrants come to the U.S. from Mexico and Central America try to escape abject poverty and food insecurity in their own countries. In Mexico, 2016 data reveal that 52.3% of children over 11 years old live under the poverty line, and 9.7% live in extreme poverty. Among indigenous children, the figures are more startling. Near 80% of them live under the poverty line, and 18.9% show symptoms of chronic malnutrition, a reflection of their unhealthy quality of life.

The term “national security” is often bandied about in different ways and at all levels of society in countries the world over. When we want to focus people s attention on a subject, we call it “a matter of national security,” for example. We might also use the phrase for totally opposite purposes. When we say, “that s a national security issue, and it should not be discussed,” we mean we want to avoid the issue and evade responsibility for it.

Are you a digital citizen? I ask the question of the reader. Have you ever asked yourself what the word digitalisation really means? What is the relationship between digitalising society and development? Why is the state so keen to promote this concept? First, to clarify the concept of digitalisation, this simply means the process of transforming traditional methods into new ones entrusted to electronic systems.

My attention was caught by an article by Ashraf Abdel-Shafi that appeared in Al-Ahram s Friday supplement commemorating the great Arab playwright Tawfik Al-Hakim and urging the establishment of a museum to pay tribute to him. Abdel-Shafi s article, which comes more than 30 years after Al-Hakim s death, compels us to take our hat off to the “alley” in which we live and which, as the great novelist Naguib Mahfouz said, is plagued with forgetfulness.

One of the principles we learned in the study of international relations and which we, in turn, would teach to our students, was the need to distinguish between the essential, crucial issue and the “noise” that is so often created by incidental events, the rhetoric that political leaders use when dealing with domestic political circumstances, or other such phenomena that distract people from the major issues and preoccupy them. For example, at the beginning of this decade, following the outbreak of the so-called Arab Spring and the attendant upheavals that threw regional and international relations into turmoil, there emerged three sources of threat to regional security in the Middle East.

It is not an easy thing to take away someone s innocence and childhood, especially if it is taken from those who cannot defend it because of their weakness and by those who are supposed to be the source of their strength, in other words their parents. Depriving a person of his basic rights is a great injustice, and all the more so when it is committed against a child.

Just three years ago, in September 2015, all United Nations Member States approved the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. The eradication of hunger and all forms of malnutrition (Sustainable Development Goal number 2) was defined by world leaders as a cardinal objective of the Agenda, a sine qua non condition for a safer, fairer and more peaceful world. Paradoxically, global hunger has only grown since then. According to the latest estimates, the number of undernourished people in the world increased in 2017, for the third consecutive year. Last year, 821 million people suffered from hunger (11 percent of the world population - one in nine people on the planet), most of them family and subsistence farmers living in poor rural areas of sub-Saharan Africa and Southeast Asia.

It is to the vibrant cultural scene of cosmopolitan Alexandria, home to a melting pot of nationalities and ethnicities and to the poets, writers, architects, merchants and industrialists who found inspiration and opportunity in this fascinating city, that Egyptian cinema owes its beginnings. By the mid-1920s, Alexandria had become a filmmaking hub, attracting artists and entrepreneurs from all backgrounds. To this day, Alexandria, the city where I grew up and of which I have my fondest memories, remains the city where the magic began.

Some colleagues who recently went to Europe were appalled by what they heard from various officials there. “They still do not understand the true nature of the Muslim Brotherhood. They are still unaware of our predicament,” these colleagues said. I discussed the issue with them, and many preferred an explanation emphasising European bad faith.