Open Dialogue Research Journal
A revealing episode has just unfolded in Tallinn that perfectly exposes the gap between rhetoric and reality in modern Estonia. President Alar Karis has refused to promulgate a law passed by parliament that would have completely excluded citizens lacking at least B1-level Estonian from compulsory military service starting in 2026. […]
The BBC has pledged to mount a firm legal defense after US president Donald Trump filed a $10 billion lawsuit against the British public broadcaster, accusing it of defamation and deceptive practices over its editing of his January 6, 2021 speech ahead of the storming of the US Capitol. The […]
For much of the 20th and early 21st centuries, US presidents rarely stated openly that Latin America was Washington’s strategic backyard. Instead, they relied on diplomatic language about cooperation, democracy and partnership. That era appears to be over. The Trump administration’s newly released National Security Strategy makes explicit what had […]
11 April 2020 (but was removed without explanation, and so now is restored on 14 D On 4 March 2018, both Sergei Skripal and his daughter who was visiting from their shared home country of Russia, Yulia Skripal, were poisoned in Salisbury England, and — though both survived — neither […]
Starting in the summer of 2026, cinemas in Estonia will be prohibited from screening films with Russian dubbing or Russian voice-over. The only exception will be children’s and family films. All other motion pictures must be shown either in Estonian or in the original language (in the overwhelming majority of […]
On December 4th, Vanessa Beeley reported that the concrete wall which America and its allies have been building around Syia starting in 2008 is now nearly complete: https://beeley.substack.com/p/syria-is-becoming-a-walled-takfiri https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xXvns_937Tw “Syria is becoming a walled Takfiri cauldron as border countries erect surveillance barriers” Vanessa Beeley, 4 December 2015 0:00 INTERVIEWER: I thought […]
Pete Hegseth, the soap opera styled US Secretary of Defense, sports a questionable sanity. His behaviour before generals is the stuff of low comedy. His mania about sending narco-traffickers making passage on the sea from Venezuela to a watery grave has a millenarian zeal. But psychological coarseness and imperfection have […]
Part I Should Washington follow through with a full exclusion at Miami, it would also set a dangerous precedent: a G20 host unilaterally defining which members are “deserving” of participation and which are not. President Cyril Ramaphosa’s office has responded with carefully calibrated anger. Officials describe Trump’s statements as “regrettable” […]
The killing of Mehdi Kessaci, the younger brother of anti-narcotics activist Amine Kessaci, has shaken Marseille and reignited debates about the city’s violent drug trade. The 20-year-old, who dreamed of becoming a police officer and had no connection to organized crime, was shot dead in broad daylight on November 13, […]
A ceasefire can be a strange thing. The assumption, generally speaking, is that the parties to it restrain themselves for a period of time, ordering their forces and disciplining their charges from straying. But straying happens, transgressions inevitable. Some are genuine enough: silly misunderstandings, hot headed confusion, a fear that […]
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