Kameel Majdali's Road Ahead

The Scottish Independence Referendum was held on September 18, 2014, and the ‘Nays’ won. No doubt, Westminster and 55% of the Scottish electorate heaved a sigh of relief. So did the Queen, Britain’s allies and many banks. The 307 year old union between England and Scotland continues on. The ‘Yes’ campaign made gains in the last days but it was not enough to snatch victory. A barnstorming speech in favour of the Union by former British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, a Scot himself, may have tipped the balance among the undecideds. What is not so well known is that the referendum in Scotland did not just affect this nation and the United Kingdom. It had global implications. Had the referendum passed, the changes would, at a minimum, been uncertain. At a maximum, they could have been massive and destabilsing. The United Kingdom comprises England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland, hence, the appellation: The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. While it co

Reports coming out of Syria and Iraq are harrowing: •   Another journalist is beheaded in a gruesome video, by a man in black; •   Yazidi women are being captured, forced to convert to Islam and marry their fighters; •   Shia Muslims are being lined up and executed en masse, simply because they are the wrong branch of Islam; •   Minorities like the Christians are not faring much better: they have fled by the 10's of 1000's from Mosul & elsewhere. Or they are asked to pay the poll tax called jizya. •   They are imposing such a puritanical form of Islam that they make even the Taliban and al Qaeda look like moderates. No one needs to guess who ‘they’ are. They are the men in black. They wave a black flag. The have blasted into prominence on the world stage in a very short amount of time. They are the men of the Islamic State (IS), also known as ISIS. The men in black have a track record that would be the envy of any terrorist group. After metic