RESEARCH AREAS

Tassos Symeonides
(RIEAS Academic Advisor)

Copyright: Research Institute for European and American Studies (www.rieas.gr) Publication date: 18 June 2016

The street murder of British Labour lawmaker Jo Cox by an apparently deranged attacker has thrown the Brexit contest into disarray.

Beset by fear mongering and palpable mutual hostility, both sides, shocked by the crime, have suspended their respective referendum campaigns. Pundits now rush to place bets on whether the tragic death of the mother of two young children could give the upper hand to the "Remain" side; Jo Cox was an ardent pro-EU MP who campaigned briskly in favor of keeping the UK inside the fold. London bookies, the accepted weather-vane of electoral contests, sped to update their prediction in favor of "Remain."... Read more

Tassos Symeonides
(RIEAS Academic Advisor)

Copyright: Research Institute for European and American Studies (www.rieas.gr) Publication date: 25 June 2016

Those familiar with military history would have no difficulty in identifying how the “Remain-ers” lost the historic referendum of June 23, 2016, in a way that was almost predetermined as it was crushingly sweeping by a margin of over one million votes.

First, the “Remain-ers,” uniting forces that are rejected, if not hated, by hundreds of millions around the Western world, drew up a battle plan that assumed the peasants had no backbone for the fight....Read more

Tassos Symeonides
(RIEAS Academic Advisor)

Copyright: Research Institute for European and American Studies (www.rieas.gr) Publication date: 3 July 2016

It is now one week since the “surprising” decision of the British people to take the UK out of the European dis-Union and the wrath, spite, and the heaping of abuse upon the “bigots” and “fascists” who dared defy Brussels and Berlin, is swelling beyond control...Read more

Tassos Symeonides
(RIEAS Academic Advisor)

Copyright: Research Institute for European and American Studies (www.rieas.gr) Publication date: 10 July 2016

History is often encapsulated in a few memorable words uttered by leaders confident they have the world by the horns. The disastrous Iraq war has now gained its own memorable words: “Act now, explain later.” The confident talker of these words was Tony Blair, the British prime minister who had struck a “special relationship” with US President George W. Bush. With a 12-volume special report on how the UK slid into war in Mesopotamia now published, Mr. Blair’s callous advice to his American colleague has claimed its permanent place in history...Read more

Tassos Symeonides
(RIEAS Academic Advisor)

Copyright: Research Institute for European and American Studies (www.rieas.gr) Publication date: 15 July 2016

One apocryphal story claims that when Louis XVI was awakened by his courtiers with the news that Bastille had fallen to a revolutionary mob he chastened the news bearers because they had disturbed his sleep.

In similar fashion, Europe is still very much asleep despite horrors like the latest carnage in Nice perpetrated by the ‘French’-Tunisian Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel, who had several earlier encounters with the law. Media reports said the murderer was a ‘loner’ who had become ‘depressed’ because his wife had left him—avoiding almost obsessively to suggest that the motive for the attack was Islam...Read more

Nickolaos Mavromates
(Security Analyst-Historian)

Copyright: Research Institute for European and American Studies (www.rieas.gr) Publication date: 17 July 2016

Note: The article reflects the opinion of the author and not necessarily the views of the Research Institute for European and American Studies (RIEAS).

“Nations have no permanent friends or allies, they only have permanent interests.” Lord Palmerstone (1784-1865)

President Tayyip Erdoğan's success in putting down the Turkish military Putsch aimed at him and his administration with the help of Dr Hakan Fidan automatically elevates him in the foreseeable future as the new premier of Turkey. Without the support of Chief of the Turkish Intelligence Dr. Hakan Fidan any resistance by Erdoğan to the Coup mutineers actions would had been futile.....Read more