Contributing Writers

Aijaz Zaka Syed

Aijaz Zaka Syed is an award-winning South Asian journalist and columnist and former newspaper editor based in the Middle East.  He has written extensively on the Muslim world and South Asian affairs and contributes to Foreign Policy Journal, Arab News, Gulf News, The News International and Al Ahram etc.

Keep up with his work on Facebook and Twitter. Read more articles by Aijaz Zaka Syed.

Ali Ahmed

Ali Ahmed, Ph.D, is an Assistant Professor at the Nelson Mandela Center for Peace and Conflict Resolution at the Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi.

Read more articles by Ali Ahmed.

Ramzy Baroud

Ramzy Baroud is an author and editor of the Palestine Chronicle. His work has been published in many newspapers, journals and anthologies around the world. His is the author of “The Second Palestinian Intifada: A Chronicle of a People’s Struggle” (Pluto Press, London), and his most recent book is, “My Father Was a Freedom Fighter: Gaza’s Untold Story” (Pluto Press, London).

Visit www.palestinechronicle.com. Keep up with his work at www.ramzybaroud.net. Read articles by Ramzy Baroud.

Abolghasem Bayyenat

Abolghasem Bayyenat is an independent political analyst and is currently completing his Ph.D studies in political science at Syracuse University. He covers Iran’s foreign policy developments regularly on his weblog Iran Diplomacy Watch.

Visit www.irandiplomacywatch.com. Read articles by Abolghasem Bayyenat.

William Blum

William Blum left the State Department in 1967, abandoning his aspiration of becoming a Foreign Service Officer, because of his opposition to what the United States was doing in Vietnam. He then became one of the founders and editors of the Washington Free Press. Mr. Blum has been a freelance journalist in the United States, Europe, and South America and was one of the recipients of Project Censored’s awards for “exemplary journalism” in 1999. He is the author of numerous books, including: Freeing the World to Death: essays on the American Empire, Killing Hope: U.S. Military and C.I.A. Interventions Since World War II, and Rogue State: A Guide to the World’s Only Superpower. Mr. Blum writes a free monthly newsletter, the Anti-Empire Report, which you may subscribe to by contacting him at via e-mail.

Visit his website at: www.killinghope.org. Contact him at: bblum@aol.com. Read articles by William Blum.

Dr. K R Bolton

K R Bolton is a Fellow of the Academy of Social and Political Research (http://www.academy-of-social-and-political-research.com), and an assistant editor of the peer reviewed journal Ab Aeterno. Recent publications include: Trotskyism and the anti-family agenda, CKR website, Sociology Dept., Moscow State University; Russia & China: An Approaching Conflict?, The Journal of Social, Political & Economic Studies Vol. 34, No. 2, Summer 2009; Bushido –Lessons for the West, Primordial Traditions, October 2009; Rivalry over water resources as a potential cause of conflict in Asia, The Journal of Social, Political & Economic Studies, Vol. 35 # 1, Spring 2010; Water wars: geopolitical implications, World Affairs (India), Vol. 14, No. 1, Spring 2010.

Contact him at: vindex@clear.net.nz. Read articles by Dr. K R Bolton.

David Calleja

David Calleja graduated with a Bachelor of Social Science and Master of Social Science from RMIT University in his home city of Melbourne, Australia. He has taught English in China, Thailand, South Korea and Cambodia, where he worked for a local NGO, Sorya, based in Tropang Sdok village. In addition he has also volunteered as a kindergarten English teacher, tutor and a football coach to male orphan students in Loi Tailang, Shan State. He has narrated and produced a video biography of Cambodian students learning English entitled I Like My English Grilled.

Contact him at: david_calleja@foreignpolicyjournal.com. Read articles by David Calleja.

Richard Falk

Richard Falk is an international law and international relations scholar who taught at Princeton University for forty years. Since 2002 he has lived in Santa Barbara, California, and taught at the local campus of the University of California in Global and International Studies and since 2005 chaired the Board of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation.

Visit his blog: http://richardfalk.wordpress.com. Read articles by Richard Falk.

Franz-Stefan Gady

Franz-Stefan Gady is a foreign policy associate at the EastWest Institute. A native Austrian, Franz-Stefan has written for the Christian Science Monitor, Fair Observer, American Diplomacy Quarterly, The National Interest, Small Wars Journal, and New Europe. He also blogs for the Huffington Post.

Visit his blog: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/franzstefan-gady. Read articles by Franz-Stefan Gady.

Antonio Graceffo

Antonio Graceffo is the former assistant head of Private Wealth Management for one of the largest private banks in the United States. He is now an adventure and martial arts author, and has lived in Asia for many years, publishing numerous books and several hundred articles in magazines and websites around the world. He has worked as a consultant and writer for shows on the History and Discovery channels and appears on camera in “Digging for the Truth” and “Human Weapon”. Antonio is host of the web TV show, “Martial Arts Odyssey.” He was embedded with the Shan State rebel army in Burma, documenting human rights abuses, and doing a film and print project to raise awareness of the Shan people.

Visit his website at www.speakingadventure.com. Contact him at antonio@speakingadventure.com. Watch his videos on YouTube. Read articles by Antonio Graceffo.

Jeremy R. Hammond

Jeremy R. Hammond is an independent political analyst and editor of Foreign Policy Journal, an online source for news, critical analysis, and opinion commentary on U.S. foreign policy. He was among the recipients of the 2010 Project Censored Awards for outstanding investigative journalism.

Visit his website at www.jeremyrhammond.com. Contact him at jeremy@foreignpolicyjournal.com. Read articles by Jeremy R. Hammond.

Franklin Lamb

Dr. Franklin Lamb is Director of the Sabra Shatila Foundation. He is working with the Palestine Civil Rights Campaign in Lebanon on drafting legislation which, after 62 years, would, if adopted by Lebanon’s Cabinet and Parliament grant the right to work and to own a home to Lebanon’s Palestinian Refugees. One part of the PCRC legislative project is its online Petition which can be viewed and signed here. Franklin Lamb’s book on the Sabra-Shatila Massacre, International Legal Responsibility for the Sabra-Shatila Massacre, now out of print, was published in 1983, following Janet’s death and was dedicated to Janet Lee Stevens. He was a witness before the Israeli Kahan Commission Inquiry, held at Hebrew University in Jerusalem in January 1983.

Contact him at fplamb@sabrashatila.org or fplamb@palestinecivilrightscampaign.org. Read articles by Franklin Lamb.

Donn M. Kurtz II

Donn M. Kurtz II, Ph. D. did his graduate work at Tulane University and taught comparative and international and politics at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette from 1969 until his retirement in 2007. He was Head of the Department of Political Science from 1974-81 and again from 1999-2006. He served as President of the Louisiana Political Science Association twice (1972-73 and 1986-87). His research, primarily on political elites, has appeared in Politics and Policy, Journal of Modern African Studies, International Journal of Comparative Sociology, Social Science Journal, Comparative Education Review, International Journal of Contemporary Sociology and Sociological Perspectives. He is the editor of and a contributor to The American Political Family (1993) and authored Kinship and Politics: The Justices of the United States and Louisiana Supreme Courts (1997). He lives in Grand Coteau, Louisiana and can be contacted at donnkurtz@netscape.net.

Read articles by Donn M. Kurtz II.

Jim Miles

Jim Miles is a Canadian educator and a regular contributor/columnist of opinion pieces and book reviews for The Palestine Chronicle. His original interest in global affairs came from the environmental perspective, with the realization that ultimately it is the corporate-military agenda that determines the human impact on the environment and on human cultures around the globe. Miles’ work has been published globally on a wide range of websites and in print, including among others Znet, Countercurrents, al-Jazeera Cross Cultural Understanding, Atlantic Free Press, Scoop, Axis of Logic, and Foreign Policy Journal.

Read articles by Jim Miles.

Maidhc Ó Cathail

Maidhc Ó Cathail is a writer and educator. Born and raised in Ireland, he has been living in Japan since 1999. In addition to writing a monthly column for the Irish language magazine Beo!, his work has been published by Antiwar.com, Foreign Policy Journal, Khaleej Times, Palestine Chronicle, Tehran Times and many more.

Read articles by Maidhc Ó Cathail.

Reza Pankhurst

Reza Pankhurst is Editor of online political journal New Civilisation (www.newcivilisation.com). His work has been published in academic journals and media outlets, and he is a contributing writer on Foreign Policy Journal. He has a Masters in the History of International Relations and a PhD from the London School of Economics and Political Science. He is a former political prisoner of the previous Mubarak regime in Egypt, having spent 4 years in jail between 2002 and 2006. He resides in UK where he is currently completing work on his forthcoming book. His personal blog can be found at www.rezapankhurst.net  and he can be contacted at rezapankhurst@newcivlisation.com.

Read articles by Reza Pankhurst.

Paul Craig Roberts

Hon. Paul Craig Roberts was educated at the Georgia Institute of Technology, the University of Virginia, the University of California, Berkeley, and Oxford University where he was a member of Merton College. Dr. Roberts has held numerous academic appointments, including Senior Research Fellow, Hoover Institution, Stanford University, and William E. Simon Chair, Center for Strategic and International Studies, Georgetown University. Dr. Roberts served in the Congressional Staff in the House and Senate and was appointed Assistant Secretary of the Treasury by President Ronald Reagan. He was awarded the French Legion of Honor in 1987. Dr. Roberts is author of Alienation and the Soviet Economy and The Supply-Side Revolution. He is coauthor with Matthew Stephenson of Marx’s Theory of Exchange, Alienation, and Crisis. He is coauthor with Karen LaFollette Araujo of Meltdown: Inside the Soviet Economy and The Capitalist Revolution in Latin America. He is coauthor with Lawrence Stratton of The New Color Line and The Tyranny of Good Intentions. His latest book, How The Economy Was Lost, will be published by CounterPunch in October 2009. Dr. Roberts is a columnist for Creators Syndicate in Los Angeles.

Read articles by Paul Craig Roberts.

Yvonne Ridley

British journalist Yvonne Ridley is the European President of the International Muslim Women’s Union as well as being a patron of Cageprisoners.

Read articles by Yvonne Ridley.

Kevin Ryan

Kevin R. Ryan began to investigate the tragedy of September 11th, 2001 through his work as Site Manager for a division of Underwriters Laboratories (UL). He was fired by UL in 2004 for writing to the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), asking about its World Trade Center investigation and UL’s work to ensure the fire resistance of the buildings. He now serves as co-editor of the Journal of 9/11 Studies, and board director at Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth. Ryan has co-authored several books and peer-reviewed scientific articles on the subject.

Visit his website: http://ultruth.wordpress.com. Read articles by Kevin Ryan.

Shahid R. Siddiqi

Shahid R. Siddiqi began his career in the Pakistan Air Force. He later joined the corporate sector with which he remained associated until recently in a senior management position. Alongside, he worked as a broadcaster with Radio Pakistan and remained the Islamabad bureau chief of an English weekly magazine ‘Pakistan & Gulf Economist’. In the U.S. he co-founded the Asian American Republican Club in Maryland in 1994 to encourage the participation of Asian Americans in the mainstream political process.

[Editor's Note: Sadly, Shahid passed away on February 23, 2011. I wish to extend my condolences to his family.]

Read articles by Shahid R. Siddiqi.

Nima Shirazi

Visit his website at: www.wideasleepinamerica.com. Contact him at wideasleepinamerica@gmail.com. Read articles by Nima Shirazi.

Daniel Wagner

Daniel Wagner is the Founder and Managing Director of Country Risk Solutions (CRS), a political and economic risk advisory firm based in Connecticut (USA), and  Senior Advisor to the PRS Group. Prior to founding CRS, Daniel was Senior Vice President of Country Risk at GE Energy Financial Services where he was part of a team investing billions of dollars annually into global energy projects. Daniel was responsible for advising senior management on a variety of country risk-related issues, strategic planning, and portfolio management. He created a Center of Excellence for country risk analysis in GE and led a team that produced a comprehensive automated country risk rating methodology. He began his career underwriting PRI at AIG in New York and subsequently spent five years as Guarantee Officer for the Asia Region at the World Bank Group’s Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency (MIGA) in Washington, D.C. During that time he was responsible for underwriting PRI for projects in a dozen Asian countries. After then serving as Regional Manager for Political Risks for Southeast Asia and Greater China for AIG in Singapore, Daniel then moved to Manila, Philippines where he was Guarantee and Risk Management Advisor, Political Risk Guarantee Specialist, and Senior Guarantees and Syndications Specialist for the ADB’s Office of Cofinancing Operations. Over the course of his career Daniel has also held senior positions in the PRI brokerage business in London, Dallas and Houston. Daniel has published more than 100 articles on risk management and current affairs, is a non-resident scholar at the Institute for Near East and Gulf Military Analysis, and a regular contributor to the Huffington Post and International Risk Management Institute. His editorials have been published in such notable newspapers as the International Herald Tribune and the Wall Street Journal. His book – Political Risk Insurance Guide – was published by IRMI. He holds master’s degrees in International Relations from the University of Chicago and in International Management from the American Graduate School of International Management (Thunderbird) in Phoenix. Daniel received his bachelor’s degree in Political Science from Richmond College in London.

Daniel can be reached at daniel.wagner@countryrisksolutions.com and 1-203-570-1005 (www.countryrisksolutions.com). Read articles by Daniel Wagner.

David Wolfe

David Wolfe is a South Asia Specialist who served as the Chief Government Relations Liaison for the Washington DC based Kashmiri American Council from 2005-2009.  Currently he lives in Brooklyn, NY where his lives with his wife and continues to report on issues regarding South Asian security.

Visit his website: http://internationalrealities.blogspot.com. Read articles by David Wolfe.

Mickey Z.

Until the laws are changed or the power runs out, Mickey Z. can be found on this crazy new website called Facebook. His eleventh book (and third novel), A Darker Shade of Green, can be pre-ordered now.

Visit him on the web at www.mickeyz.net. Read articles by Mickey Z.