Новости за 30.11.2015

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Business Mogul, reality TV star, and presidential candidate, Donald Trump recently mocked Serge Kovaleski, a New York Times investigative reporter with a disability, at a rally in South Carolina. This contemptuous reference to Kovaleski’s physical disability was morally odious and painful to observe, but not to comprehend, at least not politically. Trump is a hate-monger, More

Istanbul, Turkey. Turkey is once more in crisis. A leading pro-Kurdish lawyer has been killed. The streets fill once more with protestors. Tahir Elci, Chairman of the Diyarbakir Bar Association and a respected human rights lawyer, was killed on Saturday in Diyarbakir, southeastern Turkey. “We don’t want weapons, clashes and military operations in the birthplace More

There is no such thing as "international terrorism". To declare war on "international terrorism" is nonsense. Politicians who do so are either fools or cynics, and probably both. Terrorism is a weapon. Like cannon. We would laugh at somebody who declares war on "international artillery". A cannon belongs to an army, and serves the aims of that army. The cannon of one side fire against the cannon of the other. More

Not since Hitler ordered General Walther Wenck to send his non-existent 12th Army to rescue him from the Red Army in Berlin has a European leader believed in military fantasies as PR Dave Cameron did last week. Telling the House of Commons about the 70,000 “moderate” fighters deployed in Syria was not just lying in the sense that Tony Blair lied – because Blair persuaded himself to believe in his own dishonesty – but something approaching burlesque. It was whimsy – ridiculous, comic, grotesque, ludicrous. Читать дальше...

American readers will be familiar with the enduring notion that the media has a liberal bias. Sensible ones will know that this notion is absurd, or at least requires a rather loose working definition of the word “liberal”. There isn’t quite the same feeling about the media in Britain, at least not taken as a More

The tangled web of political alignments in the Middle East appears to have obscured possible connections between Israel and ISIS, so opposite in religious belief systems yet sharing a basic geopolitical framework of realpolitik in identifying their respective enemies. The adage of the enemy of my enemy is my friend, though not historically perfect, may More

David Cameron’s plan for joining the war in Syria is a worrying document, full of wishful thinking about the political and military situation on the ground. It is a recipe for repeating past failures in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya, by misjudging the strength of potential enemies and allies alike. Mr Cameron presents a picture of More

Economically speaking, in today’s world of nations-without-borders an extraordinarily potent Transnational Capitalist Class, with no allegiance to individual nation-states, determines the fate of society at large. However, in order to keep their “house in order,” these transnational capitalists may want to consider supporting quasi-socialist presidential candidate Bernie Sanders, aka: “The Bern.” He could help bail More

In the past two years, the way the climate movement talks about itself has changed dramatically. Seemingly overnight, there are no more ‘climate activists’, and everyone is a ‘Climate Justice’ campaigner. Mainstream environmental groups issued statements of solidarity with Ferguson and Baltimore and the blogosphere is filled with articles patiently explaining how global warming connects More

In a dramatic segment on CBS News’ 60 Minutes titled “The Last Prisoner of the Cold War,” former United States Agency for International Development (USAID) subcontractor Alan Gross tells of horrifying experiences in captivity: “They threatened to hang me, they threatened to pull out my fingernails, they said I’d never see the light of day.” More

A deafening firecracker set off by a gathering of men at the head of a funeral procession. Stray dogs flinch and onlookers cower. Shutters are hastily pulled down. The raucous entourage makes its way along the street in the Triplicane area of Chennai (Madras). Cows scatter, dust swirls and the afternoon humidity makes for uncomfortable More

On November 10, newly-elected Prime Minister Justin Trudeau met in Ottawa with the leadership council of the Canadian Labour Congress, the federation of trade unions in English-speaking Canada. Amazingly, this was the first meeting of a Canadian prime minister with a national labour body since 1958. The event was very cordial, according to a report More

France is not alien to the notion of emergency powers. The French revolutionary state was very much an ongoing child of emergency, one safeguarded by the notorious and suppressing parent known as the Committee of Public Safety. In such swaddling clothes, it was inevitable that concepts of siege and crisis would be woven into the More

Glenn Greenwald has written an op-ed piece for the Los Angeles Times. In this editorial he asserts that American spies are motivated primarily by the desire to thwart terrorist plots. Such that their inability to do so (i.e. the attacks in Paris) coupled with the associated embarrassment motivates a public relations campaign against Ed Snowden. More

This past week it was officially announced that Japan slipped into recession yet again—its 5th since the global crisis of 2008-09. What does this mean—not only for Japan but for emerging market economies from Latin America to Asia; for the economic ‘hard landing’ apparently underway now in China; and even for Europe and the US? More

Interview with “Alexandra”, a Dutch-born member of the FARC guerrilla organization who joined the guerrillas over a decade ago because she was appalled by the conditions she saw in Colombia when she went to do graduate studies there and saw no other way to remedy the situation.  After ten years in the jungle, she was More

World War One was called “the war to end all wars.” Obviously, it didn’t, and nobody made the same mistake characterizing World War Two. We consider those wars American success stories, but what about the rest? Recall that in between the two, we waged war on alcohol, dubbed Prohibition, which resulted in our total surrender. More

Carly Fiorina (the most unhappy woman in America) made her mark Friday night in Colorado when a middle-aged, white-American crackpot killed three people at a Planned Parenthood center, uttering “No more body parts,” as he shot his innocent victims. Quite a manly act. In one of the Republican presidential debates several weeks ago, Fiorina lied More

Millions of Americans believe that war doesn’t work, that war cannot end terrorism because war is terrorism, and that U.S. war-making is breeding a new generation of terrorists around the world. Millions also want the senseless killing to stop and they realize we must begin with ending our own military’s killing sprees. Americans want a More