CHARLIE HEBDO. A month ago, no one had even heard of it here in North America. And now? The magazine is selling millions of copies, many of them States-side. I see that for roughly $16,000 you can buy the first… Read More ›
World
World politics and events.
How Ethnocentrism Blinded the War’s Critics to the People of Iraq
SCANNING THIS WEEK’S renewal of the Bush and Blair trials, I wondered: do I alone notice the toxic ethnocentrism lurking in the belief that the world’s political disasters are the result of, and response to, America’s policies and actions?
Can the World Do Anything for the Girls of Nigeria?
AS I WRITE THIS, the swell of a Western grassroots outcry against the Nigerian outfit, Boko Haram, appears to be forming across social media.
Uganda’s Giant Step Backward
THE DELUSION fueling Uganda’s homophobes is nicely summarized by Douglas Foster, in a Los Angeles Times editorial headlined “Black, gay and indisputably African.”
Ariel Sharon’s Life of Vigorous Inertia
A SETTLEMENT, John Kerry said this week, is better than settlements. Yet for years now, a practical sublation of this withdrawal versus occupation dialectic has been in place, involving the concurrence of ongoing peace talks and settler expansion into the… Read More ›
An Attack on Syria for Whose Benefit?
IN THE YEARS leading up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq, a commonplace indictment of Saddam Hussein was that he was guilty of using chemical weapons against “his own people.” The notion that Iraqis, to say nothing of Kurds or… Read More ›
Taking the Side of Malala Yousafzai
PERHAPS THE MOST remarkable thing about Adnan Rasheed’s defence of the Malala Yousafzai shooting (putting aside the fact it’s a defence) is how predictable and clichéd a performance it is, beginning with its disingenuous preamble “I’m sorry this happened, but… Read More ›
The Egyptian People Are Ready for Democracy: Too Bad About the Politicians
IN A MAY 2013 Ahram Online interview, the US ambassador to Egypt, Anne Patterson, fielded a question about her government’s delicate relationship with the Morsi regime: The fact is [the Freedom and Justice party] ran in a legitimate election and… Read More ›
Edward Snowden shows us that the landscape of surveillance is far greater than we can imagine
TO UNEARTH SOME latent implications of Edward Snowden’s recent act of whistle blowing, and the landscape of surveillance it has brought to the fore, I propose the following thought experiment. You are to imagine a world in which the infrastructure… Read More ›
The Bangladesh Factory Fires Could, and Must, Be Prevented
IT WAS ONLY eight days after the March 25, 1911 Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire, and Rose Schneiderman was in no mood for playing nice. Addressing her (mostly) middle-class audience of Women’s Trade Union League supporters, she said: I would be… Read More ›
North Korea is a crime organization masquerading as government
WITHIN DAYS of the return of Dennis Rodman, the ad-hoc US Secretary for DPRK-American Goodwill, we now have for our consumption James R. Clapper’s “Worldwide Threat Assessment,” presented March 12 to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. In his crisp… Read More ›
The War in Mali
EVEN IF THE contemporary account of al-Umari is greatly exaggerated, the 1324 transit of the Malian emperor Mansa Musa’s vast entourage on a Mecca pilgrimage must have been an unforgettable sight. So rich was this King of Kings said to… Read More ›
Hamas leads Palestinians down the path to further misery
IN THIS LATEST of the Gaza Wars, a little noted symmetry offers insight into developments which doubtless portend the years ahead. The symmetry to which I refer concerns the names attached to the battles of 2008-09 and 2012.
If Greece’s disease doesn’t kill it, Golden Dawn’s cure may
AS THE POLITICAL and economic fortunes of Greece grow more precarious, it becomes harder to separate symptoms of a disease from the side effects of cures. The country’s Finance Minister, Yannis Stournaras, has projected a twenty-five percent contraction of the… Read More ›
The Courage of Malala Yousafzai and the Lessons of Mingora
THERE ARE no words of sufficient force to summarize this week’s attempted murder of fourteen year-old Malala Yousafzai, in the northwest Pakistan city of Mingora. Yet as shocking as this savagery is, there is nothing new about it either: depravity… Read More ›
