Can Russia's democrats succeed?
Russians were out on the streets again this weekend, despite the cold. Sine December they have been protesting at what they claim were rigged elections in favour of prime minister Vladimir Putin's United Russia - and therefore Putin's likely return as president (a continuation of power, since he never really went away). But the nascent "white revolution" will end as miserably as earlier Russian democratisation attempts without three things: a broad coalition, pragmatism and collaboration with (...)
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Blog posts
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Exclusive
Iranian aircraft carriers in the Gulf of Mexico
Exclusive: New Iranian Commando Team Operating Near U.S. (Tehran, FNA) The Fars News Agency has confirmed with the Republican Guard's North American Operations Command that a new elite Iranian commando team is operating in the U.S.-Mexican border region. The primary day-to-day mission of the team, known as the Joint Special Operations Gulf of Mexico Task Force, or JSOG-MTF, is to mentor Mexican military units in the border areas in their war with the deadly drug cartels. The task force (...)
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Open page
Speculating on hunger
Financial speculators invested in food futures even before the great crash of 2008, driving up food prices to dangerous levels. This can and must be stoppedThe asphalt road was straight and monotonous. Baobab trees passed one after the other, and the earth was yellow and dusty, despite the early hour. The air in the old black Peugeot was stifling. I was travelling north, towards Senegal's big plantations, with Adama Faye, an agronomist and overseas development adviser to the Swiss embassy, (...)
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2012/02
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Password
France: is the future still nuclear?
Nuclear power will be a key issue in France's presidential election, following last year's explosion at Marcoule and the Fukushima disaster in Japan. But in the world's most nuclear-reliant country, not just safety is at stake"Nuclear Power? No Thanks!" Public reactions to the Fukushima disaster could change the global energy landscape. In India and China there have been violent demonstrations against the building of new nuclear power stations. Germany plans to phase out nuclear power by 2022, (...)
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2012/02
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Password
Online disappointment
Young Tunisian bloggers who promoted and recorded the events of the Arab Spring now find that, without a common enemy, the social media are just a cacophony of divided and conflicting views Internet activists, documenting living conditions and expressing their sense of injustice were important to the Arab Spring. Most were 20-30 year olds from the urban middle class with little experience of activism, who insisted that what they did was apolitical. Repression united them: "When Ben Ali was (...)
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2012/02
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Open access
Live, on the Egyptian street
It's already the conventional view that new social media inspired and aided the Arab Spring, especially the Egyptian revolution. The reality was a little different The world saw the Egyptian revolution happen onscreen. It was broadcast live, in real time, through Twitter and Facebook status updates, a political thriller with millions of actors. The protest banners and placards were addressed to the lenses of the media and through them to the world. Satellite television channels became part (...)
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2012/02
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Open access
Anonymous power
Wikipedia last month joined blackout protests against US anti-piracy moves. Now cyber protestors, safe in their anonymity, are able to gang together briefly in support of specific causes Recent targets of the highly effective "Anonymous" cyberattacks, made in the name of freedom of speech and social justice, include the Belgian website of steel giant ArcelorMittal, hacked in January in protest against the closure of two blast furnaces; the website of the US private intelligence firm Stratfor, (...)
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2012/02
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Password
Senegal falls behind the rest of Africa
Senegal's constitutional court in late January cleared President Wade to stand for a third term in the coming elections. Protests swept the country at this news for, under Wade, a once prosperous economy has dropped behind that of its neighboursAt independence in 1960, Senegal was the richest country in West Africa, in infrastructure and human resources. Over the years, these advantages have dwindled away. Senegal is unable to keep pace with the economic growth the rest of Africa is (...)
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2012/02
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Password
Israel: a mission to disrupt
In testimonies collected and published by the NGO Breaking the Silence, we learn what Israeli soldiers did, and were expected to do, in the West Bank and Gaza in the past decade, to impose the occupation "I'll tell you when I flipped. We were in action in Gaza. We were in a trench and children got closer and threw stones. The orders were that the moment [a Palestinian] can hit you with a stone, he can hit you with a grenade... so I shot him. He was 12, or 15, something like that. I don't think (...)
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2012/02
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Password
The pirate nobody wants
The idea seems good: try pirates where they've been taken after capture. But the trial of a group of Somalis brought in at the conclusion of an army raid was a political showAbdulahi Ahmed Guelleh, 36, was freed on 30 November 2011. Just before midnight the warders at La Santé prison in Paris, where he had been locked up for several months, threw him out. He was frightened, and did not want to leave. He knows very little about France, even though he has spent more than three years there, (...)
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2012/02
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Open access
