We Russians love a good conspiracy theory, so here’s one: the failed August coup against Gorbachev by KGB and Communist party hardliners was actually organized by his rival Boris Yeltsin. Think about it: 1. The plotters arrested Gorbachev all the way in the Crimea, but did nothing to prevent Yeltsin, second on their hit list […]
Earlier this month, France’s former prime minister Michel Rocard, now French Ambassador for the Arctic and Antarctic, toured the Arctic aboard the Canadian icebreaker Amundsen. Rocard did not have high praise for his host’s capacities up north. He stated, “I have the impression that Canada has given up on the competition to attract a large […]
Whenever someone launches “a war on X”, it usually means two things. 1: that there are compelling reasons for X to exist and 2: that the powers that be are unwilling to confront those reasons. It is also likely to fail miserably. Just look at the War on Drugs. Or the War on Terror. So […]
Zimbabwe’s Prime Minister, Morgan Tsvangirai, has accused the Zimbabwe military of attacking civilians in politically motivated attacks. Few outside observers doubt that the accusation is plausible. One of the country’s leading military figures, General Solomon Mujuru, died in a fire on his farm in Beatrice on Monday evening. Mujuru, the husband of Zimbabwe’s Vice-President Joice […]
Barely a week after the Senate rejected former Justice Minister Bernard Honorat Gousse, President Michel Martelly’s second designated Prime Minister, an unsightly, distasteful aspect of Haitian history charged to the headlines and revealed the real incurable disease decaying the country’s progress. As political stagnation strangled the starved nation, some legislators dove head first into race […]
Tokyo Governor Shintaro Ishihara accused Prime Minister Naoto Kan, along with his cabinet, of being “not Japanese” for not visiting the controversial Yasukuni Shrine on Monday to honor Japan’s war dead. Kan and his cabinet visited a different, non-controversial shrine instead. Ishihara went on to comment on Japan’s current political turmoil, saying: “The Japanese race […]
Israel’s periphery has rarely had a large voice in Israeli politics. Jerusalem and Tel Aviv make the noise; those in the north and the south typically just keep their heads down and try and go about their business. But today, a hundred thousand people throughout Israel’s periphery marched in solidarity with the current protests that […]
One of the jobs of Sasha, the werewolf FSB officer In Victor Pelevin’s postmodern fantasy novel, involved communicating with the Earth and persuade it to keep providing oil for the Russian elite. To do this, he utters the following prayer: (Quote courtesy of Serguei Oushakine) In real life, it looks like the elite is getting […]
Much of the commentary about India’s elimination of the Boeing and Lockheed Martin bids from its hotly-contested, highly-lucrative Medium Multirole Combat Aircraft (MMRCA) competition has focused on its meaning for U.S.-India relations. The air force is the largest beneficiary of the country’s burgeoning military budget and a number of foreign companies were looking to snap […]
Scarcely a month ago, market analysts were calling for Latin America’s central banks to hike interest rates. But on the heels of weak US quarterly GDP numbers and signs that the EU debt crisis may envelop Spain and Italy, market analysts are now forecasting lending rate cuts for Latin America’s two largest economies. The yield […]
More than 50 members of Japan’s conservative opposition party, the Liberal Democratic Party, including leader Sadakazu Tanigaki and former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, visited Yasukuni Shrine Monday. The August 15 visit marks the 66th anniversary of Japan’s surrender in World War II, and by coincidence is the beginning of the Obon, a Buddhist festival that […]
The U.S., Canada, and Russia wrapped up the second-annual Exercise Vigilant Eagle on August 9. The five-day military exercise tested the countries’ response capabilities in the event of terrorists hijacking a commercial plane flying from Anchorage to Tokyo over the Bering Sea. Last year’s exercise was the first live-fly exercise between Russia and the U.S. […]
This past week, Umar Patek, the Jemaah Islamiyah militant responsible for assembling the explosives used in the 2002 bombings in Bali, was extradited to Indonesia after being captured in Pakistan in late March. Patek is also believed to have been behind the attacks on Christian churches in cities across Indonesia on Christmas Eve, 2000. His […]
A Japanese TV show that aired Tuesday advocated imitating Adolf Hitler to become an influential speaker. In a new low, even for Japanese TV, the show, “Kyokasho ni nosetai!” (“Let’s put it on the TEXTBOOK!”), looked at how Hitler “brainwashed the populace,” and how these techniques can be “applied to school and the workplace.” Other […]
Like most of the other uprisings going on in the Middle East and North Africa, Israel’s month long protests were started by the youth. One month ago, 26 year-old video-editor from Tel-Aviv, Daphni Leef, was informed that her rent was going to go up. Being a product of the 21st century, she did what any […]