Uncertain refuge in #Calais
Peter Blodau drew and recorded the inhabitants of the Calais #XXXLIEN1LIENXXX migrant camp as parts of it were being demolished.
▻http://mondediplo.com/2016/05/13calais
#dessin #asile #migrations #réfugiés #campement #BD
Why Moscow championed the creation of #Israel
▻http://mondediplo.com/2016/02/11sovietisrael
Growing more animated, #Weizmann continued: “You won’t get very far with a programme like that here. Here there are big and complex problems. It’s true that the Palestinian Arabs are the kind of guinea pigs the administrator is used to, but the Jews reduce him to despair. They are dissatisfied with everything, they ask questions, they demand answers — and sometimes these answers are not easily supplied. The administrator begins to get angry and to see the Jews as a nuisance. But the main thing is that the administrator constantly feels that the Jew is looking at him and thinking to himself: ‘Are you intelligent? But maybe I’m twice as intelligent as you.’ This turns the administrator against the Jews for good, and he begins to praise the Arabs. Things are quite different with them: they don’t want anything and don’t bother anyone.”
Germany: time for soul searching, by Nils Röper
▻http://mondediplo.com/blogs/germany-time-for-soul-searching
“America, you’ve got it better, [...] your heart is not troubled, in lively pursuits, by useless old remembrance and empty disputes.” These words by Goethe in 1827 could hardly be more untimely. Yet, when it comes to the main talking point on both sides of the Atlantic — immigration — Goethe’s wistful envy must capture Angela Merkel’s current thinking all too well. The world’s most powerful woman is struggling as the migration crisis lays bare Germany’s national identity problem.
The country has come to terms with its past and is praised internationally for this: many polls have #Germany as the world’s most popular country. Today’s Germans have grown comfortable, proudly waving flags when their national soccer team is playing. EU politics in recent years are a testimony to the country’s political emancipation from the sins of the past century. [#st]
▻http://zinc.mondediplo.net/messages/13376 via Le Monde diplomatique
For one indivisible French republic, by Rabah Ghezali
▻http://mondediplo.com/blogs/for-one-indivisible-french-republic
What we saw on Friday 13 November was pure evil made manifest. Right now, words are not enough to describe the horror France feels. Nothing prepared us for this, not even the January attacks. If terrorism is said to be the weapon of the weak, the Friday attacks were the use of weapon against the weak and innocent, at very symbolic places.
France loves intellectual debates. But the discussions between those who argue that radical and violent extremists hate us for our modernity, and those who argue that they hate us for our policies seem, right now, superfluous. The answer is obviously yes to both. There is absolutely no political justification for the mass crime they committed against us. With ISIS (or Daesh), absolute violence and the most absurd sectarianism prevail over everything with an eschatological view of the world as sole justification. They aim at getting closer to end of the world by attacking Paris, as a European city and capital of France. [#st]
▻http://zinc.mondediplo.net/messages/12726 via Le Monde diplomatique
US and Russia: time for reconciliation, by John Pedler
▻http://mondediplo.com/blogs/us-and-russia-time-for-reconciliation
In an article published in Le Monde diplomatique’s English blog on 2 July, I suggested that Presidents Barack Obama and Vladimir Putin had mutual interests in the Middle East, and elsewhere, which were drawing them together. The rift over Ukraine might well be overcome by diplomacy, provided Obama could divorce the resurgent neoconservatives in Defence, State and CIA, with their ambition to bring about a Unipolar world, and provided Putin listened more often to his foreign affairs advisers and less to his security chiefs and the old KGB ‘Silovki’ that he brought with him when he first became president in 2000. [#st]
▻http://zinc.mondediplo.net/messages/12710 via Le Monde diplomatique
This is a dumb war, by Serge Halimi
▻http://mondediplo.com/2015/12/01dumbwar
A little-known US senator named Barack Obama said in 2002: “I don’t oppose all wars. [...] What I am opposed to is a dumb war. What I am opposed to is a rash war. [...] A war based not on reason but on passion.” Americans were angry after 9/11 and President George Bush Jr chose to channel their anger not against Saudi Arabia (most of the Al-Qaida terrorists involved came from there), but against Iraq, which the US invaded six months later. The media wanted the war and most Democratic senators, including Hillary Clinton, favoured it too. But the invasion of Iraq created the chaos that produced so-called Islamic State (#ISIS). [#st]
▻http://zinc.mondediplo.net/messages/12387 via Le Monde diplomatique
Is this really our conflict ?, by Pierre Conesa
▻http://mondediplo.com/2015/12/03conflicts
There isn’t one war, the West versus Isis. Not even after last month’s terrorist attacks in Paris. There are layers of Middle Eastern conflicts, all linked to international intervention, of which the most intractable are heightened by the Sunni-Shia divide. [#st]
▻http://zinc.mondediplo.net/messages/12388 via Le Monde diplomatique
‘White muslin as fine as woven air’ - How cotton created modern fashion, by Veronica Horwell
▻http://mondediplo.com/2015/12/15fabric
Global trade brought huge quantities of brightly coloured and patterned Indian cottons to Europe in the 17th century. And that’s when fashion as we know it got its start. [#st]
▻http://zinc.mondediplo.net/messages/12389 via Le Monde diplomatique
Time to speak out, by Raouf J. Halaby
▻http://mondediplo.com/blogs/time-to-speak-out
Saudi Arabia has condemned Palestinian poet and artist Ashraf Fayadh to death, charging that, as an apostate, he has insulted Islam, the Custodian of the Two Holy Shrines (the Saudi monarchy) and the Wahhabi sect. Saudi Arabia’s Wahhabi tenets have been stirring fanatical religious fervor from as far away as Bangladesh, across North and central Africa, and into central Asia and the Caucasus. [#st]
▻http://zinc.mondediplo.net/messages/12227 via Le Monde diplomatique
What the Russo-Turkish incident could mean for Russia, by Andreas Umland
▻http://mondediplo.com/blogs/what-the-russo-turkish-incident-could-mean-for
The immediate fall-out of Turkey’s shooting of a Russian fighter jet may ultimately remain limited. Perhaps, neither Moscow nor Ankara will substantively modify policies towards each other. An ad hoc anti-ISIS coalition that includes both Russia and Turkey could still materialize. However, the indirect repercussions of this brief conflict may still be noteworthy in view of the event’s symbolic and geopolitical significance. The incident (by itself small) has happened at a time of other foreign challenges to Russia’s rulers. It could result in deeper problems for the Kremlin than we can currently see. In one way or another, it will impact both the coherence of Putin’s regime and the effectiveness of Moscow’s foreign policies. [#st]
▻http://zinc.mondediplo.net/messages/12228 via Le Monde diplomatique
Troubles in Kurdish paradise, by Matthew Schweitzer
▻http://mondediplo.com/blogs/troubles-in-kurdish-paradise
On 13 November Kurdish Peshmerga and Yazidi militia liberated the Iraqi city of #Sinjar. The operation ended 15 months of ISIS domination over the strategic point along Highway 47 between jihadi-controlled Mosul and the group’s de facto capital in Raqqa. It opened the possibility for advance into ISIS territory in northern Iraq — and as some analysts have argued, perhaps even to Mosul. [#st]
▻http://zinc.mondediplo.net/messages/12016 via Le Monde diplomatique
Altiero Spinelli and his European dream, by Peter Fieldman
▻http://mondediplo.com/blogs/altiero-spinelli-and-his-european-dream
The European Union faces its gravest crisis since the common market came into existence at the Treaty of Rome in 1957. Individual states dissatisfied with the technocrats in Brussels are reasserting their right to determine their own policies and laws while many of Europe’s regions are seeking more autonomy or even independence. Concern over the influence of Islam and its radical factions, and massive immigration caused by poverty and military conflicts in Africa and Asia, has led to the rise of populist political parties across the continent, bringing the fear of a return to rightwing extremism.
Instead of a European utopia, we face the break-up of the EU and the end of the dream, which began on a tiny island off the Italian coast in 1941. [#st]
▻http://zinc.mondediplo.net/messages/9687 via Le Monde diplomatique
Climate change: two funds, same money, by Deganit Perez
▻http://mondediplo.com/blogs/climate-change-two-funds-same-money?var_mode=calcul
The United Nations has managed to raise $10 billion to address climate change; that should make it possible to help the developing world reduce its impact and adapt to new environmental conditions.
But the U.N. pot - known as the Green Climate Fund - is now facing competition from a similar fund at the World Bank. The Climate Investment Fund was only meant to act as an interim trustee, administering money earmarked to combat climate change while the U.N.’s fund got underway. [#st]
▻http://zinc.mondediplo.net/messages/7653 via Le Monde diplomatique
Who is my Neighbour ?, by Raouf J. Halaby
▻http://mondediplo.com/blogs/who-is-my-neighbour
While the sordid refugee drama, a tragedy of epic proportions, was unfolding in the Levant and Europe, Americans spent their Labor Day weekend water skiing, picnicking and camping at resorts, national parks, beaches and lakes, watching sports events, and driving their gas-guzzling SUVs (thanks to $2 per gallon petrol). For a backdrop to this celebration of the good life, Americans were treated to a stream of holier-than-thou, made-for-telly sermons on moral behavior. To the best of my knowledge, there’s not been a single American minister, priest, rabbi or imam who delivered a significant sermon on the unfolding refugee crisis in Europe. Meanwhile, American politicians delivered hate-laced speeches appealing to xenophobia. Like a truant criminal, immigration was personified and became the primary whipping boy. Donald Trump and his cohorts insist that a wall must be built on America’s border, a “permanent wall” so high it would hermetically seal America’s borders to keep the riff raff Latinos and Muslim terrorist types out. [#st]
▻http://zinc.mondediplo.net/messages/7392 via Le Monde diplomatique
Is Trump the American Berlusconi?, by Carlo Invernizzi Accetti and Francesco Ronchi
▻http://mondediplo.com/blogs/is-trump-the-american-berlusconi
For a long time Italy’s Silvio Berlusconi appeared as an impenetrable phenomenon to foreign observers. He was routinely dismissed as an exotic anomaly tied to the idiosyncrasies of Italian political culture.
Today, he might not seem so unfamiliar. There are striking analogies between Italy’s former prime minister and the current front-runner in the Republican presidential nominee race — and not just that both are flamboyant billionaires and former entertainers running for office on anti-establishment platforms.
Although Berlusconi’s political fortunes now appear to be on the wane, looking back at reasons for his erstwhile success might shed light on the current fascination with Donald Trump’s US presidential bid. [#st]
▻http://zinc.mondediplo.net/messages/7105 via Le Monde diplomatique
And when Abbas goes?, by Nadia Hijab and Alaa Tartir
▻http://mondediplo.com/blogs/and-when-abbas-goes
The Palestinian National Council (PNC) is expected to meet this month in its first session since 2009 to accept the resignation of Mahmoud Abbas as chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), along with more than half the Executive Committee’s 18 members. The PNC does of course have the option of rejecting some or all of the resignations, and in any case Abbas still wears several hats: he remains head of state, President of the Palestinian Authority, commander-in-chief, and head of the Fatah political party. Moreover, all those who resign are free to stand again. [#st]
▻http://zinc.mondediplo.net/messages/6941 via Le Monde diplomatique
Editorial. #Katrina, une tempête politique
Le 29 août 2005, l’ouragan Katrina frappe La Nouvelle-Orléans. Un déluge d’eau, des morts par centaines, 1 million de sans-abri, des quartiers ravagés. Mais alors que les Etats-Unis connaissent l’une des plus importantes catastrophes naturelles de leur histoire, leur président est aux abonnés absents. George W. Bush se repose dans son ranch texan, des vacances qu’il finit par abréger deux jours plus tard pour rentrer à Washington. A bord d’Air Force One, le président américain survole La Nouvelle-Orléans et prend conscience de l’ampleur des dégâts. Mais il est déjà trop tard : en Louisiane et dans tout le pays, la colère monte face à la légèreté du président et l’impéritie de son administration. L’Amérique de Bush a failli.
C’est encore ne présenter que la version politiquement correcte que de parler de la légèreté de Bush.
“Congressman Mike Pence, a leader of the powerful Republican Study Group which helped draft Bush’s reconstruction agenda, emphasised that Republicans would turn the rubble into a capitalist utopia: “We want to turn the Gulf Coast into a magnet for free enterprise. The last thing we want is a federal city where New Orleans once was” (20).
Symptomatically, the Army Corps in New Orleans is now led by the official who formerly oversaw contracts in Iraq (21). The Lower Ninth Ward may never exist again, but already the barroom and strip-joint owners in the French Quarter are relishing the fat days ahead, as the Halliburton workers, Blackwater mercenaries, and Bechtel engineers leave their federal paychecks behind on Bourbon Street. As they say in Cajun, — and no doubt now in the White House too — “laissez les bons temps rouler!””
The predators of New Orleans
►https://mondediplo.com/2005/10/02katrina
Rainbow of misunderstanding, by Heidi Morrison
▻http://mondediplo.com/blogs/rainbow-of-misunderstanding
The US Supreme Court’s recent decision on marriage equality led to celebrations around the world. A strong, loud message of support came from Palestinian artist Khaled Jarrar, who painted large rainbow stripes on the Israeli separation wall at the Qalandiya checkpoint. He titled the work Through the Spectrum, intending the rainbow — an icon of freedom, love and humanity — to juxtapose the oppression represented by the wall. Graffiti art, including works by Banksy, cover the 700-km wall that has turned the West Bank into an open-air prison. [#st]
▻http://zinc.mondediplo.net/messages/4669 via Le Monde diplomatique
Chemicals don’t discriminate, by Ross Eventon
▻http://mondediplo.com/blogs/chemicals-don-t-discriminate
For almost four decades now the planes have been departing Colombian airstrips with a single purpose. The objective in sight, the pilot dips in low. The chemical payload is released. The tank emptied, the mission is complete. The plane turns back for base.
Over time the target has changed: first it was marihuana, then coca leaves, later opium poppies. The weapon too has evolved, settling eventually on the glysophate-based Roundup Ultra, manufactured by the Monsanto corporation. The operators have changed too: once just local Colombian forces, today there are US pilots flying US-made planes spraying a US-made product in fulfilment of a multi-million dollar contract granted by the US government to a US corporation. [#st]
▻http://zinc.mondediplo.net/messages/4670 via Le Monde diplomatique
Little to celebrate in South Sudan, by by Antony Loewenstein
▻http://mondediplo.com/blogs/little-to-celebrate-in-south-sudan
The UN Security Council recently imposed new sanctions on #South_Sudan including travel bans on six South Sudanese citizens. Samantha Power, US ambassador to the UN, praised the move saying: “The Security Council took strong action in support of a peaceful end to the conflict in South Sudan by sanctioning six South Sudanese individuals for fuelling the ongoing conflict and contributing to the devastating humanitarian crisis in their country.” [#st]
▻http://zinc.mondediplo.net/messages/4619 via Le Monde diplomatique