By Brad Wolf / Common Dreams The senseless slaughter of World War I began with the murder of a single man, a Crown Prince of a European empire whose name no one was particularly familiar with at the time. Archduke Franz Ferdinand Carl Ludwig Joseph Maria was the presumptive heir to the Austrian-Hungarian empire in June of 1914.… Read More War for Profit: A Very Short History
by J. BRADFORD DELONG Interpreting politics through the rise of technocracy, morality, and the “web of capital” NB: A thought provoking but to my mind flawed analysis. Our world is run according to the poltical theory of Carl Schmitt, moral principles are subjugated by power; the rule of law replaced by the rule of ideology; and… Read More The Modern World Reconceived
Jonathan Freedland I look at the contrasting journeys taken by Northern Ireland and by Israel in the last 25 years and conclude that one got on the right train and the other missed it – with consequences that get only more tragic. To be sure, not everything in Northern Ireland is rosy. The institutions of self-government remain… Read More Netanyahu is leading a coup against his own country. But the threat is not only to Israel
Adam Tooze Saddam’s attack on Iran in the early 1980s indicated his violent ambition, but as far as Iraq’s economy is concerned it was the invasion of Kuwait in August 1990 and the US-led riposte that delivered the first devastating shock. After a measure of recovery under the more relaxed sanctions regime of the late… Read More Iraq’s economic impasse twenty years after the invasion
Peter Beaumont n 20 March 2003, as bombs and missiles from the US-led coalition rained on Iraqi cities in the opening “shock and awe” campaign against Saddam Hussein, the tectonic plates of the post-Second World War international order shifted permanently. For those of us who covered the run-up to the war, the invasion and the long… Read More The invasion of Iraq was a turning point on to a path that led towards Ukraine
A major shift in global relations has recently transpired. To some in America, it may look like the second coming of the Evil Empire. Too much of the rest of the world, it’s a welcome chance for a renewed multipolar order, where the sovereign desires of nations are respected and new collaborations can be established.… Read More Juan Cole: The Meaning of Historic China-Brokered Deal Between Saudi Arabia and Iran
Stalin presented Orthodox leaders with a proposal: the Soviet state that had destroyed their Church would bring it back In September 1943, as the tide of the Second World War was turning in the Soviet Union’s favour, the Soviet leader Joseph Stalin called a meeting at the Kremlin. Alongside the foreign minister Vyacheslav Molotov and… Read More At the Kremlin in 1943
Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – The Middle East Eye reports that the South African parliament has voted to downgrade the Israeli embassy in Pretoria to liaison status. The resolution was introduced by the tiny center-left National Freedom Party, which has only two seats in parliament. Its passage was assured, however, when the African National Congress supported it.… Read More South Africa downgrades Israeli Embassy over Ongoing Apartheid
Exclusive: papers kept classified for decades reveal India’s first PM acted on advice from most senior general Anisha Dutta India’s first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, was urged by his most senior general to agree to a ceasefire with Pakistan in 1948, the Guardian can reveal after viewing letters on Kashmir that have been kept classified in India… Read More Kashmir letters cast doubt on claims Nehru blundered by agreeing ceasefire
Anisha Dutta India may prevent the declassification of papers from 1947 related to Kashmir as it fears the “sensitive” letters could affect foreign relations, according to internal government documents seen by the Guardian. The letters, known as the Bucher papers, are believed to include political and military arguments for why India’s first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, called… Read More GoI reluctant to declassify ‘sensitive’ 1947 Kashmir papers
