February 2013

It is only when it is too late, when all other options have been rejected, that we are asked to choose between bad and worse. Nine days after the 9/11 attacks, President George W Bush was already threatening that “either you are with us or you are with the terrorists.” Two wars followed, first in Afghanistan, then Iraq, with the results we all know. In Mali, we are once again required to decide between two equally hateful alternatives. How can we resign ourselves to armed bands, who spread (...)

Mali is an opportunity to apply the foreign policy lessons of Iraq and Afghanistan and define ‘terrorism’ and ‘stabilisation’. If France fails in this, it will seem that its strategy changes at the whim of each president.

West Africa’s perfect global positioning between South America and Europe, and its endemic corruption, poverty and disorganisation, have made it the new drug hub. And drugs money is used to fund politics.

The ruling Al-Khalifa family of Bahrain has offered hope of democratisation to the nation, but repeatedly failed to deliver, and intensified its dictatorship, certain that it will not be censured internationally.

The ‘clash of civilisations’ idea, particularly its religious aspect, is now the standard way to define national and international struggles, simplifying national and group identities and conflicts and distorting both history and current events.

The Syriza coalition wants Greece’s creditors to treat the country as did the creditors of the financially failing Federal Republic of Germany in 1953, and adjust their demands to Greece’s ability to pay.

The Chinese takeover of two-thirds of the port of Piraeus, which predates the Greek debt crisis, delights the Greek ship owners, and the European Commission. It’s a miserable augury of the future.

The Greeks now clear their plates, burn wood, buy just a litre of petrol to drive to a wedding. The future as it had been conceived has disappeared.

A project run by ExxonMobil to supply China and Japan with liquefied gas for the next 30 years is changing life in Papua New Guinea with wildly inequitable results for local people.

The banking lobby has heavily influenced the French government’s banking reform bill. François Hollande had promised to separate investment and retail banking, but little will change.

The French parliament has begun debating gay marriage. Many countries now offer, or are about to offer, genuine equality and freedom for the LGBT community, though this is not yet universal.

The US calls loudly for ‘Internet freedom’, but it is Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Apple and Amazon that have built up the dotcom services used by people all over the world. Is that now about to change?

Latin American presidents have attempted to regulate by law the content of media owned and controlled by a very few private individuals, and to reduce the concentration of that ownership. The task is not an easy one.

Young middleclass Indian women have educations and jobs, and they, and their male peers, are not prepared to put up with traditional political culture and abusively sexist behaviour, let alone violence and rape.