February 2014

Freedom of speech is something we only really talk about with reference to statements we condemn. Damage done to this principle may last long after the motive and the rulers who exploited it have been forgotten. In the atmosphere of near-panic immediately after 9/11, only one US senator, Russell Feingold, voted against the Patriot Act with its freedom-destroying raft of measures, which were adopted en bloc by Congress on the pretext of combating terrorism. Thirteen years and one president (...)

It is three years since popular movements in the Arab world made it clear that the future could not be like the past. Despite the horrors, religious infighting and foreign interference, Arabs now see themselves as citizens not subjects, and demand dignity and a proper voice.

The sudden conflict in South Sudan isn’t essentially tribal, but the result of clever economic pressure from Khartoum on South Sudan’s president, who is desperate to hold on to power.

The fight for power in North Korea is between rival reformers with a different vision of the country’s future. Right now, the consumer approach is winning: don’t upset the new middle classes.

To China, possession of the Diaoyu/Senkaku Islands, which Japan also claims, symbolises naval dominance of the East China Sea and free access to the Pacific. Hence the worsening dispute.

Abenomics favours corporations over people, promotes militarised nationalism, and doesn’t begin to deal with the changing demographics or desires of the Japanese. And anyway, it isn’t working.

America’s fastfood outlets are not restaurants but food systems serviced by cheap labour in de-skilled jobs — employees so badly paid that they need state aid and charity. They went on strike in North Carolina last summer.

The EU sends Europeanisation agents across Romania to end subsistence farming and encourage agricultural competition. But those who have turned to self-sufficient farming because of austerity resist the world of the CAP.

Should subsidies between old and new member states be rebalanced? This EU aim is not so simple.

Chaos and corruption and ludicrous expenditure have created an Olympic ski resort complex at and near Russia’s Black Sea coast resort. They may also have wrecked its future.

José Mujica has attempted to change the premises and conditions of the drugs wars through the legalisation of marijuana. Although even the people of Uruguay don’t really back their president’s initial reform, at least it’s a start.

Nobody heeded the neoliberal globalise-your-industry advice like the narco-cartels and their financial supports. The trade is now everywhere, and can’t be stopped or controlled.

The fashionable prescription for insomnia and workplace-induced tension is the artistic siesta, which aims to send its audience to sleep — please bring your own pillow.