April 2014

Tunisia has taken the most hopeful direction after its Arab Spring. But none of the entrants in the forthcoming election seems to have the valid and drastic economic plans that will be needed to fulfil the aspirations of Tunisians.The Arab revolts in Egypt, Syria and Libya have not turned out happily, which leaves Tunisia as the last source of potential optimism in the region. None of the social aspirations that sparked its December 2010 uprising have been fulfilled. But after a long (...)

The conventional readings of the Ukraine crisis, and of the Russian response to it under Putin don’t accurately reflect the situation in Ukraine, Russia or Crimea. And they’re no help for the future.

Ukraine’s president has fled and there is an interim government, but the power brokers who will make or break the country’s future include many of the same oligarchs who backed the last regime. And the corruption won’t stop.

The EU has never seriously thought out a coherent defence-linked foreign policy: its external identity is based on free trade and the market economy (with US backing). And it’s been caught out on this in Ukraine.

Narendra Modi is attempting to become prime minister of India in this year’s election. But what has worked in his home state of Gujarat may appeal much less across the whole country.

The youthful anti-government protests in Venezuela aren’t the spontaneous uprisings they’ve been portrayed as being.

A radical group believes that the way to a majority vote for Scotland’s independence is to persuade people in deeply deprived areas to end their allegiance to the Labour Party. It isn’t easy.

The ailing president Abdelaziz Bouteflika is managing his fourth re-election campaign through proxies and trying to control Algeria in the same old ways. But it isn’t the same country any more.

The young men of Algeria’s South fantasise about earning regular wages in the oil industry. They live with their parents, get by on handouts and a few days’ casual labour, drink coffee and complain.

The huge new methane terminal near Dunkirk was to help solve local unemployment but, thanks to an EU directive, 60% of the jobs have gone to foreign workers who may be denied French terms and conditions of labour.

New agreements being discussed in Brussels might mutualise EU member states’ loan debts — but at the price of curtailing their social welfare provisions.

The jobs aren’t there any more. Anyone lucky enough to find work must accept whatever rate of pay they’re offered. There’s nowhere, no way, to fight.

Last year’s Cambodian general elections just about put the former Communist Party back in power, although the opposition challenges its legitimacy. The government follows the Chinese model, enriching itself and its friends at the expense of the people.

The Mexican Muralists painted massive, public, political statements in pigment on wet plaster — the very opposite of portable, purchasable, private trophies of art.