The South African Civil Society Information Service
A nonprofit news agency promoting social justice. Seeking answers to the question:
How do we make democracy work for the poor?
A nonprofit news agency promoting social justice. Seeking answers to the question:
How do we make democracy work for the poor?
Pepe Escobar -
A specter haunts the fast-aging “New American Century”: the possibility of a future Beijing-Moscow-Berlin strategic trade and commercial alliance. Let’s call it the BMB.
Its likelihood is being seriously discussed at the highest levels in Beijing and Moscow, and viewed with interest in Berlin, New Delhi, and Tehran. But don’t mention it inside Washington’s Beltway or at NATO headquarters in Brussels. There, the star of the show today and tomorrow is the new...
Alexander O'Riordan -
This weekend Crimea’s hastily organised referendum concluded as expected with an ethnically Russian majority population voting overwhelmingly to merge with Russia. The Western response of sanctions and punitive measures against Russia for its shamefacedly opportunistic occupation will prove in the long run to be largely bluster. There is no doubt the Kremlin is anxious to counter a growing Western-leaning politics in the region and to annex a strategically important part of Ukraine....
On Sunday the people of Crimea voted in a referendum with over 95% in favour of leaving Ukraine and joining Russia. President Obama has said that the U.S. will never accept the results of this referendum and European Union officials have more or less said the same thing.
On Monday morning, sanctions were announced by Europe and the U.S. various officials around Russian President Vladimir Putin and in the Ukraine. These will include travel bans and some attacks on their assets in the...
Norman Solomon -
The frontrunner to become the next president of the United States is playing an old and dangerous political game -- comparing a foreign leader to Adolf Hitler.
At a private charity event on Tuesday, in comments preserved on audio, Hillary Clinton talked about actions by Russia’s President Vladimir Putin in the Crimea. “Now if this sounds familiar, it’s what Hitler did back in the ’30s,” she said.
The next day, Clinton gave the inflammatory story more oxygen...
John Feffer -
The Cold War is history. For those growing up today, the Cold War is as distant in time as World War II was for those came of age in the 1970s. In both cases, empires collapsed and maps were redrawn. Repugnant ideologies were laid bare and then laid to rest, though patches of nostalgia persist.
Surely the Cold War has been consigned to the textbooks as irrevocably as the Battle of the Bulge. The Berlin Wall is in pieces. The U.S. president speaks of the abolition of nuclear weapons. The...
Following the overthrow of the government of Ukraine, Russia occupied (some say invaded) strategic locations in Crimea on February, 28. Nevertheless, Russia has had a military presence in Crimea (a province of the Ukraine) for more than a decade. On Thursday this week, the Crimean parliament voted to secede from Ukraine and join the Russian Federation. The issue will be put to a public referendum in the next 10 days. Meanwhile President Vladimir Putin has indicated that Russia has no...
