On Monday many African Government offices, businesses and banks grind to a halt in order to commemorate Africa Day. In schools up and down the continent, little children are taught that heroic Africans liberated the continent from racist white colonial regimes and various events and parades are held to celebrate the occasion. Colonialism in Africa … Continue reading
“The dollar is our currency, but it’s your problem.” This is what US Treasury Secretary John Connally said to his counterparts in the Rome G-10 meeting in November, 1971, shortly after the Nixon administration ended the dollar’s convertibility into gold and shifted the international monetary system into a global floating exchange rate regime. The world … Continue reading
Will the Minsk Agreement hold? Probably not. The West, the US in particular, has too much at stake in desiring its failure, and if Obama-Nuland style gamesmanship/adventurism is up to the mark, expect not-so-subtle sabotage and the resumption of hostilities. By Norman Pollack This is madness like not before. Neither Kennan nor Kissinger would have … Continue reading
Nearly a decade ago, a keen observer of Honduras produced a damning analysis of the country. “In a very real sense, Honduras is a captured state,” he began. “Elite manipulation of the public sector, particularly the weak legal system, has turned it into a tool to protect the powerful,” and “voters choose mainly between the two … Continue reading
For thirteen years through legal cases attempting to show Saudi financial support of al Qaeda, and thus bearing at least some responsibility for 9/11, the US court system, the Executive, and in fact the whole apparatus of the government, have played hard-ball, resisting evidence even though the issue directly affects the causation of a seminal … Continue reading
On Wednesday the European Central Bank (ECB) announced that it would no longer accept Greek government bonds and government-guaranteed debt as collateral. By Mark Weisbrot Although Greece would still be eligible for other, emergency lending from the Central Bank, the immediate effect of the announcement was to raise Greek borrowing costs and squeeze its banks, and to … Continue reading
By Halya Mokrushyna On January 27 2015, while visiting an exhibition “Auschwitz concentration camp – Ukrainian dimension” in the National Museum of History of the Great Patriotic War located in Kyiv, Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseniy Yatseniuk stated that the Nazi concentration camp was liberated by Ukrainian soldiers from Zhytomyr and Lviv regions. These soldiers were … Continue reading
By Garikai Chengu Under the late King Abdullah, Saudi Arabia played a role most treacherous in world affairs: its oil fueled U.S. militarism and its money funded Islamic extremists. Saudi Arabia is perhaps the greatest inherent contradiction of U.S. foreign policy. Prior to the 20th century, the value of money was tied to gold. When … Continue reading
By Michael Welton The mood of our uneasy times is incredibly bellicose, dark, apocalyptic and vengeful. The “war on terror” is like a virus that infects everything it touches. And it does seem to touch everything, from our popular television shows, to getting across borders, travelling overseas somewhere. You can’t read the Sunday paper without feeling … Continue reading
By Benjamin Dangl A caravan of buses, security vehicles, indigenous leaders and backpackers with Che T-shirts wove their way down a muddy road through farmers’ fields last Wednesday to the pre-colonial city of Tiwanaku, where Bolivian President Evo Morales was ceremonially inaugurated into his third term in office. Folk music played throughout the morning as … Continue reading