The budget Obama will present to Congress next week will likely begin what the Pentagon is billing as $78 billion in cuts to its budget over five years. In fact these are cuts to their plans for expansion, i.e., slowing a proposed increase is being defined as a cut.
The nascent American sushi trend brings into relief aspects of Japan-US relations that are seldom articulated in the context of discourse about food – in particular the continued symbolic dominance of the US in Japanese eyes; and it also is emblematic of how Japan engages aspects of globalisation, in this case fetishising a mundane product that has become something new in its reimported form.
The breadth and depth of the spreading protests, the helplessness of the U.S.-backed governments to stop them, and the rapidly diminishing ability of the United States to protect its long-time clients, are resulting in a level of revolutionary fervor not visible in the Middle East in a generation.
Can Obama change Africa policy as Big Oil and other powerful U.S. companies remain a serious challenge to peace and stability on the continent?
Heretofore coexisting peacefully, the two are now juxtaposed.
Even though Washington claims to have counseled Ethiopia not to use military force against Somalia.
Just how strong is Iran’s supposedly fearsome Revolutionary Guard if it’s both fearful of local karate clubs and reliant on them for training and assistance?
Is the WikiLeak founder’s threat to drop the rest of the documents motivated by revenge or concern for WikiLeaks?
With both the potato famine and the current economic crisis, the devastation resulted from conscious policy choices by the powerful.
Dynamite is dangerous stuff. Drop it and you visit the clouds. Misuse it and you might just blow up the neighborhood. This is why Benjamin Dangl’s title for his book on Latin America’s leftish surge is so apt. Social movements can be explosive.