The Obama administration’s opposition to the alleged Russian arms sale is the result reflects a desire to weaken the Syrian regime’s ability to combat rebels armed by U.S. allies Saudi Arabia and Qatar.
Even though Deutsche Bank helped cause its financial crisis, Spain is bailing it out.
United States-India cooperation continues to move beyond the economic and scientific to the military.
The hopes of Mexico’s president Felipe Calderon to have the European crisis under control before he presides over the G20 Summit have been dashed. Although the immediate threat of an economic meltdown has subsided, the crisis is far from over. Continued uncertainty in Greece and growing crisis in Spain are the most recent problems that have worsened the situation in the euro zone, said the European Commission in its weekly report for the last week of May. As usual, it called for holding the line.
“I’m going to see the European cup having resolved the situation,” claimed Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy on Sunday, after a bailout of the country’s banks worth up to €100 billion was announced. The Spanish team drew, but the Spanish people continue to lose – paying for a crisis that has left them with “not much bread, and terrible circus” (Poco pan y pésimo circo), in the words of a Spanish rap-rock song that sounds more apt today than when it was recorded over 15 years ago.
The definition of insanity is continuing air and drone strikes and expecting the results to be different each time.
The Nazis unintentionally kick-started avant garde film.
I delivered the following remarks at an anti-NATO conference held in Moscow on May 15, 2012. I was the only North American speaker at an all-day conference, having been invited in connection with the appearance into Russian of my book Drugs, Oil, and War. As a former diplomat worried about peace I was happy to attend: as far as I can tell there may be less serious dialogue today between Russian and American intellectuals than there was at the height of the Cold War. Yet the danger of war involving the two leading nuclear powers has hardly disappeared.
Russia’s recent solicitation of ExxonMobil and Norway’s Statoil to develop a field of oil shale in Siberia follows a pattern of President Putin.
In the chorus of condemnation that resounded after the massacre, Russia’s voice stood out for its glaring ambiguity.