How Ukraine war is shrinking democracy in Mozambique as liquified gas becomes Europe’s obsession
With outside attention focused on violent extremism and gas exports, Mozambique’s democratic backsliding is proceeding apace. In his first three years after becoming president in 2015, Filipe Nyusi’s governance led Mozambique to fall in the Economist Intelligence Unit’s Democracy Index from a hybrid regime to an authoritarian one. A hybrid...
After Russian-made missile hit Poland, world is now on red alert for Third World War
Nato has convened an emergency summit after a “Russian-made” missile possibly fired by Ukraine crashed in Poland killing two in a “serious escalation” of the war in Ukraine. The world nervously awaited last night after US intelligence initially reported the weapon had been fired by the Russians – an act...
Paris Agreement doesn’t compel armies to report carbon emissions, now fuelled by Russian war in Ukraine
When the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) did approve the US and European intervention in Libya in 2011, it was for the protection of civilians from the security forces of that country’s autocrat, Muammar Gadhafi. That campaign, however, quickly turned into one aimed at toppling his government by assisting the...
Fighting on wrong planet: Response to Ukraine war is the standard by which we’re judging – things don’t look good
Washington’s vaunted “rules-based international order” has undergone a stress test following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and here’s the news so far: it hasn’t held up well. In fact, the disparate reactions to Vladimir Putin’s war have only highlighted stark global divisions, which reflect the unequal distribution of wealth and power....
FTX cryptocurrency heist: World’s crypto tracers are tracking closely where last week’s loot ends up
Cryptocurrency has always offered a strange mix of temptations and challenges for anyone trying to steal it. As digital cash, held in multibillion-dollar sums on hackable, internet-connected networks, it presents a lucrative target. But once it’s stolen, the blockchains that almost every cryptocurrency is built on make it possible to...
How, why Black voters in Georgia faced waves of disinformation and misinformation in US midterm polls
Monday morning, the team at A-B Partners, a Washington DC political-communications firm that works with progressive groups, gathered on Zoom. They had less than 24 hours before the Election Day polls opened for a series of contests around the country that Democrats, at least, were billing as a last chance...
US midterms: Voters back changes to the Constitution to prohibit involuntary labour and slavery
Terrancé Akins worked the entire seven years that he was incarcerated in the Hardeman Correctional Facility, a private prison contracted to imprison people in Tennessee. “You couldn’t have a job,” he says. “We cooked. We cleaned. We washed the clothes. We taught the classes. The whole operation of the facility...
Russian cyberespionage: Instead of choosing stealthy espionage or disruptive attacks they become embedded
In 2018, Russia’s hacking agency, GRU, infected more than half a million routers worldwide with malware known as VPNFilter and they similarly attempted to create a botnet of hacked firewall devices that was discovered just ahead of Russia’s Ukraine invasion in February. But Mandiant analysts argue that only now are...
America’s addiction to war: To convert war into something sacred means fashioning a deceitful myth
Complexities involving alternatives to Washington’s war-making urges are, of course, not part of the national conversation on Veterans Day. Instead, we are promised that war and this country’s warriors will somehow redeem us as a nation. The unimaginable losses to families, communities, infrastructure and culture in the lands where such...
How US exploits religion to bless violence that hides wars’ hideous destructiveness with sacred sheen
Dear Veterans, I’m a civilian who, like many Americans, has strong ties to the US Armed Forces. I never considered enlisting, but my father, uncles, cousins, and nephews did. As a child I baked cookies to send with letters to my cousin Steven who was serving in Vietnam. My family...
