By Jan Lundius* Epidemic diseases are not random events that afflict societies capriciously and without warning, on the contrary, every society produces its own specific vulnerabilities. To study them is to understand the importance of a society’s structure, its standard of…
Boaventura de Sousa Santos* 6 April 2020 – Today’s cultural, political and ideological debates are imbued with a strange opacity, the result of their remove from the concrete day-to-day experience of the vast majority of people — ordinary citizens, or la gente de a pie, as…
By Thalif Deen* UNITED NATIONS, Mar 20 2020 (IPS) – The devastating spread of the deadly coronavirus across every continent– with the exception of Antarctica– has triggered a conspiracy theory on social media: what if the virus was really a biological weapon? And more…
By George Friedman* – Geopolitical Futures, The global medical community appears to have devised a strategy for mitigating the coronavirus that depends largely on quarantine, or limiting contact among the infected and potentially infected, thereby limiting the virus’…
By Saber Azam* GENEVA, Mar 16 2020 (IPS) – The fourth and last presidential election in Afghanistan on 28 September 2019 was yet another setback to the democratic process. Not only did it take months…
By Staffan de Mistura* I had the privilege of working under the leadership of Javier Perez de Cuellar when he was the Secretary General. He had some unique qualities which were not very visable during a long period because one of his main qualities was to be a…
The Economist Boris Johnson is busy accumulating power in Number 10 The emperor Nero was reportedly in the habit of dipping dissidents in tar and using them to light his dinner parties. Boris Johnson has not so far shown an inclination to use his ministers as human torches…
By Corey Robin* – New York Review of Books It has been more than two weeks since the Iowa caucuses, and we still don’t know who won. That should give us pause. We don’t know in part because of a combination of technological failing and human error.
By Madeleine Albright and Igor Ivanov (*) – The New York Times Two former diplomats, from Russia and America, call for extending the nuclear arms limitation pact called New START, to make the world more secure. The relationship between Russia and the United States has been mired…
By Amy Goodman – Democracy Now! (*) The Trump administration has expanded its contested travel ban to six additional countries — most of which are African nations. Under the new restrictions, nationals of Nigeria, Eritrea, Myanmar and Kyrgyzstan will no longer be able to obtain…
