In the early 1900s, there were more than 100,000 tigers worldwide, with the greatest number on the Indian sub-continent. In the twenty-first century, one country has overtaken India by having a larger tiger population than any other. The Humane Society of the United States reports that there are between 5000 and 7000 of the iconic big cats in the USA, but fewer than 400 of them are held in officially recognised zoos. (More…)
No one was surprised when Canada lost to Portugal for a seat at the Security Council in October 2010. Rumour had it that it was a direct result of a new pro-Israeli foreign policy being spearheaded by Prime Minister Stephen Harper. We may never know if this is true or not, but it’s undeniable that Canada’s shift towards an increasingly uncritical support for Israel has deeply affected its international standing. (More…)
Following the Syrian Day of Rage, on March 15th, 2011, the city of Daraa quickly became the strongest flashpoint. By March 18th, thousands of protesters were roaring across Daraa, leading to a brutal suppression by security forces. When resistance continued into late April, Assad directed thousands of troops to lay siege of the city. (More…)
Heroes are hard to come by in Europe. Even as the nightmare of two world wars recedes farther into the distance, the sense that they were the product of excessive belief persists. Had there been less passion to mobilize, the reasoning goes, the flames of nationalism would have petered out a lot sooner. But it is proving increasingly difficult to keep the continent bound together with “post-passion.” (More…)
On September 3rd, Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan made a “surprise declaration” – as it is still sometimes referred to – that he would bring his country into the new Eurasian Economic Union (EEU) alongside Belarus, Kazakhstan, and Russia. Of course, it should have been anything but that. (More…)
Fear truly is the mind-killer. It has a way, when intentionally stoked and directed at some enemy, of killing a lot of people as well. In Israel, the bombardment and invasion of Gaza over the summer demonstrates what can happen when a populace is fed a consistent diet of fear, no matter how safe the society is and how meager the threat to them is. (More…)
Benjamin Netanyahu raised some eyebrows when he expressed a desire for an independent Kurdistan in June. Not only was his speech to a Tel Aviv think tank surprising. It also contradicted current American policy of trying to prevent Iraq from splitting apart. Of course, Israeli-Kurdish solidarity isn’t actually new. Israel has maintained military and financial ties with Kurdish separatists since the 1960s. (More…)
The lady in Clacton-on-Sea’s library says she’ll be glad to tell me who she is voting for in the by-election taking place today. “I’m white, I’m English….he’ll help us get out of Europe. Obviously I’m going to vote for Carswell! Who do you vote for?” (More…)
If you live in what Americans’ obnoxiously refer to as the Heartland or those places, as I do, where residents more obnoxiously claim the title despite their geographical and cultural liminality, you have been hearing an awful lot in the past week about how the President has failed to protect his charges. The beheadings were bad enough, but now there’s the Ebola virus to inspire panic. (More…)
It’s old news by now. The Cameron government has joined the Obama administration in its air campaign against the self-declared Islamic State, in Syria and Iraq. In Syria, US-led forces are effectively acting on the side of the Assad regime. The attacks, in turn, have united the affiliates of al-Qaeda with the ISIS forces that they had broken with. (More…)
