Bottom Line Up Front:
Global arms sales are booming, with a spike caused by a years-long increase in spending from countries in the MENA region.
Countries exporting arms cite the link between deterrence and stability to justify these sales, while often downplaying the role these weapons play in helping autocrats oppress their populations and often prolong wars and insurgencies.
Bottom Line Up Front:
A serious military escalation is underway in Libya as General Khalifa Haftar and his forces move to take Tripoli.
The battle is now unifying a range of violent non-state actors with the recognized interim government against Haftar, who is receiving significant external state support.
Since taking office in 2013, German Defense Minister Ursula von der Leyen has done little to alleviate the problems in the military. The best-known projects during her tenure were kindergartens for the soldiers' families; the procurement of flat screen television sets and mini-fridges for the barracks; the announcement of efforts to make the German army "more attractive for gay, lesbian and transgender people"; buying uniforms for pregnant soldiers, and making battle tanks suitable for pregnant soldiers. As worthwhile as these efforts may be, they do little to address the core problems.
"Apparently the readiness of the Bundeswehr is so bad that the public should not be allowed to know about it." — Tobias Lindner, a Greens Party member, serving on the budget and defense committees.Francis Boyle, Professor of International Law at the University of Illinois pre-recorded this interview for the tenth Unity4J Vigil which took place on 30 December 2018.
The Counter Extremism Project (CEP) today called on members of the U.S. House Committee on the Judiciary to use their Tuesday hearing on hate crimes and white nationalism to hold the tech industry accountable for its failure to permanently remove extremist and terrorist content in disregard for public safety and security, particularly in the wake of the New Zealand shootings. Ahead of Facebook and Google’s testimony, CEP is releasing a list of questions with the aim of holding tech companies accountable for their inaction regarding extremist content online.
Following Mark Zuckerberg’s Op-Ed in Support of Regulation, Facebook Must Cease all Related Lobbying Work
Last weekend, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg called for governments and regulators to become involved in censoring harmful content online. However, Mr. Zuckerberg’s call was intentionally heavy on idealism and rhetoric, and light on specifics. Once more, the company’s PR strategy is carefully calibrated to give the public very little understanding of how Mr. Zuckerberg plans to support his words with action.
20 years have passed since NATO bombed Yugoslavia for 78 days. The air campaign with at least 900 bombing sorties again announced imperialist power – destroy everything to loot. It was an act of aggression against Yugoslavia, deny the country’s sovereignty and integrity, and violently carve away Kosovo for creating an imperialist enclave.
The expression “academic prostitution” appears abusive. It either conveys an apparently arbitrary disrespect to certain academics by comparing them to prostitutes, or conversely appears to equate sexual prostitution, – an honorable, if hazardous, occupation – with intellectual prostitution, a definitely dishonorable one.
French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Angela Merkel have signed a new Franco-German friendship treaty aimed at reinvigorating the European Union, which has been buffeted by the European debt crisis, mass migration and Brexit — as well as innumerable conflicting interests and priorities among its 28 member states.
