Reflectii

Dan Drezner has a piece in Reason, arguing that the victory of post-neoliberalism is premature.

The claims of a “post-neoliberal” paradigm rest on the belief that there is a tradeoff between resilience and efficiency, between strategic autonomy and globalization. But it seems increasingly clear these values are not mutually inconsistent. The best hope for economic resilience might come not from post-neoliberal policies but from neoliberal ones.

If religion was the opium of the masses in the days of Karl Marx, then today’s drug is the cult of green capitalism. The West has been fooled into thinking that a combination of futuristic green technologies and green growth will save humanity from the climate crisis. As long as we eat our broccoli stalks and refuse plastic bags, we can continue to turn a blind eye to the truth: that the root cause of climate change is capitalism, and that our current way of life will not only lead to ecological collapse, but in doing so exploit the labour and land of the impoverished Global South.

The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) operates
in the Gaza Strip, the West Bank, and East Jerusalem, as well as in Lebanon, Jordan, and Syria. It
reportedly1 provides education to almost 545,000 children in its schools.

In 2023, Spanish authorities arrested 78 people for offenses related to jihadist terrorism, a 66% uptick compared to the previous year.

The figures, compiled and released by the Ministry of Interior, are the highest recorded in nearly two decades. The rising number of jihadist terror-related arrests represents the continuation of an upward trend that began in 2015, the same year Europe witnessed an unprecedented influx of 1.3 million migrants, the vast majority of whom come from Islamic cultures.

The security concerns of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s (NATO) encompass a wide range of challenges of unprecedented magnitude. Since its inception in 1949, NATO has been involved in several military operations in Europe. During the Cold War, it maintained a defensive posture in Europe to deter potential aggression from the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact Countries. This effort included the deployment troops, military exercises, and maintaining combat readiness to respond to a potential conflict.

After the Arab Spring, the African left was left demoralized and disorganized. However, a recent book argues that the revolution continues in quotidian life.

Twelve years have passed since the Arab Spring, and both Egypt and Tunisia are facing a stark economic crisis. Both are currently under the mercy of extremely unfavorable structural adjustment programs imposed by the International Monetary Fund, relying heavily on food imports, mired in debt, and facing historical inflation rates with unprecedented hikes in food prices. This dire economic situation is made all the worse by a relentless escalation of authoritarian measures in both countries. The prevailing atmosphere indicates that the counterrevolution has prevailed and that avenues of emancipatory possibility have shrunk almost to the point of extinction.

“Terrorism is when the United States installs a dictatorial regime somewhere,

relying on bayonets and using terror against his own people.”

Former CIA employee F. Agee.

Intervention in the internal affairs of foreign states became one of the primary directions of US foreign policy immediately after the end of the Second World War. The key instrument in achieving these goals is an agency with virtually unlimited powers, established in accordance with the National Security Act of 1947, called the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).

In the Clash of Civilizations and Remaking of the World Order, Samuel Huntington discusses the revival of Islamic values within the Islamic world and discusses the social and cultural work of Islamic organizations within the Islamic societies. When defining the revival of Islamic values these organizations adopted to do positive social and cultural welfare work, Huntington uses the word “resurgence” and describes the organizations as “fundamentalist” organizations. Much of what Huntington writes, he, in fact highlights the impactful social and cultural welfare work in Islamic societies these organizations delivered; yet the reader in the West is led to see the values upon which the welfare activities were carried out as “resurgence” and “fundamentalist” activities. The deliberate use of these two terms, “resurgence” and “fundamentalist” are misleading for the reader in the West who, to the present date, may not understand that Islamic societies and their existence is primarily directed in accordance with Islamic values.

Can coercive airpower quell a rebellion? Existing literature on the effects of counterinsurgent
violence focuses predominantly on casualties resulting from attacks on civilians. It thus
overlooks the targeting of civilian infrastructure, which is a frequent phenomenon in war. We fill
this gap by examining the targeting of healthcare as one of the most essential infrastructures in
war and peace time. We argue that attacks on medical facilities are distinct from direct violence
against civilians.

Traditional religious divisions regularly fuel conflicts in the Middle East. When it comes to the division of Muslims into Sunnis and Shiites, then not only the Middle East is divided, but also the Islamic world. The Sunni-Shia divide is very dangerous, as history shows again and again.