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Viewpoint by Yossef Ben-Meir *
MARRAKECH (IDN) – Recently, I had a moment of self-reflection brought about by the passing of someone who made a difference in the trajectory of my life. Years ago, I lived in the home of Omar Himmi Ait Omrar in the village of Amsouzerte in the High Atlas Mountains of Morocco. Sharing stories about those two years (1993-1995) living in Omar's home and what followed, those stories of life, may be meaningful to others.
Viewpoint by Sonali Kolhatkar
This article was produced by Economy for All, a project of the Independent Media Institute. Sonali Kolhatkar is the founder, host and executive producer of “Rising Up With Sonali,” a television and radio show that airs on Free Speech TV and Pacifica stations.
LOS ANGELES (IDN) – The New York Times in late June published an explosive revelation about the longest official U.S. war in modern history. According to high-level sources, Russia had been paying cash bounties to Taliban forces to kill U.S. soldiers.
Viewpoint by Charlotte Munns
Charlotte Munns is a London-based freelance writer who has specialized in English Literature and Middle Eastern Studies at Columbia University, New York
LONDON (IDN) – John Bolton's 'The Room Where It Happened' opens with a bizarre epigraph touting the British triumph over Napoleon in the Battle of Waterloo. To liken Bolton's 'tell-all' memoir of the Trump administration to the actions that destroyed an empire is a stretch, to say the least.
Viewpoint by PS Suryanarayana*
This article first appeared on East Asia Forum on 5 July 2020. You might also like to read a related article: Cultural Wisdom Might Help Resolve India-China Conflict
SINGAPORE (IDN) – Perpetual border tensions between Asia's biggest neighbours turned ominous in the harsh Himalayan terrain of the Galwan Valley in the twilight of June 15, 2020. The agreed de-escalation of a nearly 40-day confrontation was to take place in that valley in the western sector of disputed Sino–Indian boundary.
Viewpoint by Paul W. Franks and Joacim Rocklöv*
LUND | Umeå, Sweden (IDN) – More than half a million people have died from COVID-19 globally. It is a major tragedy, but perhaps not on the scale some initially feared. And there are finally signs that the pandemic is shuddering in places, as if its engine is running out of fuel. This has encouraged many governments to relinquish lockdowns and allow everyday life to restart, albeit gingerly.
Viewpoint by Jonathan Power*
LUND, Sweden (IDN) – One of the founders of Russia's Pussy Riot rock band, Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, was interviewed at length on the BBC this past weekend. She has no time for President Vladimir Putin. When the group played inside the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour she was sent to jail for two years for "religious hatred". She doesn’t seem bitter but she seems damning. She thinks that last week’s referendum on a new constitution was only held to cement Putin in power for another couple of decades. She barely discussed the other articles of the constitution.
Viewpoint by Azu Ishiekwene
The writer is the Managing Director/Editor-In-Chief of The Interview magazine based in Abuja, Nigeria.
ABUJA (IDN) – After three and a half years of his presidency, US President Donald Trump appears to have exhausted all surprises in the bag, except, of course, the next one. And that next one could be the big one: Will Trump leave the White House if he loses the presidency on November 3?
Discussions about it first started in hushed tones and informal offline chats. But as poll after poll predicted a bleak future for Trump, discussions about his reaction to a possible defeat have been forced into the open.
Viewpoint by John Scales Avery*
COPENHAGEN (IDN) – The total human population and economy have imposed excessive weight on the global environment, as discussed in my new book circulated and freely downloadable from http://eacpe.org/app/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/Malthus-Revisited-by-John-Scales-Avery.pdf
Thomas Rpbert Malthus' "Essay on The Principle of Population", the first edition of which was published in 1798, was one of the first systematic studies of the problem of population in relation to resources. Earlier discussions of the problem had been published by Boterro in Italy, Robert Wallace in England, and Benjamin Franklin in America.
Viewpoint by Marshall Auerback and Jan Ritch-Frel
Marshall Auerback is a market analyst and commentator and Jan Ritch-Frel the executive director of the Independent Media Institute. This article was produced by Economy for All, a project of the Independent Media Institute.
NEW YORK (IDN) – Former U.S. Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers has recently conceded: "In general, economic thinking has privileged efficiency over resilience, and it has been insufficiently concerned with the big downsides of efficiency." Policy across the globe is therefore moving in a more overtly nationalistic direction to rectify this shortcoming.
Viewpoint by Nick Engelfried*
BELLINGHAM, Washington (IDN) – As the Trump administration neared the end of its first year in office in 2017, it seemed environmental activists had lost one of the most hard-fought battles in the movement's history. Thanks to a last-minute manoeuvre by Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski, Congressional Republicans succeeded in passing legislation allowing oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR). Some of the worst fears of environmental and Indigenous rights groups for what might happen under the administration appeared to be coming true.
This interactive WHO dashboard/map provides the latest global numbers and numbers by country of COVID-19 cases on a daily Basis.
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