With repetition, truth accretes. For example, repeat that Iran must be stopped from acquiring nuclear weapons, and everyone believes that Iran is trying to acquire nuclear weapons. The problem is, the facts don’t support so certain a conclusion, any more than they prove Iran’s innocence. (More…)
Once upon a time, political posters read like essays. Words always outnumbered images. You could spend half an hour reading them, if not longer. Particularly in Europe, where the practice of wheatpasting a manifesto denouncing, for example, capitalism, at bank entrances, can be as common as posting screeds on blogs. It just depends on the city. (More…)
According to Vittorio Longhi, Nepal sees “on average” two guest workers return in coffins to Kathmandu’s Tribhuvan International Airport every day. More than 7,000 Nepalese guest workers are known to have died on the job in the Middle East between 2003 and 2013 – over 700 in 2013 alone so far, according to The Kathmandu Post – from a combination of workplace injuries, natural causes, and traffic accidents. (More…)
It finally happened. The US government has shut itself down for the first time since 1996. If you’re concerned about what this means, I recommend the article that Brad Plumer has written in The Washington Post, which discusses the shutdown’s effect in full. Personally, I’m most concerned with the long-term effects that this particular brand of politics has on American democracy. (More…)
There are times when the exuberant heterogeneity of the bumper stickers I see on many American vehicles seems to realign itself into a synchronized statement. Take this vehicle I found myself inching along behind the other day. I photographed it for the anti-establishment message dating back to the 2012 Presidential campaign, in which both Barack Obama and Mitt Romney are deemed to provoke disgust. (More…)
Phoolan Devi was shot dead on July 25th, 2001. The gunmen fled the scene, and within two days, a man named Sher Singh Rana surrendered himself to police, saying that the murder was an act of revenge. For many Indians, the following years of police incompetence, and Rana’s own short-lived escape from Tihar Jail in 2004, were to be expected. (More…)
Just when I thought I was out…they pull me back in!” Those were the words of Michael Corleone, an old man who had spent his life reluctantly running a Mafia family, in the third installment of The Godfather trilogy. This was a movie, of course, but the line probably has some resonance right now for US President Barack Obama. (More…)
Barack Obama has delivered an address at the UN General Assembly that he can’t possibly believe. Obama’s argument is that US isolationism could leave a leadership vacuum that would be damaging to the peacefulness of global politics. Irrespective of his actual intentions, the President’s meditations are increasingly unhinged from reality. (More…)
Hassan Rouhani is on a charm offensive. Bibi Netanyahu and the Emergency Committee for Israel have initiated an anti-Rouhani crusade. What does it all add up to? I explore at LobeLog. (More…)
For over a decade, artists and intellectuals have been touting Berlin as an alternative to overpriced and overpopulated metropolises like London, Paris, New York and Tokyo. And even now, despite a rising tide of gentrification, the city’s rougher neighborhoods remain a bargain for people with a bourgeois support network. The problem, though, is that long-time natives of these neighborhoods typically lack one. (More…)
Drummer David Ruffy and bassist John “Segs” Jennings peer out of the poster announcing a German tour this past weekend for their legendary punk-reggae band Ruts DC as members of a unique club within the first-wave punk generation. Theirs is one of the few bands that has endured the slings of mortality during both their salad days and in their later revival years. (More…)
Blaming women for rape? Bollywood actresses talking smack are an obvious satire. The sarcastic video called It’s Your Fault, by comedy troupe All India Bakchod, has won praise, as well as criticism, including from progressives, normally skeptical of English-language productions. For foreigners, it’s a great introduction to how seriously Indians are taking the sex crimes epidemic sweeping their country. (More…)