Once upon a time, a rich hypochondriac was complaining about pains in his head and stomach. He consulted a wise man who pointed out that the root of the problem lay somewhere else: in the man’s eyes. To resolve the persistent headache and stomachache, the sage suggested focusing on just one color in the surrounding environment — green — and ignoring all others.
March 7 marked two years since the death of Guillaume Faye, the former number two of the French (new right). His death wasn’t big news in the media. In academic research, Faye exists mostly in the shadows of the so-called number one of the new right, Alain de Benoist.
On December 10, 2020, then-US President Donald Trump recognized Moroccan sovereignty over Western Sahara, circumventing a decades-long UN-sponsored peace process for the territory. In return, Morocco agreed to normalize relations with Israel.
In less than two years, the editor-in-chief and CEO of the independent news site Rappler, Maria Ressa, has been issued 10 arrest warrants. The latest accusations against her involve tax evasion and failure to file accurate tax returns, which she testified against on March 4, 2021, before the Court of Tax Appeals. In addition, Ressa faces numerous other charges, including illegal foreign ownership of Rappler Holdings Corporation — the Philippine Constitution restricts foreign ownership of mass media in the country, subject to congressional regulation. The charges amount to 100 years of prison time if she is found guilty. This latest flurry of persecution is a continuum of the country’s troubling history of suppressing press freedom.
An endgame, traditionally, brings both bad and good news. An endgame is always tense because those involved know things are coming to a head. We can see this in the battle theaters in Yemen over the past weeks. What we don’t see is the reality of how those battles are actually progressing and who will be the last man standing: Ansar Allah, aka Houthis, or the Hadi faction, aka Yemen’s legitimate government. Although from the experience of past battles and the progressive loss of ground President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi had suffered, we can make a good guess.
The Wall Street Journal reports on the Indian government’s intention to clamp down on social platforms that have played a role in the recent farmers’ protests. According to Wall Street Journal sources, Narendra Modi’s government has threatened to jail employees of Facebook, WhatsApp and Twitter “as it seeks to quash political protests and gain far-reaching powers over discourse on foreign-owned tech platforms.”
“We all know what the British press can be like and it was destroying my mental health,” Prince Harry said in a recent interview for “The Late Late Show With James Corden.” Was he kidding? Destroying his mental health? How exactly? By expressing opinions on his behavior? Or deciding whether he has acted selflessly or not? Or speculating on his motives for relocating to California? Harry just keeps providing new raw material. Even in his most meaningless moments, he can offer an off-the-cuff remark that contrives to evoke the sympathy of some and the outrage of others.
Many will remember 2020 as the year of COVID-19, an invisible pestilence that is still haunting the world a full year after its outbreak in the form of a global pandemic. Though it is still rather early, 2021 may one day be remembered as the year of an unexpected financial epidemic, the craze for NFTs, or non-fungible tokens.
A political crisis was the last thing Italy needed during the COVID-19 pandemic. Yet a personal conflict between the leader of Italia Viva, Matteo Renzi, and the previous prime minister, Giuseppe Conte, led to the collapse of the coalition in mid-January. President Sergio Mattarella then commissioned 73-year-old Mario Draghi, the former head of the European Central Bank (ECB), to form a technocratic government, which he will preside over as prime minister.
A look back at history shows that desperate times do indeed call for desperate measures. After all, it was not until Saudi officials watched in horror as oil prices plummeted by 70% that, in 2016, Vision 2030 was born. While other Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) members presented their own initiatives, true to form, Saudi Arabia’s economic reform agenda is the most ambitious yet. 2020 was set to mark the agenda’s first benchmark achievement. Instead, an oil price war, a disastrous bombing campaign against Yemen and a 5.4% contraction in GDP set a different tone than the kingdom may have intended.