International issues

Amy Goodman and Juan Gonzales interview for Democracy Now! A new exposé based on the leaks of Edward Snowden has revealed the National Security Agency has developed methods to crack online encryption used to protect emails, banking and medical records.…

“Never has the use of violence brought peace in its wake. War begets war, violence begets violence.” So said Pope Francis, addressing the crowd on Sunday in the Vatican City’s St. Peter’s Square. He was speaking about the crisis in…

Glasnost means transparency. Gorbachev promoted it in order to lift the veil of secrecy that pervaded the old Soviet Union. The result was the collapse of the system. Some comparisons may be in order. A little story by the Argentinean…

The Treaty of Tlatelolco is the conventional name given to the Treaty for the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons in Latin America and the Caribbean. It is embodied in the OPANAL (the Agency for the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons in Latin…

We started to cover Syria, it was February 2012, because we believed a red line had been crossed: demonstrations against Assad were being swept away by bullets and mortar fire. But confrontation between the regime and the newborn Free Army,…

By Kaye Stearman 13 September 2012 for OpenDemocracy. After being home to several Olympic competitions this summer, London’s ExCel Centre is to host one of the world’s most important arms fairs in 2013. But the event’s past affiliations with autocratic…

[divide][clear] By Johan Galtung. ALFAZ, Spain, Aug 13 2013 (IPS) – THESIS ONE: The leaks are not about “whistle-blowing”, but about a nonviolent, civil disobedient fight against huge social evils. Whistle-blowing presupposes that somebody can be warned, in fact wants…

By Emile Nakhleh. WASHINGTON, Aug 16 2013 (IPS) – The recently restarted talks between Israel and the Palestinian Authority are the only peaceful political activity amidst ongoing violence in Syria, Iraq, Libya, Yemen, Egypt, Bahrain and elsewhere in the Arab…

As the Obama family heads to their annual summer vacation on Martha’s Vineyard, perhaps the president should take along a copy of “Catch-22” for some beach reading. Joseph Heller’s classic, satirical antiwar novel, published in 1961 and based on his…

The case of former contractor of the National Security Agency (NSA) Edward Snowden is far to influence political relations between Russia and the United States, which we aim to improve, said presidential sources. The situation around Snowden is far from…