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By Paul Johnson
$14.97
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By Juan Cole
$22
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AP / Richard Drew
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The stock market is revisiting last week’s extreme volatility, with the Dow Jones average plummeting 471 points in the first two hours of trading Thursday. (more) Update: At the closing bell, the Dow was down about 419 points, 3.7 percent, to roughly 10,990.
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A student activist living in the middle of London’s riots shares her view from the ground on this week’s Truthdig Radio in collaboration with KPFK. Also on the show: William Cohan and Robert Scheer on Wall Street’s plunge; Robin Wright on Syria, and David Inocencio on juvie journalism.
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White House / Samantha Appleton
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By E.J. Dionne, Jr. — The world is looking to the United States to help power a recovery and provide leadership at a time when we are suffocatingly inward-looking—and when ultraconservatives are so dogmatic about slashing government that they are prepared to boot away our nation’s influence.
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First Generation Films via IMDb
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By Richard Schickel — In the summer, when we are always in the mood for fun and frolic, “The Whistleblower” is an easy movie to ignore. But we should not.
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White House / Pete Souza
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By William Pfaff — Few Americans know, or much care, about the opinions foreigners hold of the United States. This was displayed during the ignorant and solipsistic debate over when or whether the United States will pay its debts.
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Today, Ukraine holds the unwanted title of being one of the world leaders in global prostitution—a reality fueled by the country’s harsh economic climate since emerging from the former Soviet Union. Despite the fervent efforts of anti-sex-tourism groups such as FEMEN, the illegal industry, which exploits children as well as women, is booming.
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Pavel Constantin, Cagle Cartoons, Romania —
Posted on Aug 1, 2011
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By William Pfaff — The events in Norway were in a twisted way the product of Western ideas about the rivalry and clashes of civilizations, which persist.
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AP / Thierry Charlier
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Europe’s right-wing parties, many of which once had explicitly anti-Jewish messages, have expanded their hatred to Arabs and Muslims.
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Deng Coy Miel, Cagle Cartoons, Singapore —
Posted on Jul 3, 2011
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By William Pfaff — Athens in recent days has experienced continuing popular protest, sporadically violent, against the economic austerity program demanded of Greece by the IMF.
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AP / Evert Elzinga
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Depending on how you see it, a Dutch court’s acquittal Thursday of controversial politician Geert Wilders is an instance of hate speech gone unpunished or, as Wilders himself put it, “a victory for freedom of expression in the Netherlands.”
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By William Pfaff — Looking backward, there is a great deal to be said for leaving well enough alone, which is more difficult than one might think.
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Taylor Jones, Cagle Cartoons, El Nuevo Dia, Puerto Rico —
Posted on Jun 8, 2011
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Wikimedia Commons / Mattosaurus
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Here’s a reason to postpone travel plans to Germany: A new kind of E. coli bacterium has been discovered and has already killed 18 people and infected more than 1,500, according to the BBC.
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Bjoern Schwarz (CC-BY)
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Just two and a half months after Japan’s nuclear disaster kicked off a global rethink, Germany’s governing coalition has committed to closing down all of the country’s nuclear power plants by 2022. Chancellor Angela Merkel says Germany will replace nuclear, which ... (more)
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Wikimedia Commons
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A group of Greek leaders fell short of reaching an agreement on Prime Minister George Papandreou’s austerity plan by week’s end, putting Greece on shaky ground in terms of the country’s chances of receiving more bailout funds from the IMF.
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By William Pfaff — The European intervention in Libya has provided a needed practical demonstration of the European states’ ability to influence world affairs, while at the same time discrediting the expectation that the European Union itself can or will conduct a united foreign and security policy.
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By William Pfaff — What can only seem the irresistible self-destruction of Dominique Strauss-Kahn has already produced fundamental and irreversible consequences in France and Europe.
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By Eugene Robinson — At the time of the reported incident on Saturday, Dominique Strauss-Kahn was resident in a $3,000-a-night luxury suite at a posh Midtown Manhattan hotel. I didn’t think this was how socialists were supposed to roll.
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By William Pfaff — The always-implausible notion that the European Union could have a common foreign policy has been exploded.
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AP / Daniel Roland
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European Union financial officials meeting in Brussels have agreed on the setting up of a permanent bailout fund, even as Portugal reportedly teeters on the precipice of financial collapse.
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tonystl (CC-BY-ND)
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Researchers have adapted to religion a model used to forecast and explain the deaths of languages, and are predicting that in Australia, Austria, Canada, the Czech Republic, Finland, Ireland, the Netherlands, New Zealand and Switzerland, religion is destined for extinction.
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By William Pfaff — Neither Europe nor Washington has a United Nations mandate to depose and arrest Gadhafi and seek his indictment by international courts. Nor do they have a mandate to overturn the existing government in Libya, install a new one, build democracy, etc.
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Brian Fairrington, Cagle Cartoons —
Posted on Mar 22, 2011
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White House / Pete Souza
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There’s a problem when world leaders announce fervid support for universal principles: There is no way to avoid having those highflying words flung back at them at another time, during some other crisis, when they will have no choice but to lie or duck and scamper for cover. (more)
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flo21 (CC-BY-SA)
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The EU’s energy commissioner declared that all of Europe’s 143 nuclear reactors would be reviewed for safety and said of the Japanese crisis, “There is talk of an apocalypse and I think the word is particularly well chosen.” (more)
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Luojie, Cagle Cartoons, China Daily, China —
Posted on Mar 11, 2011
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Daniel Erwin (CC-BY)
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In the age of oversharing, we take it for granted that our every status is up to date and hanging out for all to see. Privacy, we are told, is dead. But over in Europe, they have crazy new laws that actually restrict how businesses stalk us online. Communists.
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Wagner Machado Carlos Lemes
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The U.K., France, various Arab states and NATO representatives are all working on plans to prevent besieged Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi from launching airstrikes against his people. Gadhafi’s forces continue to clash with rebels, who now control much of the country.
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Ricardo Stuckert / PR (Agência Brasil [1]) [CC-BY-2.5-br] via Wikimedia Commons
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The Italian prime minister will face trial for allegedly paying a 17-year-old girl for sex, among other charges. If convicted, Berlusconi could get up to 15 years in prison, which might please the hundreds of thousands of Italian women protesting his behavior toward women.
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AP
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A Belgian senator and gynecologist has suggested that citizens of the country protest the current impasse in forming a new government by—we kid you not—abstaining from sexual activity until a new administration is installed.
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Flickr / John D. Carnessiotis (CC-BY)
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According to The New York Times, “What’s Broken in Greece” is that the cost of labor in Greece from 2005 to 2010 has been, on average, 25 percent higher than in Germany. (more)
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AP / Chris Carlson
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The Christian Science Monitor took a brief survey Monday of the coverage of the Gabrielle Giffords shooting from across the Atlantic, browsing British, French, German and Dutch publications to see how the violence and its aftermath registered from their points of view.
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By William Pfaff — Is it a case of murder, or has the Western economy deliberately, if unwittingly, attempted suicide and nearly succeeded?
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AP / Daniel Roland
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Despite sounding more like an arcade than a currency oversight organization, European Union leaders have agreed to set up an official bailout fund for eurozone members as soon as 2013, doing “whatever is required” to defend the beleaguered currency.
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AP / Visar Kryeziu
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With ethnic divisions still etched into the memories of its citizenry, Europe’s youngest democracy, Kosovo, is holding its first parliamentary elections since it formally declared its independence from Serbia in 2008.
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Flickr / Mason Masteka (CC-BY-SA)
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Sad but apparently true: Europeans are gaining on Americans. According to a newly released study, more than half of the adult European population is overweight, and their kids aren’t exactly fitness champs either.
Posted on Dec 7, 2010
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Flickr / Hector Lopez-Berges
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Awash in debt and 20 percent unemployment, the Spanish government on Friday approved an austerity package aimed at reviving its moribund economy.
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AP / Gali Tibbon
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Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman is on a kick to improve his country’s standing in Europe. His strategy? Develop a cadre of “allies” abroad who will serve as walking PR agents for Israeli policy.
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By William Pfaff — To adapt to secular use a phrase from medieval mysticism, “the cloud of unknowing” deepens as the war-waging countries of North America and Western Europe approach their NATO “summit.”
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By William Pfaff — The European Union’s leaders, Germany and France, decided Oct. 30 to try to change the EU’s Lisbon Treaty. This is a highly charged and divisive move.
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AP / Daniel Roland
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Like a well-financed and politically powerful parent, the European Union has agreed to implement tougher rules for euro zone countries that overspend and over-borrow to “deter bad budgetary behavior” that could lead the currency into yet another crisis.
Posted on Oct 29, 2010
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By Amy Goodman — Just days away from crucial midterm elections, WikiLeaks, the whistle-blower website, unveiled the largest classified military leak in history. But in the U.S., it barely warranted a mention on the agenda-setting Sunday talk shows.
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By William Pfaff — It is not pension claims that are driving the current political uproar. It is popular fury at the people who created the present economic crisis and have been rewarded, with everyone else left to face the consequences.
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AP / Claude Paris
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In demonstrations across France, protesters have marched repeatedly against plans by the Sarkozy government to cut social programs and hike the retirement age as short-term budget woes have given the center-right president the opportunity to push through neoliberal reforms.
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AP / Bela Szandelszky
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The red sludge that, in the words of one official, extinguished all life in Hungary’s Marcal River has now reached the blue Danube, the second longest river in Europe. The disaster began at a waste reservoir in western Hungary where 33 million cubic feet of toxic material began its long spill, reaching more than 6.5 feet high in places.
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Flickr / Marty Portier (CC-BY-SA)
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The State Department has warned Americans traveling to and living in Europe that the entire continent faces a heightened risk of terrorist attack. Authorities fear that al-Qaida is planning something like the 2008 Mumbai shooting spree that killed 166 people.
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AP / Henny Ray Abrams
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The good news is that the U.S. stock market has enjoyed its “strongest September in 71 years” thus far this month, according to The Wall Street Journal. The bad news is that September ain’t over yet, and that hopeful trend didn’t quite last through Monday.
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Truthdigger of the Week: Medea Benjamin
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