Roberto Abraham Scaruffi

Friday 29 October 2010

Le Monde diplomatique

November 2010

... dossier, stand against austerity; Tea Party in US midterms; Indonesia, goodbye to Islamisation; Lebanon, peacetime pursuits; Putin's Russia somehow works; Kazakhstan takes on Russia; India's quite surprising new friends; screen test for Israel...and more...
  • New economic territory

    France says No - Serge Halimi

    France hasn't seen demonstrations like this for 40 years. President Nicolas Sarkozy's character, his arrogance and determination to crush the "enemy" have aroused wide opposition. But one man's whims do not account for all the sound and fury. This is a response to a fundamental and unjust change of social direction chosen by European governments with allegiances ranging from confident right to compliant left, on the pretext of dealing with the financial crisis. Berlusconi has done no more good (...)
    Translated by Barbara Wilson

  • A permanent state of emergency - Slavoj Zizek

    The explosion of anger seen on the streets of Paris, Madrid, Athens and Bucharest is a sign of people's exasperation and desire for change, with the hope that would bring. But we are in new economic territory: we do not know what we have to do, but we have to act now
    Original text in English

  • Ireland, still a role model - Renaud Lambert

    Ireland's neo-liberal economic policies were greatly admired around the world, just as long as they seemed to be delivering high growth rates. Even now, Ireland's ferocious austerity measures are being emulated
    Translated by Stephanie Irvine

  • Cuba squeezes the state - Janette Habel

    Cuba intends to cut 20% of all jobs and radically revise its economic model as fast as possible. There is already inequality, and soon that may be legal within the constitution
    Translated by Tom Genrich
  • Challenges for the establishments in us midterms

    Texas Tea Party - Robert Zaretsky

    Politicians are gaining ground with Texas voters by blaming the federal government for all national ills. For Tea Partiers here, Washington appears a distant, almost foreign ruler
    Original text in English

  • 'We the people' - Walter Benn Michaels

    A new strand of rightwing populists in the US, represented by talk show host Glenn Beck and his Tea Party followers, fear al-Qaida less than they do socialism. But in particular all Tea Partiers despise the Republican rich and the elites
    Original text in English
  • Islam in the Pancasila state

    Indonesia, a democracy full stop - Wendy Kristianasen

    Indonesia's disasters - October's tsunami and eruption, the killing of suspected terrorists in Sumatra - get more media attention than its democratic elections. Yet these marked the direct re-election of the president last year and a cautious step away from Islamising agendas, re-affirming the country's historic balance of secularism with Islam
    Original text in English

  • Where culture blends with belief - Wendy Kristianasen

    Original text in English
  • A free society under an authoritarian regime

    Russia shouldn't work but it does - Vladislav Inozemtsev

    Russia's post-Soviet elites of wealth and bureaucracy did a quiet deal with Putin long ago: we'll keep your governing structure stable if you keep us in the money. And that's how the country functions, even if it is storing up problems for the future
    Translated by Charles Goulden

  • Nightmare scenarios in a primordial forest - Marie-Hélène Mandrillon

    Translated by Robert Waterhouse
  • From antipathy to military cooperation

    India and Israel: an unlikely alliance - Isabelle Saint-Mézard

    India has the world's third largest Muslim population, and political and economic ties with Arab nations. It is also buying weapons and military expertise from its new friend Israel
    Translated By Charles Goulden

  • India's close encounters with Iran - Isabelle Saint-Mézard

    Translated By Charles Goulden
  • The military industrial complex doesn't lack business

    War without end - Jean-Paul Hébert and Philippe Rekacewicz

    Which came first in the 20th and 21st centuries - the pretext for war or the new weapons with which to fight it?
    Translated by Tom Genrich
  • Agriculture and transport today's pressing issues

    Lebanon's bitter garden - Lucile Garçon and Rami Zurayk

    Lebanon's Bekaa valley has become a vast yet crude agribusiness supplying fruit and vegetables to the Middle East and drawing its underpaid, insecure migrant labour force from neighbouring Syria
    Translated by Tom Genrich

  • A season in hell - Lucile Garçon and Rami Zurayk

  • Can the Med rescue Beirut's commuters? - Don Duncan

    Planners are thinking up creative remedies for Lebanon's transport woes: go offshore or renovate the coastal railway line which served the country well in Ottoman days
    LMD English Edition exclusive
  • Film directors' critical gaze

    Israel's screen test - Hubert Prolongeau

    Israel's filmmakers can now say and show almost anything they like onscreen, and be admired internationally for doing so
  • OSCE, in the name of peace in Europe

    Silent diplomacy - Alain De Neve

    The end of the the cold war provoked many tensions between 'national communities' in Europe and Asia. To confront these, the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) must collaborate with other European institutions
    Translated by Robert Waterhouse

  • Kazakhstan or Eurasian geopolitics - Régis Genté

    Russia and Kazakhstan share an endless border, a language and many mutual interests. There should be no relationship crisis, yet the young central Asian republic is increasingly trying to assert its independence
    Translated by Robert Waterhouse

Diplomatic channels

Posted by Roberto Abraham Scaruffi at 16:35