Showing 1-10 of 13 results
-
The year of the woeful world leaders
News, Leonid Bershidsky, Published on 28/12/2018
» The dictionaries have decided on their 2018 words of the year. Oxford picked "toxic". Merriam-Webster went for "justice". Collins chose "single-use". However, I'd zero in on "misgovernment". Surely, 2018 saw a number of countries misruled by the worst crop of world leaders in recent memory.
-
Secretive Russian billionaire vents to US conservatives
News, Leonid Bershidsky, Published on 13/03/2018
» It's not every day that a Russian billionaire submits a op-ed piece to the Daily Caller, the conservative US website. When the billionaire in question is as media-shy as Oleg Deripaska, something extraordinary is going on. As the unfortunate recipient of an oversized role in the "Trump-Russia" scandal, he has had enough and is not quite sure how to defend himself.
-
Putin struggles to keep wars separate
News, Leonid Bershidsky, Published on 16/02/2018
» Late on Feb 7 and early on Feb 8, US forces in Syria likely killed the greatest number of Russians since the end of the Cold War -- more than 200 soldiers. There will, however, be no international repercussions, nor will any of the Russians get posthumous medals like Roman Filipov, the fighter pilot who was shot down over Syria earlier this year and resisted capture until he was forced to blow himself up with a hand grenade.
-
Coup against Mugabe is really nothing to celebrate
News, Leonid Bershidsky, Published on 17/11/2017
» As leader of Zimbabwe, Robert Mugabe has survived longer than Stalin in the Soviet Union and Mao in China. If it's coming to an end -- which seems likely given his apparent inability to emerge from house arrest after the military took charge -- it's worth reflecting on the mistakes he made to end such a remarkable run.
-
No, separatism isn't the continent's next major crisis
News, Leonid Bershidsky, Published on 03/11/2017
» Those who are always on the lookout for the next European crisis -- Brexiters not least among them -- have latched on to Catalonia's symbolic "secession" as another sign that Europe isn't working well. The Catalan events, however, merely confirm that today, Western European countries are secession-proof -- too fat to fail. Belgium, the country where ousted Catalan First Minister Carles Puigdemont is hiding out from prosecution (or, to Catalan secessionists, leading a government in exile) is another example.
-
Facebook too big a platform to allow fake users
News, Leonid Bershidsky, Published on 10/08/2017
» There's something in common between the amazing story of "Nicole Mincey", the pseudonymous Twitter user with 146,000 followers who was retweeted by US President Donald Trump and then disappeared overnight along with a few other online personae, and a recent prank by a Berliner frustrated with his inability to get Twitter to remove hate speech. The common element is the obvious solution to both problems, which rarely surfaces in discussions of trolling, fake news and cyberbullying.
-
The new Saudi Arabian heir is a dangerous man
News, Leonid Bershidsky, Published on 23/06/2017
» The abrupt change in Saudi Arabia's line of royal succession will probably help maintain the House of Saud's sway over its 31 million people, 70% of whom are under 30. It is, however, a dangerous move in the context of a new Big Game unfolding in the Middle East, which involves the US, Russia and local players.
-
The mundane radicalism of terror
News, Leonid Bershidsky, Published on 22/06/2017
» The UK tabloids hesitated about what to call the white driver of a van who crashed into a crowd of worshippers at the Finsbury Park mosque in London on Monday. But Harry Potter author JK Rowling tweeted furiously that he was no less a terrorist than the perpetrators of recent Islamic State-inspired attacks.
-
Don't rush to judge in war crimes -- the truth will out
News, Leonid Bershidsky, Published on 19/04/2017
» Something is wrong with the standard of proof we're willing to accept for extremely serious accusations. There's a cost to credibility and a need to weigh available evidence calmly before approving or criticising potentially deadly government action.
-
Facebook can't have it both ways
News, Leonid Bershidsky, Published on 24/03/2017
» Nearly everyone has criticism for German Justice Minister Heiko Maas's proposal to impose fines on social networks and their workers for failure to delete hateful content. Internet freedom advocates hate it for imposing censorship. The European Union is concerned for the same reason and the German union of judges and prosecutors criticise it for not going far enough because the posters of hate-speech themselves escape punishment.
Your recent history
-
Recently searched
-
Recently viewed links
Did you find what you were looking for? Have you got some comments for us?
