Media reports on Syria conveyed the idea of a civil war between the Assad regime and the so-called "rebels," recent events are finally disclosing the true nature of what are affecting a regional world war. For if regional are the protagonists of this cynical and bloody war, global are the...

The number of times the word "hacking" appears in the news is inversely proportional to the degree of indignation that the very act of accessing private information causes to the general reader. It happens on such a regular basis that we hardly consider its significance any longer. It all began...

Less than two years ago the Western world rejoiced at the savage beating and subsequent death of Muammar Gaddafi. Libya became free, ready for democracy. Democracy in Libya's case meant a disproportional increase in sectarian violence and a puppet, Western-backed government (where, let it be clear, Gaddafi's former henchmen retained...

Another atrocious act of violence followed by yet another phoney happy ending. No, it's not Hollywood; it's contemporary America. Images of people cheering at the arrest and killing of the Boston suspects speak of a nation way too lost in its own nightmarish unreason to realize the gravity of the...

A recent biopic starring Meryl Streep in the titular role depicted the life and times of Margaret Thatcher under a very sympathetic light and from the perspective of an ailing Iron Lady well into her 80s, harmless and confused by dementia. The Hollywood tribute glossed over Thatcher's darkest hours (her...

Scaremongering by definition tends to exaggerate and mislead. Yet it works. Ten years ago, they invaded Iraq telling us that its wicked ruler - a certain Saddam Hussein who was once on very friendly terms with the U.S. - was hiding weapons of mass destruction. By deploying weapons of mind...

Business is usually thought to be a rather cold and heartless affair. There surely is a great deal of truth in this assumption, but even the basest monetary transaction cannot transcend a certain degree of "humanity." Emerging players in the global economy all have one thing in common: if not...

Fu Ying, the first woman to be named spokeswoman of the National People's Congress, in line with the novelty she represents, did not officially announce the 10.7 percent increase in China's defense budget as it is traditional during the annual NPC & CPPCC sessions.

The "iron lady," as she has...

Lumbering Christmas readers over in the Western world were served up, along with their OGM dinners, yet another heartbreaking story on "Chinese censorship". Liberal newspapers in the Western world dutifully reported on the unveiling of tighter Internet controls from the Chinese government. Worried freedom-loving journalists fretted about the grim fate...

According to neo-liberal doctrine, state intervention constitutes the biggest obstacle to a thriving economy, with the free-market and competition as its sole arbiters. Not only has neo-liberalism proved a colossal failure, but when the markets reached a breaking point, who came to their rescue? The state. It was precisely that...

It was fleetingly mentioned by some as a sort of chronological coincidence, but the 81st anniversary of the Japanese invasion of Northeast China, the incipit of the Second Sino-Japanese War, your average curiosity is not. The wounds of that war are still wide open and its unresolved legacy continues to...

Europe's Industrial Revolution did not only bring us the pleasures of pollution, but the welfare state too was a direct result of the then thriving economic climate. While its remnants are being methodically dismantled across the Old Continent as the blind belief in privatisation assumes evangelical dimensions, China, and the...

"I sometimes think that the price of liberty is not so much eternal vigilance as eternal dirt."
- George Orwell

Should you find yourself eating a custard tart in Trafalgar Square do make sure not to spill any cream on the floor. It's a criminal damage and you are...

"The rich man who gives, steals twice over. First he steals the money and then the hearts of men"
- Edward Munch

Many may be struggling to make ends meet in these times of economic instability but some deserving few seem to be making the most out of meritocracy....

"If you want to judge my thinking, look at The Sun"

-- Rupert Murdoch

With Warhol-ian sarcasm, the sly and powerful 81-year-old media mogul told the Leveson Inquiry that he basically has nothing to hide, let alone fear from this farcical tirade against his corporate stranglehold on public...

"Be uncomfortable; be sand, not oil in the machinery of the world"
- Guenther Eich

A gentle revolutionary who advocated artistic insubordination as a guarantor for freedom of imagination and the right to knowledge, Amos Vogelbaum died peacefully on Tuesday in his New York apartment. Born in Vienna in...

"Only crime and the criminal, it is true, confront us with the perplexity of radical evil; but only the hypocrite is really rotten to the core."
- Hannah Arendt

Since Anders Breivik's trial began a great deal of attention has been devoted to his supposedly disturbed psyche, much...