Roberto Abraham Scaruffi

Thursday 8 January 2015


8 January 2015

January 2015

... Cuba in from the cold; drugs companies' hard sell special report; rise and rise of Boko Haram; Darfur: the trouble with UN sanctions; Turkey: farewell to post-Ottoman dreams, Roma opening; Central Asia's shifting plates; US special report: the meaning of Ferguson, is Iraq the new Vietnam? Australia courts the Chinese dragon; India's car workers fight for rights... and more...
  • Obama's bold Cuban gesture - Serge Halimi

    Last November's mid-term electoral defeat for the Democratic Party seems to have reinvigorated President Barack Obama. He was triumphantly elected in 2008 and had a comfortable Congressional majority in his first two years, but all he produced was a modest reform of the healthcare system, plus homilies urging compromise on Republican politicians determined to destroy him . Since the Democrats' crushing defeat, Obama has been making bold decisions as his political career winds down: a decision (...)
    Translated by George Miller
  • Between Ottoman ambitions and regional constraints

    Turkey's not so splendid isolation - Wendy Kristianasen

    The AKP's 'New Turkey', a project of regional influence and aspiration, was going so well. Then came the Arab Spring, the violent mess of the Syrian civil war, and the rise of IS.
    Original text in English
  • Roma no longer invisible* - Marie Chambrial and Erwan Manac'h

    Turkey has begun to acknowledge and accept the distinct identity of its many Roma citizens over the past five years, but their socioeconomic circumstances are not improving.
    Translated by Charles Goulden
  • Europe's biggest Roma community* - Marie Chambrial and Erwan Manac'h

  • Poverty and mass unemployment drive the young to join

    Boko Haram invades Cameroon* - Rodrigue Nana Ngassam

    Boko Haram has moved into northern Cameroon, better equipped than the state and with good local intelligence. It's becoming a rallying point in an underemployed region.
    Translated by Charles Goulden
  • Sanctions are international community's automatic response

    The new gunboat diplomacy* - Claudio Gramizzi and Jérôme Tubiana

    UN sanctions don't work: they are too late or they hit the wrong people. In Darfur, after a decade of war, all that the UN Security Council can agree on is to condemn the rebels' actions.
    Translated by George Miller
  • United States slips back, at home and abroad

    Here we go again* - Tom Engelhardt

    The escalation of the US's third war in Iraq echoes what happened in Vietnam over 50 years ago, in response to fears and fantasies that were never warranted.
    LMD English edition exclusive
  • What Ferguson revealed* - Desmond King

    The rights legislation of the 1960s promised a fairer, desegregated future for African Americans. But inequalities are worsening again, and the will to fight them has gone.
    Original text in English
  • The great game continues across Central Asia

    Whose Silk Road?* - Régis Genté

    After a brief term of involvement, the US is exiting Central Asia, leaving Russia to defend its (former colonial) interests against China's economic investments in the region.
    Translated by George Miller
  • China fascinates wary Australia

    The big guy in the room - Olivier Zajec

    Despite justified defence concerns, and a long-standing alliance with the US, Australia is getting closer to China, its biggest trading partner.
    Translated by Charles Goulden
  • Anger and envy at a Japanese-style car plant

    India on wheels* - Naïké Desquesnes

    Young workers are fighting for rights, especially for adequate union representation, at the Maruti-Suzuki car company, the great model for foreign investment in India.
    Translated by George Miller
  • From research laboratory to doctor

    The hard sell* - Quentin Ravelli

    Drug companies prioritise profit over patients, and they control their own clinical trials, which do the same
    Translated by George Miller
  • 'Antibiotics aren't automatic'* - Quentin Ravelli

  • Care in the community in Italy

    No more asylums* - Mathilde Goanec

    It took over 20 years to close all of Italy's psychiatric hospitals and replace them with drop-in or short-stay mental health centres in the community. Today the Italian system is admired worldwide.
    Translated by Charles Goulden
  • Prisons for the mentally ill - Mathilde Goanec

  • Labour pursues the impossible dream of being middle class

    A few dollars more - Benjamin Selwyn

    Even the International Labour Organisation has picked up the neoliberal idea that slightly better off members of the global working class can now be reclassified as middle, and thinks that's where the future lies.
    LMD English edition exclusive
  • Egypt's art revolution peters out

    The writing's off the wall* - Peter Schwartzstein

    The Arab Spring revitalised Egypt's cultural scene. But now everyone is weary, broke and scared.
    LMD English edition exclusive