2019/12/30

Kingdom of Evil

Abdulaziz has claimed in a lawsuit that his communications were probably intercepted by Saudi Arabia – an allegation the kingdom has denied. But Abdulaziz fears his messages to Khashoggi could have given insights to the people who would later kill him.

"Prince Mohammed is emboldened - he has already ousted any threats to his rise, and jailed or murdered critics of his regime without any repercussion,"


The young prince silenced debates inside the kingdom and pursued his critics abroad. The brutal murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi was the final stroke in shattering his international reputation, while his decision to pursue a disastrous war in Yemen has embarrassed his western allies, which continue to sell arms to Saudi Arabia.

But his propaganda abroad and deployment of thinktanks that promote his interests abroad and launder his reputation among a western political elite, ensured that he remained the preferred candidate of Donald 

2019/12/17

China is world’s leading jailor of journalists

“For the fourth consecutive year, at least 250 journalists are imprisoned globally as authoritarians like Xi Jinping, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Mohammed bin Salman, and Abdel Fattah el-Sisi show no signs of letting up on the critical media,” the report read.

The Drums of Cyberwar

Georgia was hit with a distributed denial of service (DDOS) attack that took down media outlets and military command centers. With the government struggling to communicate with its citizens and the outside world, Russia commandeered the airwaves, broadcasting its own version of events. The hackers themselves were freelancers, recruited from social media sites, which gave Russia plausible deniability, making retaliation that much harder. When Russian troops invaded the country about a month later, the hackers had prepared the battleground. It was the first time cyberwarfare was used to initiate an armed conflict,

Amnesty says more than 300 killed in Iran protest crackdown

At least 304 people were killed and thousands more injured during a three-day crackdown on nationwide protests in Iran in mid-November, Amnesty International said Monday.

2019/12/16

Tibet has a history dating back over 2,000 years

A good starting point in analyzing the country's status is the period referred to as Tibet's "imperial age," when the entire country was first united under one ruler. There is no serious dispute over the existence of Tibet as an independent state during this period. Even China's own historical records and the treaties Tibet and China concluded during that period refer to Tibet as a strong state with whom China was forced to deal on a footing of equality.

2019/12/15

'It Has Been the Same Shit for Years'

Rui Pinto, the face of Football Leaks, has spent the last nine months in prison. For the first time, he is now speaking out about the 147 charges against him and his time spent in pre-trial detention.

2019/12/13

Huawei, whose name can be translated as “China is able”, is one of the country’s most important success stories

the five arrests show the extent of Huawei’s “relationships with the government, the police and the courts”. “In China, all three can be manipulated. As long as Huawei says this person has done something, the police will arrest them.”

Christina Ramberg: Hair Candy #2 (1972–73)


2019/12/12

Sea of Shadows

When Mexican drug cartels and Chinese traffickers join forces to poach the rare totoaba fish in the Sea of Cortez, their deadly methods threaten to destroy virtually all marine life in the region, including the most elusive and endangered whale species on Earth, the vaquita porpoise.

2019/12/08

For the first time in its 150-year history the Vienna State Opera is staging an opera by a woman

Olga Neuwirth says "it feels a little bit strange" to be the first female composer to have a work staged at the Vienna State Opera.

2019/12/04

Jailed physicist released following corruption protest

A Croatian theoretical physicist has been released from prison after he was jailed in August following a two-month sit-in at the science ministry in Zagreb.

Family members and close associates of Mihajlo Perenčević, a wealthy Croatian businessman with ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin, received millions of dollars from Russia under the guise of fictitious real estate purchases.

“Al-Bab, the Nightmare” / “Jarablus, the Nightmare”

Rape is a crime of war that Syrian rebel groups have largely refrained from committing, but reports of rapes perpetrated by SNA fighters circulate among local Kurds and Kurdish media outlets. Disturbingly, two SNA members, Qassem and Mohsin, confirmed to me the incidence of such cases and could name specific Kurdish and Yazidi women they know who were raped by SNA fighters in Efrîn.

2019/12/03

Two more Tibetans arrested from Zachukha for demanding Tibet’s independence


Zaha Hadid Architects Designs Futuristic Transit Hub That Doubles as a Public Bridge


Conductor Mariss Jansons dies aged 76

Born in Rīga into the musical family of conductor Arvīds Jansons and singer Iraīda Jansone, Mariss moved to what was then Leningrad in 1956 with his parents, where his father worked as a conductor at the Leningrad Philharmonic. Mariss Jansons studied violin, piano and conducting at the Leningrad Conservatory