NM's blog

 The Saudis are the biggest losers Correction: the closest transliteration of the Yemeni port city's name is Mokha (المخا like the Spanish j or the German ch), not Mocha.  Related "The “Houthis are Shi‘a” narrative should be seen for what it is—a carefully crafted piece of political rhetoric devised to gloss over important differences between religious denominations, to reinforce the false image of a war between those who identify as Sunni versus those who identify as Shi‘a, and to encourage foreign—and particularly US—military intervention in Yemen. It provides a dangerously simplistic mental short cut for policymakers who are unfamiliar with Yemeni history and politics. In so doing, it diverts attention from the massive humanitarian crisis caused by years of civil war and the US-backed Saudi-led coalition’s ongoing blockade and bombardment. The cynical use of sectarian language casts the conflict in Yemen as part of an epochal, region-wide struggle rather than a local civil ...

Cuba está experimentando su mayor transformación económica en décadas: las empresas privadas han vuelto y los pequeños negocios emplean a una cuarta parte de la fuerza laboral. Sin embargo, la reforma de mercado no ha traído una apertura política. Una casa de color turquesa recién renovada destaca en una Habana desgastada. Dos árboles frutales dan sombra a su patio; un columpio se alza sobre el césped artificial y las ventanas delanteras están polarizadas para mayor privacidad. Una anciana sentada en una silla de ruedas junto a la entrada hablaba sola. Es residente de TaTamanía, el primer hogar de ancianos privado de Cuba, que abrió sus puertas esta primavera en el distrito del Vedado de la capital. Este tipo de negocio estuvo prohibido durante mucho tiempo bajo la revolución, pero en los últimos años, la falta de recursos ha dejado a las instalaciones públicas de cuidado en un estado crítico. Una ex pediatra, Yadira Álvarez, y su esposo, Rolando Pérez, especialista en informática, cre...

The right today … is just as inconsequential as the left, and for exactly the same reason, that it’s hyper but not formally organised. “The people who go on marches subscribe to the same podcast, might follow the same pages on Instagram, might be on the same Telegram channels, but they don’t have an organisational history they shared before they entered the march. This is different even to the BNP, where marchers had a shared history in football hooliganism, and the National Front. That shared subculture is no longer there. He says this is clear with Reform UK, “which is so heavily leader-dependent. The entire movement is at risk with this scandal of the crypto-billionaire, because there’s no party infrastructure. There is just Nigel and a smartphone and then a couple of private donors.” To me, this fails to take into account that the right is different to the left: they have more money. “Maybe I understated the availability of private funding,” he says mildly. “The fact that we can ev...