Three days after the earthquake and tsunami hit Japan, as news of a possible nuclear leakage in Fukushima was capturing the headlines, the Italian secretary for the environment, Stefania Prestigiacomo, went on record announcing that, despite growing widespread concern, Italy's nuclear policy would "obviously" remain unchanged. That policy, recently implemented, had terminated a national nuclear moratorium put in place by popular referendum in the aftermath of the Chernobyl incident of 1986, and mandated the construction of four new nuclear power plants by 2020. And because the devil is in the details, it was that little word, "obviously," which signaled once again the explosive stuff of which Berlusconi's hold over the destiny of his own country is made. As much... >>

What is the point of the bombing campaign against Libya? To answer this question, it would be nice if we could reach some certainty about what is going on in Libya itself. But this is not going to be easy, in the absence of specialist knowledge about the parties and players involved in the internal conflict. Certainly, Qaddafi, a world figure of some notoriety, seeks to maintain his power in the face of internal opposition. But who is this opposition? >>

Several times within the last century, Japan came close to national annihilation, or so it must have seemed to many in Japan. The 1923 Kanto Earthquake that devastated Tokyo, Yokohama and a number of surrounding prefectures, killed 140,000 people. The atomic bombs dropped onto Nagasaki and Hiroshima in 1945 obliterated the cities, immediately killed between 150,000 to 250,000 combined, and left legions severely injured and ill with radiation sickness. In the firebombing of Tokyo earlier that same year in which 1700 tons of incendiary bombs were dropped, 50% of the city was destroyed, and according to a very conservative estimate, 100,000 died.  The recent triple-disaster, the Tōhoku earthquake, tsunami and subsequent nuclear crisis was "apocalyptic," in the words of German... >>

The ongoing crisis at Japan's Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power plant intensified today, with worrying news emerging of radioactive iodine in Tokyo's water supply. The entire infrastructure of one of the world's most modern and cohesive societies seems to be threatened with collapse. Seen from outside, this crisis seems likely to have huge reverberations in Japan. The Japanese collective imaginary was indelibly marked by the U.S. use of atomic weapons to destroy the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki during World War II. The nuclear nightmare lived on in the post-war period in popular cultural icons such as Godzilla, whose slashing tail and fiery breath leveled, entire cities just as the atom bomb had, with Japanese cinema-goers watching this replay of their... >>

Consider the recent violent image making by the Egyptian state in its staging of counterinsurgency terror in mufti. I refer to the charging of Liberation square in Cairo by thugs on horses  and camels, and by vigilantes on foot armed with home made swords.  This is deliberate Orientalist theater  orchestrated by the state to promote a picture of generalized anti- modern anarchy for western media consumption.  These mounted and pedestrian thugs are being imported from nearby rural areas, released from prisons and recruited from security forces in civilian drag.  (The mounted thugs are described by apologists for the state as disgruntled tour guides who sell rides on camels and horses protesting their loss of income. But why expose your... >>