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      Never forget Epstein’s little helpers – the powerful men who knew about his crimes, and helped him out anyway | Marina Hyde

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      I’m sorry, but this is not just a political scandal. Time to refocus on the horrific mistreatment of women and girls, and the role of these ghoulsLike a lot of women, I do vaguely care about the latest political implosion of Peter Mandelson – but I think we’re all massively more obsessed with the fact that there really was a network of incredibly famous and powerful men trying to help a known ex-con minimise and wave away his underage sex crimes. Amirite, ladies? Sure, I’m crying my eyes out about some Gordon Brown adviser having his asset-sale memo forwarded in 2009 … but at the same time I’m a whole lot more concerned about the actual Sex Bilderberg. Which, even now, our eyes seem to keep being conveniently dragged away from. Can we refocus?We are, naturally, talking about the Jeffrey Epstein files. Since the latest lot dropped, I’ve been collating the emails from extremely famous men who actively sought to help the since-deceased underage sex trafficker trivialise his crimes in the years after his jail release in 2009. Richard Branson, Noam Chomsky, Steve Bannon, Mandelson, Andrew (obviously) – all of these men offer strategic advice, or media training, or chummy solidarity. Or, in the case of Chomsky, all of the above plus a drive-by on the notion of female victimhood. According to text signed under his first name that Epstein sent to a lawyer and publicist in February 2019, months after the Miami Herald had run an explosive series of articles laying out the scale of Epstein’s serial underage sexual abuse and the perversion of justice that covered it up, Chomsky sneered at “the hysteria that has developed about abuse of women”. Wow. Never mind Manufacturing Consent – have a read of Not Giving A Shit About Consent. I thought Chomsky cared about power and exploitative elites? Still, nice photo of him laughing it up with Steve Bannon. Continue reading… More

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      FO° Talks: Freebies, Religion and Corruption: The Brutal Reality of India’s Politics

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      Fair Observer’s Video Producer Rohan Khattar Singh speaks with Dhruv Jatti, a young Congress spokesperson from Karnataka, India, about how Indian democracy functions. The country’s elections are often explained through ideology, religion or social media narratives. Drawing on his experience in both rural and urban politics, Jatti strips away abstraction and focuses on turnout, money,… Continue reading FO° Talks: Freebies, Religion and Corruption: The Brutal Reality of India’s Politics
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      Epstein files: has Trump really been ‘absolved’? | The Latest

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      Donald Trump claims that the release of millions more files related to Jeffrey Epstein ‘absolve’ him of wrongdoing, even though his name appears hundreds of times. The latest documents also indicate high-profile figures , including the former prince Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor and Labour peer Peter Mandelson, continued friendships with the disgraced financier after his child sex abuse convictions. So what have we learned from the newly released files and what happens next? Lucy Hough speaks to columnist and host of Politics Weekly America Jonathan Freedland Continue reading… More

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      Why Strategic Partnerships Fail to Build Power in the Global South: Lessons from Pakistan

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      Strategic partnerships are often presented as pathways to development for the Global South. Yet from Latin America to Asia and Africa, they have delivered finance and infrastructure without the technological capabilities needed for lasting transformation. As geopolitical competition intensifies, the key question is no longer who partners with whom, but who controls technology, learning and… Continue reading Why Strategic Partnerships Fail to Build Power in the Global South: Lessons from Pakistan
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      Governance Without Legitimacy: The Kurdish Region’s Descent into Stagnation

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      For more than three decades, particularly since 1991, the Kurdistan Region of Iraq (KRI) has been presented as a semiautonomous polity with its own institutions and an ethnically distinct identity. But beneath that veneer of autonomy lies a more troubling reality.  Corruption has deteriorated the region, and it is not an aberration in the Kurdish… Continue reading Governance Without Legitimacy: The Kurdish Region’s Descent into Stagnation
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      South Yemen at a Crossroads: Saudi Arabia’s Risky Political Gamble

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      Recent events in Yemen’s south reveal a rapidly shifting political and security landscape shaped by external intervention, internal mobilization and deep uncertainty over southern governance. At the center of these changes stands Saudi Arabia, which has increasingly taken the political initiative in the south — a role previously shared with the United Arab Emirates (UAE).… Continue reading South Yemen at a Crossroads: Saudi Arabia’s Risky Political Gamble
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      How the left can win back the internet – and rise again | Robert Topinka

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      In the final part of this series, we look at how infighting has ripped the left apart online while the right has flourished – and how some progressives are turning the tideRobert Topinka is a reader in digital media and rhetoric at Birkbeck, University of LondonPart one: How liberals lost the internetPart two: How the right won the internetThere is politics before the internet, and politics after the internet. Liberals are floundering, the right are flourishing, and what of the left? Well, it’s in a dire state. This is despite the fact that the key political problems of the last decade – rising inequality and a cost of living crisis – are problems leftists claim they can solve. The trouble is, reactionaries and rightwingers steal their thunder online, quickly spreading messaging that blames scapegoats for structural problems. One reason for this is that platforms originally built to connect us with friends and followers now funnel us content designed to provoke emotional engagement.Back when Twitter was still the “town square” and Facebook a humble “social network”, progressives had an advantage: from the Arab spring to Occupy Wall Street, voices excluded from mainstream media and politics could leverage online social networks and turn them into real-life ones, which at their most potent became street-level protests that toppled regimes and held capitalism to account. It seemed as though the scattered masses would become a networked collective empowered to rise up against the powerful.Robert Topinka is a reader in digital media and rhetoric at Birkbeck, University of London Continue reading… More