Author: Jean-Philippe Stone

Lords of War: The British Monarchy And The Arms Trade

Prince Harry’s memoir Spare provoked an avalanche of commentary. Newsrooms, who rarely questioned London and Washington’s occupation of Afghanistan in the first place, suddenly find it objectionable that an unpopular prince should confess to killing dozens of Taliban fighters. However, the Royal family’s overt or implicit collaboration with the arms

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The Steppes Are Ablaze: Corruption And Protest In Mongolia

What initially began last month as a backlash against an entrenched “coal mafia” has snowballed into a trenchant critique of Mongolia’s inability (and unwillingness) to provide a better future for its country’s youth. Corruption revelations involving the state-owned Erdenes Tavan Tolgoi (E.T.T.) mining company have sparked enormous protests in the

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Never-Ending Tragedy: The Dangers Of Foreign Intervention in Haiti

On November 28, 2022, Bocchit Edmond, Haiti’s ambassador to the United States, urged the international community to send a strike force to help overwhelmed police quell unruly gangs in Port-au-Prince. These demands came a month after embattled Prime Minister Ariel Henry begged foreign leaders to deploy a “specialized armed force,

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Blood And Iron: Volkswagen And Modern Slavery In Brazil

On June 14th, labour prosecutor Rafael Garcia Rodrigues pressed charges against the German car-manufacturing giant Volkswagen for having owned a farm worked by slave labour in the 1970s and 1980s. Law professor and cleric, Father Ricardo Rezende, told Le Monde that he has spent four decades gathering information on Volkswagen’s

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Bringing Up The Bodies: Mass Graves From Spain’s Civil War Exhumed

The Guardian reported in May that descendants of 21 out the 3,400 Republicans executed in Valencia after the Spanish Civil War will finally recover the remains of their ancestors, whose bodies were flung into mass graves in Paterna Cemetery. The war began in 1936 after Nationalist military leaders, convinced that

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An Overdue Reckoning: The Napalpí Ruling And Indigenous Repression In Argentina

In May, Voice of America reported that a court in Resistencia held the Argentinian state responsible for committing “crimes against humanity” in July 1924, when police and settlers massacred around 400-500 indigenous Qom and Moqoit peoples for protesting slave-like working conditions in the Napalpí reservation. Judge Zunilda Niremperger ordered the

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A Far Way From Paradise: State Violence and Insurgency in West Papua

On April 27th, Union of Catholic Asian News reported that separatists affiliated with the Free Papua Movement (Organisasi Papua Merdeka, O.P.M.) in the Indonesian province of Papua murdered a construction worker, more than likely in response to security forces killing an O.P.M. commander a few days prior. Father John Bunay,

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Caribbean Apartheid: Anti-Haitianism In The Dominican Republic

Anti-Haitian sentiments in the Dominican Republic are spiralling out of control. The Guardian reported in February that construction of a 196km-long Trumpian wall to stem the flow of migrants, gangs, and contraband is well underway. In addition, Haitians fleeing destitution and a crumbling healthcare service at home face appalling mistreatment

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A Warning From History: Sanctioning Russia Will Not Save Ukraine

The United States, the European Union, Britain, Canada, Australia, Switzerland, and Japan have imposed wide-ranging and crippling economic sanctions, travel bans, and other restrictions in response to Russia’s relentless assault on Ukraine. Unfortunately, they are unlikely to make a difference. Political scientist Robert Pape proved beyond doubt, in an expansive

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On Deadly Ground: Unexploded Ordnance And Agent Orange In Cambodia

On January 10th 2022, an anti-tank mine killed three deminers affiliated with the NGO Cambodian Self-Help Demining in northern Cambodia. This tragic incident is a reminder that despite considerable progress, deminers have yet to clear 2,034 kilometres strewn with landmines and cluster bombs, according to the Phnom Penh Post. The

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Battered Hills: The Struggle Of Bangladesh’s Indigenous Jumma Tribes

The Chittagong Hill Tracts (C.H.T.) are home to Bangladesh’s indigenous Jumma tribes, which consist of eleven ethnicities and predominantly Buddhist, Christian, and animist believers and which are, like Indigenous and Aboriginal groups in the United States, Canada, and Australia, battling an encroaching oblivion. The Bangladeshi government at Dhaka’s brutal crusade

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Manufacturing Savagery: U.S. Military Training In West Africa And Beyond

On January 24th, Burkina Faso bore witness to its third destabilizing coup in less than a decade. It also marked the eighth successful putsch American soldiers launched in multiple West African countries since 2008. The Intercept reports that Ouagadougou’s new leader, Colonel Paul-Henri Sandaogo Damiba, took part in many United

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A Past Forever Present: Truth And Reconciliation In Burundi

Burundi’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), established in 2014 to ease ethnic animosities between the Hutu majority and Tutsi minority, has caused controversy ever since. Development and Cooperation states that Tutsi politicians still accuse TRC members of being too one-sided in their investigations of Burundi’s troubled past. The TRC discovered

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Tears After The Rain: The Legacy Of The Gukurahundi Genocide In Zimbabwe

In 1983, Robert Mugabe, then Prime Minister and leader of ZANU-PF (Zimbabwe African National Union – Patriotic Front), launched the final phase of his plan to turn Zimbabwe into a one-party state. He sent the North Korean-trained Fifth Brigade (called “Gukurahundi” in Shona) into Matabeleland to exterminate “dissidents.” What arguably

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