Business as Usual At What Price Part I of II by Yanis Varoufakis edited by Anton Foek Amsterdam, September 26th 2021– Former U.S. president, Donald Trump, humiliated the European Union by annulling the Iran nuclear deal. And now the current president, Joe Biden, has done so too, by announcing the new AUKUS agreement with Australia…
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Centre of the world Part II by Anthony Ham Amsterdam, September 12th 2021—Ag Mohamed Ali initiated travellers into Timbuktu’s secrets. He took them to the private family libraries that still held manuscripts from Timbuktu’s golden age – biographies of the Prophet Muhammad on pages of gold leaf and scientific treatises from the great Islamic scholars of…
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Part I by: Anthony Ham Amsterdam, September 12th 2021– As the sun neared the horizon, before the day’s final call to prayer, Azima Ag Mohamed Ali began his nightly walk through the sandy streets of Timbuktu in Mali. Along the way, first one, then a second friend fell into step alongside him. The greetings continued…
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Fifty Years ago Ammsterdam, Agust 4th 2021– It was 50 years ago but Zhang Xielin still remembers vividly how a shaggy-haired American table tennis player stepped onto the Chinese team’s bus, a chance encounter which would shape history. It was the world championships in Nagoya, Japan, and Glenn Cowan mistakenly hopped in with Zhang and…
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SIDOARJO, East Java: Indonesian Muanisah, who goes by one name, recalled the day when she held her 40-day-old baby in despair as he had trouble breathing. She was just about to have her breakfast on May 29, 2006 when she smelled a pungent odour, which she believed caused her baby to cry while gasping for air. He…
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Soon after this film aired, Agafia found a helper who has now been living with her for more than a year. Georgy Danilov, 53, is from Orenburg. He is an Old Believer. It was Agafia’s spiritual father who found and blessed her helper. Georgy has been doing the toughest chores for almost two years: he…
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Where To This Time? Anton Foek Amsterdam, June 8 th 2021–Kalmykia is in Southern Russia. North of the Caucasus it is bordered by the Oblasts of Volgograd, Dagestan, Astrakhan, Rostov and Stavropol Krai. It has access to the Caspian Sea and the Volga River. The Republic has many natural resources and wildlife including the protected…
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Beatriz and Bernard Amsterdam, March 12, 2021 – First thing the Vice Minister of Health in Bujumbura, the then Capital of Burundi says when I am entering his impressive office and on a story invited by a Dutch NGO, to report on the construction of a water system in Muyinga, is: ‘ Be welcome and…
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The Boys from Beijing Kindergartens, handicrafts markets, high-tech companies, hydroelectric dams … political indoctrination camps? These are some of the sights international journalists are whisked around when they take part in all-expenses paid tours to China. The motive of these invitations is, in the mantra of Chinese president Xi Jinping, to “tell a good China…
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Perhaps you’d like to take some time to read and refuel on geo-political issues, [in other words] the relationships in the world. If so, allow me to introduce Peter Frankopan’s “The New Silk Roads”. I’d strongly recommend however to put on your seat belts and check your air bags. Reading that book I felt as if I was being blown off my seat…
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