Voltaire, International Newsletter is a weekly newsletter on international politics. It features 10 to 15 pages of contextualized, sourced news items. Its aim is to enable you to follow the decline of the unipolar world and the emergence of a multipolar system. The newsletter is published in several languages. Several foreign ministries from different countries…
Voltaire Network | 22 November 2024 • According to the New York Times of November 17, U.S. President Joe Biden has finally authorized the Pentagon to provide satellite data to Ukraine so that it can use U.S. ATACMS (Army Tactical Missile System) missiles against North Korean forces in Kursk (Russia). The United Kingdom immediately aligned…
Millionaires and billionaires hold a remarkable 79.2 percent of the United States’ household wealth. That is according to a newly released triennial study into consumer and household finances from the Federal Reserve. The report paints a picture of an unequal America, where a small minority of the rich control the vast majority of household wealth. 11.9…
A new report published today by international charity Oxfam lays bare the massive disparities in carbon dioxide emissions between the world’s wealthy elite and the rest of society. Titled “Confronting Carbon Inequality,” the study found that over the previous 25 years, the globe’s richest one percent are responsible for 15 percent of all carbon emissions — more…
For the first time in history, the 12 richest individuals in the United States collectively hold over $1 trillion in wealth. New figures from the Program on Inequality and the Common Good at the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS) show that, despite a pandemic that has stunted the economy for months, America’s billionaire class is becoming…
SAN FRANCISCO — Residents of San Francisco’s South Beach are organizing to stop a homeless shelter in their affluent neighborhood, having crowdfunded tens of thousands of dollars in a matter of days to fight their legal battle with authorities. A 2.3-acre vacant lot in the shadow of the Bay Bridge has been identified as a…
NEW YORK — The revelation that the Dow Jones industrial average and the Standard and Poor’s stock index closed at historic highs this past Thursday afternoon reminded me of an early autumn afternoon a dozen years ago in a glorious San Francisco apartment high in the sky. The apartment, perched atop a rise in the…
In the name of the fight against terrorism, the United States is currently waging “credit-card wars” in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, and elsewhere. Never before has this country relied so heavily on deficit spending to pay for its conflicts. The consequences are expected to be ruinous for the long-term fiscal health of the U.S., but they…
LONDON – The royal wedding between the U.K.’s Prince Harry and American actress Meghan Markle, due to take place today, has been in the headlines for some time, serving as a convenient distraction from other major events – from the mass shooting of unarmed protesters in Gaza to efforts by certain U.S. officials to sabotage…
Most of the world recognizes May 1—May Day—as International Workers’ Day. Here in one of the few countries that doesn’t, it’s worth pausing to ask how U.S. workers are doing. At an event last December, Fight for $15 organizer Terrence Wise recalled “going to bed at night, ignoring my own stomach’s rumbling, but having to…
On average, women are paid nearly 23 percent less than men and in countries like Turkey, the gap can be as much as 75 percent. As a response to the staggering gender pay gap revealed in the World Economic Forum’s Global Gender Gap Report, the U.N. Women agency has adopted the theme of “Press Progress,” in 2018…
INDIANAPOLIS – The morning commute in this landlocked Midwestern city is an obstacle course of potholes, buckled pavement, and shards of fugitive cement. Like infantrymen navigating a minefield, motorists swerve and stop, and zig and zag in rush hour traffic to avoid the peril from below. Drive east on Kessler Boulevard, however, and just past…
In December last year, United Nations Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights, Professor Philip Alston, issued a statement on his 15-day fact-finding mission of some of the U.S.’s poorest neighborhoods. Alston, the author of the quoted phrase in the excerpt, is an Australian who is a professor of law at New York University. During his…
Voltaire, International Newsletter is a weekly newsletter on international politics. It features 10 to 15 pages of contextualized, sourced news items. Its aim is to enable you to follow the decline of the unipolar world and the emergence of a multipolar system. The newsletter is published in several languages. Several foreign ministries from different countries…
Voltaire Network | 22 November 2024 • According to the New York Times of November 17, U.S. President Joe Biden has finally authorized the Pentagon to provide satellite data to Ukraine so that it can use U.S. ATACMS (Army Tactical Missile System) missiles against North Korean forces in Kursk (Russia). The United Kingdom immediately aligned…
During his first term, President Trump decorated the Oval Office with a portrait of President Jackson. Almost all commentators do not understand what the re-elected President of the United States, Donald Trump, is doing because they wrongly interpret his actions through the prism of Republican or woke ideologies. However, Trump, who has successively frequented the…
U.S. President-elect Donald Trump wasted no time nominating potential cabinet members and other members of his second administration. Trump’s selections departed from how he chose cabinet members for his 2017-21 presidency. It is clear he and his advisers are specifically choosing hard-right personal “loyalists” and fascist-minded ideologues, while ignoring many GOP functionaries who joined his…
