Richard Slotkin on Guns and Violence – Moyers & Company

Ahead of the one year anniversary of the massacre at an elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut, in which Adam Lanza took the lives of 20 school children and six educators, Bill speaks with cultural historian and scholar Richard Slotkin about the role of guns in America’s national psyche. Slotkin has spent his life studying and

Parents selling children shows desperation of Afghanistan

In a sprawling settlement of mud brick huts in western Afghanistan housing people displaced by drought and war, a woman is fighting to save her daughter. Aziz Gul’s husband sold the 10-year-old girl into marriage without telling his wife, taking a down-payment so he could feed his family of five children. Without that money, he

Taliban release decree saying women must consent to marriage

Afghanistan’s Taliban government on Friday released a decree on women’s rights which said women should not be considered “property” and must consent to marriage but failed to mention female access to education or work outside the home. The Taliban has been under pressure from the international community, who have mostly frozen funds for Afghanistan, to

Autocracy is Winning – The Atlantic

THE BAD GUYS ARE WINNING If the 20th century was the story of slow, uneven progress toward the victory of liberal democracy over other ideologies—communism, fascism, virulent nationalism—the 21st century is, so far, a story of the reverse. By Anne Applebaum The future of democracy may well be decided in a drab office building on the outskirts

Taliban rulers seek help from world powers to revive sinking economy – WION

Poland says Belarus border crisis may be prelude to “something worse”

Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki warned on Sunday that the migrant crisis on the Belarus border may be a prelude to “something much worse”, and Poland’s border guard said Belarusian forces were still ferrying migrants to the frontier. The European Union accuses Belarus of flying in thousands of people from the Middle East and pushing

Democracy slipping away at record rate, intergovernmental body warns

A greater number of countries are sliding towards authoritarianism, while the number of established democracies under threat has never been so high, the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance (IDEA) said on Monday. Populist politics, the use of COVID-19 pandemic restrictions to silence critics, a tendency of countries to mimic the anti-democratic behaviour of

Taliban says failure to recognise their government could have global effects

The Taliban called on the United States and other countries on Saturday to recognise their government in Afghanistan, saying that a failure to do so and the continued freezing of Afghan funds abroad would lead to problems not only for the country but for the world. No country has formally recognised the Taliban government since

Taliban’s Deputy Prime Minister Mullah Baradar meets Chinese FM Wang in Doha – WION

Two months since taking over Kabul, the Taliban is struggling for international recognition. In their latest effort, acting deputy Prime Minister of the Afghan Taliban’s interim government Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar held a meeting with Chinese delegations in Doha, Qatar.

Several people killed and wounded in an explosion in eastern Afghanistan’s Jalalabad – WION

Several people have been killed and wounded in an explosion in eastern Afghanistan’s Jalalabad region. WION’s correspondent Anas Mallick gets you more details.