News From Antiwar.com
On May 10 North Atlantic Treaty Organization Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg met with Austrian Foreign Minister Alexander Schallenberg at NATO headquarters in Brussels to sign an agreement on the opening of a NATO Liaison Office in Vienna.
The NATO chief thanked Austria for twenty-six years of military cooperation, beginning with Austria joining the Partnership for Peace program in 1995. In particular he expressed appreciation for the nation’s contribution to NATO’s International Security Assistance Force mission in Afghanistan, where its troops served with those of fifty-three other countries under NATO command. (Among the others were fellow European Union member states and NATO partners Ireland, Finland, Sweden and Switzerland. In 2014 Finland and Sweden were elevated to the status of Enhanced Opportunities Partners. The two nations were in charge of Mazar-i-Sharif in Balkh province where their troops engaged in combat operations while under NATO comm
LIVE EVENT - Democratic Erosion and Academic Freedom: Hungary, India, Turkey and Beyond (13 May)
Democratic Erosion and Academic Freedom
Hungary, India, Turkey and Beyond
Thursday, 13 May 2021
12:00 PM CDT
Co-sponsored by the Chicago Center for Contemporary Theory (3CT), the Chicago Center on Democracy, the University of Chicago s Department of Political Science, and the Arab Studies Institute
Widespread democratic backsliding is raising alarm bells about the future of academic freedom in democratic and autocratic regimes. Such fears are not unwarranted. Institutions of higher education suffer from systemic and multi-faceted attacks across the globe. Transgressions on university autonomy, restrictions on research and curriculum, widespread neoliberal transformation of funding structures, and attacks on the life and liberty of academics themselves demonstrate the extensiveness of the arsenal employed by a multitude of governments. Are the recent attacks on academic freedom spill
G7 Foreign and Development Ministers’ Meeting Communiqué (London, 5 May 2021) Share
I. Preamble
1. We, the Foreign and Development Ministers of the Group of Seven (G7), and the High Representative of the European Union, are meeting today at a critical juncture for our people, our planet, our security and our future prosperity. Democracy is under pressure globally; the pandemic continues to pose acute global challenges; new technological threats are mounting; and the catastrophic effects of climate change are increasing. We commit to strengthening open societies, shared values, and the rules-based international order. We affirm that free and fair trade, and the free and secure flow of capital, data, knowledge, ideas and talent is essential to our long-term prosperity. We affirm that liberal democracy and free and fair markets remain the best models for inclusive, sustainable social and economic advancement. We commit to tackling threats jointly and committing our resources to a
Does cryptocurrency need governance? These researchers say so
Bitcoin has done a lot for some people, but what has it really done for society?
In 2008, an enigmatic figure by the name of Satoshi Nakamoto devised a blockchain ledger, leading to the creation of what we now call Bitcoin. Satoshi claimed to have developed “an electronic payment system based on cryptographic proof instead of trust”, an alternative that relies on technology, not banks and governance.
It’s hard to emphasize just how influential Bitcoin (and cryptocurrency in general) has grown in the relatively short timespan since 2008 but can it truly survive in the long term without any governance? Some researchers are starting to doubt it.
29 Apr 2021
UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, is offering a full time (100%) UNOPS position attached to UNHCR’s headquarters-based Education Section in Copenhagen, Denmark. Education is an integral part of protection for persons of concern to UNHCR, fifty percent of whom are children and youth. The Division of Resilience and Solutions (DRS), in close collaboration with the Regional Bureaus, is working on an integrated and holistic approach to support operations in implementing the policies and guidelines on education, especially in terms of solutions where education plays a large role in an individual’s ability to plan for their own future, and to contribute to society as whole.