Author: Olivia RUM

Israel-elections-Netanyahu-Eisenkot

Survivor Against Soldier (I)

Israelis voted last Tuesday in their first national election since Hamas’s attack of 7 October 2023. Polling stations opened at 7 a.m. and closed at 10 p.m. local time. For Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has been in office for 19 years and is Israel’s longest-serving leader, it was a […]

Serbia-parliamentary-elections-students-victory

Serbia’s Historic Election

On Sunday night Aleksandar Vucic, the populist and nationalist who has dominated Serbian politics as prime minister or president since 2014, stood before television cameras and conceded defeat. “It is clear that we have lost these elections, the Student List has won,” he said. Within moments, tens of thousands of […]

Brazil-Lula-gamble-betting-ban

Lula’s Gamble On Gambling

Nine days before Brazilians vote in the first round of a presidential election, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva signed an order banning fixed-odds sports betting nationwide – a move he framed in the starkest possible terms, comparing the industry to cancer that must be cut out before it kills the […]

Brazil-presidential-elections-Lula-da-Silva-Bolsonaro

Brazil At The Crossroads

razil-presidential-elections- Recently, Brazil voted in an election that matters far beyond its borders. The leftwing incumbent, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, is reported to be neck and neck with Flávio Bolsonaro, son of the former far-right president Jair Bolsonaro. A first round on Sunday is to be followed by a […]

US-space-militarization

The Admission That Changes The Rules

For decades, the militarization of space operated on a kind of diplomatic fiction: everyone assumed the major powers were developing weapons capable of operating in orbit, but no government had ever officially confirmed deploying them. That fiction ended last week when US Secretary of the Air Force Troy Meink told […]

China-economy-overproduction-AI-race

China’s AI Ambitions Widen A Dangerous Economic Gap

China’s economy is pulling in two directions at once, and July’s data makes the split harder to ignore. On one side, household spending is barely growing and the property sector remains locked in a multi-year collapse. On the other, factories are running hotter than ever, with high-tech manufacturing surging at […]

Germany-Merz-chancellorship-end

Reading The Warning Signs Around Chancellor Merz

Political power in Germany rarely collapses overnight. It erodes first – in lost votes, in failed personnel reshuffles, in polling numbers that keep sliding without a clear floor – and only later does that erosion translate into an actual change of leadership. That’s the framework German political analysts are now […]