All articles by Matt Kennard
Ken Livingstone on America, Iraq, and his political evolution
Matt Kennard — June 6, 2010 0 Comments
For the last 500 years global politics has been determined by Europe and America. Now it is about to shift so that power will have to be shared with China and the coalition of forces in the developing world
Politics
Matt Kennard on neo-Nazis in the US military
Matt Kennard — June 3, 2010 2 Comments
MK: It’s difficult because the U.S. military don’t keep specific data on neo-Nazis. They couple them together with gang members, so it’s impossible to say. There have been FBI reports saying they’ve uncovered 203 neo-Nazi veterans, but in terms of hard numbers there’s nothing, really
Politics
China’s new strategy for African minerals
Matt Kennard — June 1, 2010 1 Comment
“It is no big secret that it’s the ambition of many junior exploration companies to discover a good deposit, de-risk it, then have a mining major approach you and your shareholders with an attractive offer,” said Mark Parker, managing director of African Eagle, an exploration company working in Africa. “Obviously, with China’s current voracious appetite for raw materials, Chinese companies are the obvious suitors at the moment.”
Economics
UK must expel Israeli ambassador
Matt Kennard — May 31, 2010 6 Comments
Let him now heed his own words, and stop all arms exports, expel the UK ambassador. The enormity of this crime must not get lost in the inevitable mist the Israeli propaganda machine will pollute the debate with. Israel ordered and carried the murder of unarmed humanitarian activists in international waters, trying to take aid to a starving and desperate people.
Politics
Robotic mining: The future for resources extraction?
Matt Kennard — May 27, 2010 0 Comments
“In Africa you don’t want to automate mines in a poor town where people need jobs, you probably won’t be able to get away with it in places like the DRC [Democratic Republic of Congo],” said Joe Lunn, FinCapp analyst
Technology
Nick Cohen on Iraq, the Left and the anti-globalisation movement
Matt Kennard — May 25, 2010 5 Comments
In this society you don’t have to make commitments anymore. You didn’t have to say, “If Saddam’s Iraq was a terrible place when America when was his ally, it was still a terrible place when America was his enemy.”
Politics
Defend Kurdish journalists imprisoned in Turkey for 187 years
Matt Kennard — May 14, 2010 1 Comment
Turkey wants to join the EU, but unless it changes its constitution, which the people have a referendum on in the not-too-distance-future, it will stay stuck in the backward, demented system that is being handily exploited by a group of authoritarian boneheads who think they are defending Turkey, but are in fact hastening its descent into dictatorship and fascism
Editor's Pick, Media
Jak Codd’s witch hunt at Leeds University continues
Matt Kennard — May 5, 2010 33 Comments
This crude censorship of the freedom of student journalism is a sad day for my old university and a sad day for Codd who has revealed himself as a spineless bureaucrat concerned with his own partisan interests. Leeds students of today should demonstrate against this blatant censorship and protect the paper; just like the students demonstrated against Ellis and were successful in seeing him expelled from the university, they should pressure Codd to step down from his position which he has abused
Editor's Pick, Media
Joseph Stiglitz on the left turn in Latin America and the privatization of Iraq
Matt Kennard — April 27, 2010 3 Comments
I think we live in a different world than we lived in the 1980s. In the 1980s the CIA could get away with change of regimes that it didn’t like in other countries. We are in a different world, and we are in a world in which that kind of strategy risks backfiring. And it happened in Venezuela: after the US attempted coup, Chavez’s electoral vote increased markedly, and I think it’s partly because countries don’t like the US coming in and changing their government from the outside. No matter where it is, in general it’s not welcome
Economics, Editor's Pick
Richard Sennett on trade unions, life narratives, and our financial times
Matt Kennard — April 21, 2010 1 Comment
MK: Are you talking about the current crisis?
RS: Yeah. I think this is not just going to be a simple thing of throwing some money at things in a normal business cycle. It’s graver than that, and it’s your generation that will have to sort that out, I’ll be retired. The serious thing is what to do about this. The system can’t hold together
Editor's Pick, Politics, Psychology
Steven Pinker interview on capitalism, morality and the future of our species
Matt Kennard — April 16, 2010 0 Comments
History shows us that the tendency to dominate and exploit is far greater with communism than with capitalism (at least the democratic capitalism of Europe and the US). The reason, I think, is that people only contribute altruistically to the good of others if they perceive them to be kin or close community. Otherwise you either have to motivate them by profit (capitalism) or by coercion (communism). As bad as the profit motive may seem, it’s much better than the Gulag, the killing fields, and the “cultural revolution.”
Editor's Pick, Science
Matt Kennard
26London
Matt Kennard graduated from the Journalism School at Columbia University as a Toni Stabile Investigative scholar in 2008. He now works for the Financial Times in London. He has written for the Guardian, Salon, The Comment Factory and the Chicago Tribune, amongst others. In 2006 he won the Guardian Student Feature Writer of the Year Award
mattkennard@thecommentfactory.com