Le Monde diplomatique (Oslo)EurozineLe Monde diplomatique (Oslo)2012-12-30Summary for Le Monde diplomatique (Oslo) 12/2012Sonia Shah
India's superhospitals and superbugs
Medical tourism in India can greatly reduce the cost to westerners of the best and fastest surgery. It can also lead to an infection by the latest and nastiest superbugs.Leila Farsakh
Palestine refuses to disappear
The Gaza ceasefire negotiated by Egypt has reinforced the position of Hamas regionally and internally. Meanwhile the UN voted to grant Palestine the upgraded status of non-member state, a success for Mahmoud Abbas. But the PA president faces opposition from the US, Israel and some countries in Europe -- and scepticism from the Palestinians themselves.Agnès Sinai
The partiality of the judge in the world of nuclear power
The International Atomic Energy Agency has neither managed to control the spread of fissionable nuclear material or prevent the enrichment of uranium in Iran. In addition to be given the role of the police constable in cases where military use of nuclear power is not acceptable, the agency is also an eager proponent of the use of atomic power for civil purposes. This is also its agenda in Fukushima, where the agency is the host of a ministerial conference from 15 to 17 December.Perry Anderson
Europe speaks German
It is becoming clear that Germany intends to be the EU's major political as well as economic power, and to dominate European governance to favour Germany's privileged position as the global economic order changes. Ordinary citizens of other countries in Europe may refuse to comply.Espen Grønlie
An African European
Celebrated by some, hated by others. There are very few who are indifferent to the philosopher Jacques Derrida. A new biography reawakens the discussion about one of the most controversial philosophers in the last century.Anne-Cècilie Robert
Africa's organic borders
The national boundaries drawn across Africa in the 19th century, with their straight lines that make no social or geographic sense, were very important to national independence and self-definition. But they may not represent, or contain, the future.Truls Lie
Nothing more to lose
Orwa Nyrabia is an important film personality who last autumn was thrown into a Syrian prison for his daily protesting on Facebook. A campaign where people signed petitions for his release was a contributing factor for his escape from Syria. Le Monde diplomatique has talked to him about torture, Western media and the importance of culture in the Syrian revolution.Mikkel Bolt
The end of the line for the bubble economy
No matter if capitalism is close to a final collapse or we are "just" experiencing a process involving devaluation or correction, we are nevertheless in the middle of a deep crisis which will make a dramatic impact on the art world. How this will happen, remains to be seen, but we already have one first indication: the cooperation the Swedish art exhibition hallTensta Konsthalls has with the auction house Bukowskis, owned by the family Lundin, also owned by Lundin Petroleum, an oil company accused of being complicit in killings and arson in several villages in Sudan and Etiopia. The same oil company has also sponsored the opening exhibition at Astrup Fearnly's new museum in Oslo.Renaud Lambert
Media strifes in Latin-America
In Brasil, the media company Globo owns 61 per cent of the TV-channels and 40 per cent of all the printed media. In Argentina, Clarín owns almost 60 per cent of the entire media sector. Left-wing governments attempt to create a more balanced media landscape but are tempted to regulate media content or create alternatives which are just as one-sided in their coverage as the dominant media.Serge Halimi
Back to Gaza again
"There's no country on Earth that would tolerate missiles raining down on its citizens from outside its borders," said President Obama. When he made this perfectly sensible statement he was not thinking of the Palestinians in Gaza, helpless victims of Israeli bombs and missiles in some cases dropped or fired by F-16 fighters or Apache helicopters manufactured in the US.For years now, there have been the same shortcomings in accounts of events in Palestine.Remi Nilsen
Environmental debt
The Kyoto Protocole expires at the end of the year. Representatives from 200 countries met in the first week of December 2012 to agree on the terms of a new treaty, or to a least extend the Kyoto Protocole in time. It was in its time of great symbolic importance, as the first binding multilateral agreement concerning CO2 emissions. But if you sum up what has been achieved at its expiry, it has not led to much else symbolic gestures.Slavoj Zizek
Glimmers of hope in Obama's presidency
Obama is often accused of dividing the American people instead of unifying it. But what if thise is what is Obama's best quality? In times of crisis there is an urgent need for real division -- between those who want to prolong the political status quo and those who realize that change is necessary.Aditya Chakrabortty
Headache for India
Generic medicins from India have conquered the market in the poorer parts of the world. This irritates the European and American pharmaceutical industry who uses every means they have at their disposal to gain access to the enormous Indian market and block Indian producers of generic medicins to reach the rest of the world. Carla Luciana Silva
Brasil's compass in need of repair
The Brasilian weekly magazine Veja is the most influential in Latin-America. Brasil'sself-proclaimed "ethical compass" is now involved in a corruption scandal. Eivind Olsnes
With political risk out of the calculation
This autumn, the Astrup Fearnley art museum has been criticized for allowing Lundin Petroleum to sponsor them. The company is also a heavy investor in Norwegian offshore oil installations and has a bad reputation in the international oil industry. Sverre V. Sand
Perverted rituals
The documentary Bully is a testimony to how harassment has become a permanent institution in the daily life of scholl children. It opens up questions about what responsibilty both teachers and authorities have to put an end to it.Steffen Moestrup
In the middle of reality
The borders are hazy between those who film and those who are filmed.Steffen Moestrup
Every revolution needs a good hit song
Why didn't the huge sale of records in South Africa, containing songs made by the American songwriter known as Rodriguez lead to international fame?Arnstein Bjørkly
Good advertising
Mad Men is at its best a perfect blend of serious drama and soap opera. The last season of the tv-serial the witty and ragingly funny is combined with a dark, melancholic reflection in a circus mirror of the decade that changed the world. Steffen Moestrup
Symbiosis
The most enduring feature of Steven Spielberg's E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial is the symbiosis between the child and the alien.Aliocha Wald Lasowski
Rancière, art and politics
The French philosopher Jacques Rancière has for over three decades challenged the boundaries between politics and non-politics. Morten Harper
Wartime
Two German comic books look closer at the final costs of the war in Afghanistan. The fictions Wave and Smile depict the life of soldiers while the documentary Kriegszeiten examines how the war has changed the German military and their foreign politics. At the same time the most influential anti-war comic is published in Norwegian: Jacques Tardis It Was the War of the Trenches.