A Tunisian friend of Justin Marozzi told him, “I’m embarrassed to be an Arab these days. Everywhere you look there’s chaos, fighting, bloodshed, dictatorship, corruption, injustice, unemployment. The only thing we’re leading the world in is terrorism”. For centuries the caliphate was both ascendant on the battlefield and triumphant in the battle of ideas, its…
MIT’s Daren Acemoglu and Chicago’s James Robinson authors of highly influential Why Nations Fail, provide an in-depth analysis of how to get there, It is hard, and liberty originates from a delicate balance of power between state and society. Liberty is hardly the natural order of things as in most places and at most times,…
As the Democracy is on the defensive, civil freedoms and the role of law are being eroded in many countries, Parliament, free elections, political pluralism and independent media are under assault form strongmen rulers and illiberal populists, Dutch born Hong Kong based historian, Dikotter throw light into the era of modern tyrannies, much of the…
The Labour Party under the leadership of Michael Foot with the “longest suicide note in history” Labour’s 1983 election manifesto was deeply unpopular and it felt like a turning point in British politics. Margaret Thatcher had came power in 1979 with a daring plan to reverse Britain’s decline into shabbiness and chaos, as factories closed…
A Beginner’s guide to Japan is scheduled to publish as the country bids for the world’s attention first with the Rugby World Cup and then with the Tokyo Olympics next summer. The underlying surge in foreign tourists over the past six years Japan and a window for Japan hands – old and new- how everything…
On October 5, 2017, two New York Times reporters – Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey – wrote a bold but painstakingly recounted allegations from a string of women that they had suffered sexual abuse by Weinstein while he was running the movie company that carried his name, although he maintained that any sexual contact was…
German philosopher, Ludwig Feuerbach gave an immortal reply to the followers that modern life owes much to its Christian prototype, who asked if Christians had incubated some early version of modern ideas that eventually needed toppling Christianity itself to come to their own? Despite opposition to paganism, Christianity had to be smashed as the…
A simple white tag that would go on any garment letting consumers know that it had been under humane conditions an idea by a Chicago-based activist, Florence Kelley proposed in 1899, pushing cruelty out of the clothing supply chain. It is a pity her idea didn’t catch on, as it could have saved the world…
The remarkable story one of the world’s most magnificent empires disintegrated and came to be replaced by the supreme act of corporate violence by a dangerously unregulated private company based thousands of miles away and answerable only to its shareholders. The East India Company, a joint stock organisation founded by a motely bunch of explorers…
Peter Pomerantsev “This is Not Propaganda : Adventures in the War Against Reality” explores how Russia reinvented post-modern politics and war against reality. This is the story of the brave life and tragic fate of Maria del Rosario Fuenles Rubio speaks about the initial promise of information revolution and highlights the horror of perversion.…