Who is the winner in post-ISIS Syria?
ISIS may have been defeated, but the battle for Syria’s political soul is far from over.
The Queen rules the Commonwealth!
Many epithets have been used to run down the Commonwealth. The London summit may even be called the Commonwealth Games II…
Russia haunts the western imagination
The dividing line between authoritarian Russia and liberal democracies is growing ever thinner.
The Aral Sea Disaster
Liu Zichao visits the lunar landscapes of Uzbekistan and realises the terrifying power of environmental disaster.
Marx and modern microeconomics
Few economists doubt that Marx flunked economics, a judgement mostly based on his labour theory of value. But Marx’s representation of the power relationship between capital and labour in the firm is an essential insight for understanding and improving modern capitalism.
Is the US heading towards Fascism?
Joost Douma looks at recent political events in the United States and grapples with the question of whether Fascism will take hold or if we will witness a breakdown in government and the rule of law.
England is Anxious
Rather than comfort ourselves with nostalgia for monarchy, empire, church, and the ‘special relationship’, it’s time to embrace confusion – and optimism? – about what ‘England’ could mean in the modern world.
Sex and Charity
Regarding the massive scandal involving chief executives of big NGOs, the situation must be considered through the lens of how we have dealt with sexual abuse. But we must be wary of how this is used to justify budget cuts.
At the roots of the nationalism of the rich
If we take the cases of Catalonia, Flanders and northern Italy, the formation of the nationalism of the rich generally coincided with periods of prolonged fiscal strain.
Baudelaire’s Parisian Scenes
Charles Baudelaire’s poetic masterpiece, Les Fleurs du mal, underwent extensive reworking between 1857 and 1868, as did the French capital in which he was writing. Daniel Finch-Race explores the ecopoetic implications of such upheaval in ‘Le cygne’, a poem torn between antiquity and modernity.