Tag: politics

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Emergence of Americas

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Yale professor, Greg Grandin, a Pulitzer-winning historian comes America, América, the first definitive history of the western hemisphere,  a sweeping five-century narrative of North and South America that redefines our understanding of both continents- perfect for reader of How the World Made the West. The story of the United States’ unique sense of itself was forged facing south – no less than Latin America’s was indelibly stamped by the looming colossus to the north.  Grandin reveals how the Americas emerged from constant, turbulent engagement with each other, shedding new light on well-known historical figures like Bartolomé de las Casas, Simón Bolivar … Continue reading Emergence of Americas

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Combine curiosity, irreverence, power of calmness and warmth to deal with difficult people

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Paul Dolan, a professor of behavioural economist at the London School of Economics, defines Beliefism as a discrimination against those with different beliefs to us. In today’s civil discourse, one exacerbated by the anger-stoking effects of digital doomscrolling and the perverse incentives the media has constructed for political discourse (Anyone who changes policy in response to criticism, for example, is gleefully reported to have performed a “humiliating U-turn”.) The citizens of the US and UK are becoming more polarised and inclined to avoid altogether those who aren’t their ideological comrades. Do you really avoid people who are strongly against immigration? … Continue reading Combine curiosity, irreverence, power of calmness and warmth to deal with difficult people

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Seven turbulent decades of Global finance

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Professor of economist at Harvard and former chief economist at the IMF, Kenneth Rogoff explores the global rise of the U.S. dollar and reveals why the future stability is far from assured and argues that America’s currency might not have reached today’s lofty pinnacle without certain amount of good luck. The sharp sell-off of US Treasury bonds following Trump’s April 2 announcement of America’s highest tariff wall for a century confirmed Rogoff’s view that the recently prevailing belief that real interest rates will be “lower forever” is a dangerous myth. He sees America’s, and hence the dollar’s, “Achilles heel”, as … Continue reading Seven turbulent decades of Global finance

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Correlating rigid thinking to political extremes

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  Political Neuroscientist attached to Cambridge University, Dr Leor Zmigrod discovers the biological factor that drive ideologies to extremes and her research into the physical and psychological origins of extremism. Her definition of ideology is a rigid and dogmatic way of thinking that discourages thought in favour of a pre-determined and hermetically sealed belief system. Her findings “Prejudiced children’s rigidities were not constrained to one domain: they were everywhere. Rightly spilled into every response, every reasoned thought and miscalculation.” Zmigrod reveals the hidden mechanisms driving our beliefs and behaviours. She using powerful tools of neuroscience to show that our political … Continue reading Correlating rigid thinking to political extremes

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Ireland was a laboratory for empire: While million starved grain was hoarded 

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In the 1800s, as Britain became the world’s most powerful industrial empire, Ireland starved. In 1847, Richard Webb, the rector of Caheragh, County Cork, sent a group of men to check on his parishioners. On arriving at a cluster of cottages, they were turned back by farmers who told them, “those houses are cursed”. Webb persisted sending another emissary who discovered the corpses of the Barry family there, half-eaten by dogs. The cleric wrote: “I need make no comment on this but ask, are we living in a portion of the United Kingdom?”. The Great Irish famine fractured long held … Continue reading Ireland was a laboratory for empire: While million starved grain was hoarded 

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inadequate visions of gender equality

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Inequality in the workplace impacts all areas of our lives, from health and self-development to economic security and family life. But, despite the world’s richest countries’ long-avowed commitments to gender equality, there is so much to fix – and so much we don’t see. The most lucrative industries are male-dominated- yet half of men think they’re the ones being discriminated against. Women work more hours than men and accumulate less wealth- while many children want more time with their dad. Patriarchy Inc, reveals how the status quo is harming us all, in our working lives and beyond. Drawing on social … Continue reading inadequate visions of gender equality

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People’s right to think, teach and speak are routinely violated

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In Western world, free speech is held up as core value, but there is widespread discord and disagreement about what freedom of expression means. In China, India and across the Islamic world, unorthodox views about politics, sex, and religion are repressed and people are often punished for expressing them. Amidst perennial imbalances of power, continually evolving cultural taboos, dramatic new technologies and a fast-changing global media landscape, where free speech comes from- and how we might think about it- are critical questions. Through lens of history, freedom of speech is not an absolute from which societies and regimes have drifted … Continue reading People’s right to think, teach and speak are routinely violated

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Battle for hearts, minds, literature, and intellects

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Charlie English explains how the CIA helped Poland’s underground print banned books, as over ten million books that were smuggled across the Iron Curtain. In 1950s Polish émigré Jerzy Gledroye was running out of cash, after launching a literary review in Paris to save Polish literature from the communist onslaught. In France, funding was scarce, and the Polish people stranded there after the Second World War were improvised and many French intellectuals were enamoured with the USSR. Giedroyc went in search of money in America, as the CIA officers who were keen to undermine Soviet Union censorship, offered him $10,000 … Continue reading Battle for hearts, minds, literature, and intellects

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Greed, lies and Veil of Secrecy

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Former Wall Street Journal reporter, editor and Bloomberg’s investigative journalist Duncan Mavin’s Melt Down exposes a crisis year for Credit Suisse’s 2023 implosion, with a lucid account of how greed and complacency of bosses and employees destroyed the bank. For centuries Swiss banks have served the globe’s wealthiest individuals, employing a strict culture of anonymity and gaining massive wealth in the process. In March 2023, bank runs and panic among depositors of smaller US lenders spread to customers of Credit Suisse. As the crisis deepened Credit Suisse remained highly solvent across a reassuringly wide range of metrics, but said it … Continue reading Greed, lies and Veil of Secrecy

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Persians in crisis exploring questions of love, money, art and fulfilment

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A captivating Iranian family Valiat’s saga whose fate is intertwined with modern Iran. In Iran they were somebodies, but in America they’re nobodies. We follow, Elizabeth, from childhood to old age, a real matriarch, a lost young artist plagued with a too-big nose, and lost love, who remained in Tehran despite the revolution, while her daughters are Shirin, a flamboyantly high-flying event planner in Houston, who considers herself the family’s future, and Seema, a dreamy idealist turned bored housewife languishing in Los Angeles,  fled to the US in 1979, the year of the revolution. They are kept company with Niaz, her … Continue reading Persians in crisis exploring questions of love, money, art and fulfilment