Tag: politics

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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

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Democracy is in Crisis

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Democracy is in crisis across the globe, especially in UK, it has been rocked by Brexit, the pandemic and successive attempts by governments to bypass legal norms.  Jonathan Sumption renders acute analysis of the state of democracy today – from the vulnerabilities of international law to the deepening suppression of democracy activism in Hong Kong, and from the complexities of human rights legislation to the defence of freedom of speech. One of the finest examples is of Jonathan Sumption, whose career has been an unusual combination of medieval historian, barrister, supreme court judge, member of the House of Lords. The … Continue reading Democracy is in Crisis

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The giant Trauma

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The German Peasants’ War was the greatest popular uprising in Western Europe before the 1789 French Revolution. In 1524 and 1525, it swept across Germany with astonishing speed as thousands of people massed in armed bands to demand a new and more egalitarian order. The peasants took control of vast areas of southern and middle Germany, torching and plundering the monasteries, convents, and castles that stood in their way. But they would prove no match for the forces of the lords, who put down the revolt by slaying somewhere between seventy and a hundred thousand peasants in just over two … Continue reading The giant Trauma

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Have we lost ability to make things?

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We live in a manufactured world, Unless you are floating naked through space, you are right  now in direct contact with multiple manufactured products. How ofoten we stop to think: where do the things we buy actually come from? American President, Donald Trump, promised in his recent inaugural address, America would soon become “a manufacturing nation once again”. His planned tariffs, will encourage some global companies to relocate factories back to the US.  Academic expert on innovation and technology at Cambridge University, Tim Minshall’s Your Life Is Manufactured is about perils of losing touch with the art of making things .  This … Continue reading Have we lost ability to make things?

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Iran’s Rise and fall

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The 1979 Islamic Revolution triggered a cold war between Iran and the United States – former fast friends. Despite the US’s relentless efforts at containment, Iran has risen as a formidable power in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Yemen and Gaza. Its newfound status not only frustrates the US but has swiftly become a thorn in the side of Israel and Saudi Arabia. How did Iran rise so rapidly and as it faces ever increasing pressure at home and abroad, can it hold onto its power?  Iran is weaker now than it has been since the Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s, in … Continue reading Iran’s Rise and fall