Showing 1 - 10 of 18
The treacherous sycophancy of the populists
Oped, Michael Burleigh, Published on 15/12/2025
» Until a few days ago, it had never crossed my mind that people across Europe -- including Londoners like me -- were living in a strife‑afflicted hell hole, "suffocated" by regulations, stripped of political liberties, and bound for "civilisational erasure". So, it was with some surprise that I read this assessment in the new US National Security Strategy -- a document that echoes pseudo‑intellectual propaganda more than resembling any serious foreign‑policy analysis.
Centre-left parties must regain relevance in Germany
Oped, Bartosz M Rydlinski, Published on 01/03/2025
» Germany's Social Democrats are one of the West's oldest political parties, with a legacy of advocating parliamentary democracy, opposing Nazism, and leading the modernisation of postwar Germany. In addition to many notable labour, economic, and human-rights reforms the party has implemented over the years, ex-SPD leader and West German chancellor Willy Brandt's Ostpolitik in the 1970s laid the groundwork for Germany's reunification in 1990.
CDU won the German polls, but can it rule?
Oped, John J. Metzler, Published on 26/02/2025
» Another major country has flipped politically to the conservative column. After three years of a drifting centre-left coalition government, voters elected a conservative (small c) Christian Democratic Union CDU government in Germany's parliamentary elections. Yet what was expected to be a massive win for the likely new Chancellor, Friedrich Merz, became a bit disappointing when his party gained 28.5% of the vote.
The key to narrowing the gap
Oped, Pascal Lamy, Agnes Kalibata & Ibrahim Assane Mayaki, Published on 31/01/2025
» In 2015, United Nations member states unanimously pledged to work towards "peace and prosperity for people and the planet" by meeting 17 Sustainable Development Goals by 2030. Although the agenda was unprecedented in its ambition -- end hunger, slash inequality, spur economic growth, achieve gender equality, arrest climate change and ensure access to water, sanitation and energy -- many expected that the world would make significant progress. But the sad, hard truth is that only 12% of the SDGs' 140 measurable targets are heading in the right direction, and more than 30% are stalled or moving in reverse.
Nobody really wants to be a Nazi, but....
Oped, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 27/12/2024
» 'Alternativ fur Deutschland" (AfD) means "The Alternative for Germany", and the alternative on offer is fascism. Not actual Naziism, but the AfD uses fascist rhetoric and tactics to attract German voters. It has also attracted some improbable foreign admirers.
Turning a little debate into a major crisis
Oped, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 20/12/2024
» One of the daily miracles of the media world is that there is always exactly enough news to fill the slot.
Democracy is in need of workers
Bartosz M Rydliński, Published on 12/12/2024
» Donald Trump shocked the world in 2016 when he was elected US president, winning swing states in America's Rust Belt, including Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, that had traditionally backed Democrats.
Allies jumpy as US waltzes into Trumpworld 2.0
News, Peter Apps, Published on 21/11/2024
» As America's allies digested the news and scale of Donald Trump's election victory, four US B-52 strategic bombers over a week ago landed at Britain's RAF Fairford having flown the Atlantic and conducted joint training missions over Scandinavia with Finnish and Swedish jets.
The link between climate and talk of 'remigration'
Oped, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 12/10/2024
» 'Remigration": the word had a harmless origin, as a term academics used to describe the phenomenon of migrants who failed to thrive in their new home and decided to go back to their birth country.
Former Merkel rival aims to become chancellor
News, Sarah Marsh, Published on 24/09/2024
» Squeezed out of top-level politics by his arch-party rival Angela Merkel more than two decades ago, Friedrich Merz is on course to land his first-ever government job as Germany's next chancellor. The conservative Christian Democrat Party (CDU) and its Bavarian sister party, which together are topping nationwide polls, last Tuesday agreed to nominate Mr Merz, 68, as candidate for chancellor in next year's federal election.