Showing 1 - 10 of 52
Why run for seat?
Oped, Postbag, Published on 12/01/2026
» Re: "Thailand's local vote still matters", (Opinion, Jan 10).
How G20 can help curb inequality
Oped, Jayati Ghosh, Published on 01/12/2025
» This month's G20 Summit in Johannesburg marked several historic firsts. For starters, it was the group's first-ever summit in Africa, and the first to include the African Union as a full-fledged member. It also set less encouraging precedents: it was the first meeting boycotted by a key founding member -- the United States -- on spurious grounds, and the first in which that same country tried to prevent the host from issuing a final declaration. Equally unprecedented was South Africa's decision to ignore the American threat and issue one anyway.
Timor-Leste's long road to Asean
Oped, Ronny P Sasmita, Published on 22/10/2025
» This Sunday, when Timor-Leste finally joins Asean as its 11th member, it will mark a diplomatic triumph for one of Asia's smallest states and a moral test for the region's most enduring organisation. For Dili, this long-awaited step is not about prestige; it is about survival, legitimacy, and opportunity. For the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean), welcoming Timor-Leste completes the Southeast Asian map but also exposes the limits of its inclusivity.
Authoritarians' brave new cities
Oped, Robert Muggah & Carlo Ratti, Published on 23/09/2025
» Few policy ideas are as radical -- or as misleadingly packaged -- as "freedom cities". Championed by Silicon Valley's techno-libertarian elite and recently embraced by right-wing politicians like Donald Trump, the idea is to create digitally powered, master-planned enclaves of deregulated innovation.
Trump's tariff blackmail boosts Brics
Oped, Thitinan Pongsudhirak, Published on 06/12/2024
» Even before officially taking office, United States President-elect Donald J Trump is shaking up the international system with drama and fanfare unlike any other major leader in recent memory. His most recent outburst to slap 100% tariffs on the "Brics" countries -- Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa, as well as Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran and the United Arab Emirates -- is a case in point. While it will coerce developing economies to think twice about the cost of going their own way, this tariff blackmail and others like it also risk pushing smaller countries away from the US to other rival big powers, particularly China.
Do carbon credits make a difference?
News, Rapeepat Ingkasit, Published on 27/11/2024
» At COP29 in Baku, carbon credits ignited intense debate from the very start. While Azerbaijan, the host nation, celebrated progress on Article 6, climate justice groups criticised carbon markets for enabling major polluters to continue emitting greenhouse gases.
Rethinking national prosperity through institutions
News, Antara Haldar, Published on 13/11/2024
» Each autumn, a telephone call from Stockholm launches one or a few scholars to international fame with the bestowal of the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences -- a process that Irving Wallace dramatised in his 1962 potboiler The Prize.
Middle Kingdom and 'boomerang effect'
Oped, Kasit Piromya, Published on 25/10/2024
» President Xi Jinping, on the eve of assuming the supreme leadership of China, came forward with the notion that China, the Middle Kingdom, lost its grandeur and supremacy in the middle of the 19th century to Western influence and encroachment, as well as the Japanese and island kingdoms that essentially acted as imperial Western powers inflicting military defeats against the massive but inadequate Chinese forces.
The UK's most working-class government
Oped, Aaron Reeves & Sam Friedman, Published on 09/07/2024
» The United Kingdom has a new Labour government whose class composition are radically different from previous ones. According to our analysis of Labour's shadow cabinet, some 46% of Keir Starmer's cabinet members were raised by parents with "working class" occupations. That figure is well above average in terms of the broader working population, and it stands in stark contrast to the 7% who were of working-class origin in the last Conservative cabinet.
Understanding 'Animal Farm' in Zimbabwe
Oped, Beaven Tapureta, Published on 27/04/2024
» I began to notice Animal Farm references start to proliferate in Zimbabwe in 2008.