Showing 1 - 8 of 8
A view of global power with a gangster's eye
Oped, Jayati Ghosh, Published on 20/01/2026
» There is a method behind the apparent madness of US President Donald Trump's transactional, spheres-of-influence approach to geopolitics and the global economy. Nowhere has this logic been clearer than in his administration's illegal abduction of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and its ongoing efforts to secure control of the country's oil reserves by installing a client regime.
Forgetting what democracy is for and all about
Oped, Antara Haldar, Published on 10/07/2025
» On June 2, I got a sense of history coming full circle in the Polish town of Sopot, on the Baltic Sea just a few kilometres from the Gdańsk Shipyard. Sharing a stage at the Plenary Session of the European Financial Congress with Lech Wałęsa, the legendary trade unionist who led the 1980 Solidarity strike at the Lenin Shipyard and later became Poland's first post-communist president, I felt I was witnessing the end of an era.
Grim path to peace
Oped, Postbag, Published on 13/05/2023
» Re: "Can Jakarta push peace in Myanmar?" (Opinion, May 9).
Tax havens are fuelling autocracy
Oped, Yuriy Gorodnichenko and Ilona Sologoub, Published on 23/02/2023
» People have been trying to dodge paying taxes since time immemorial, but globalisation has turned tax avoidance and evasion, as well as money laundering, into a lucrative business model. Over the past few decades, offshore tax havens such as the Cayman Islands, Bermuda, Cyprus, and Ireland have enabled corporations and wealthy individuals to conceal profits and private wealth on an unprecedented scale.
Putin's actions prove Russia is a fascist state
Oped, Vasyl Cherepanyn, Published on 10/06/2022
» A few years ago, during a panel discussion on the politics of memory at a university in a German-speaking country, I called Russian President Vladimir Putin "the most powerful fascist politician in the world". Afterwards, the organisers shyly told me that while the event had gone well, the label I applied to the Kremlin leader was "too much" -- even though Russia had by that time already occupied Crimea and started a war in Ukraine's eastern Donbas region. I was surprised not so much by the organisers' comment as by the way they made it. They seemed genuinely embarrassed as if I had said something obscene.
Nostalgia: It's worse than it used to be
Oped, Edoardo Campanella, Published on 07/05/2022
» Before the pandemic, nostalgia was a major force in global politics. Donald Trump promised to "make America great again", and Brexiteers won their political battle partly by idealising Britain's imperial past. While Chinese President Xi Jinping called for a "great rejuvenation of the Chinese people", Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdo an pursued neo-Ottoman ambitions, and Prime Minister Viktor Orban lamented the Kingdom of Hungary's territorial losses after World War I.
Can Navalny change Russia like Lenin did?
Oped, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 22/01/2021
» When Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny returned to Moscow on Sunday after convalescing in Germany from an attempted poisoning by the FSB domestic spy agency, the regime-friendly media loyally failed to mention his arrival. With one striking exception: Vremya, the flagship news show of Russian state television.
A silly syllabus
Oped, Postbag, Published on 04/11/2020
» Former Education Minister Somsak Prissananantakul favours providing students with a better understanding of history (BP, Nov 3), so long as a process known as chamra prawattisat be undertaken, in which academics with differing opinions come together to agree on a standard interpretation. This proposal sums up much of what is wrong with Thai education, and perhaps Thai culture as well. Why have a standard interpretation of history? So it can be crammed down students' throats for later regurgitation on command? History is like a photograph. It captures events from a specific angle, with a specific depth of field, and perhaps through various filters. Why not expose students to multiple interpretations and let them, through discussion, identify the biases in each and, in the process, develop critical thinking skills?