Showing 1 - 10 of 22
Socialism's novel brand of nomenclature
Oped, John J Metzler, Published on 18/11/2025
» On Nov 9, 1989, the Berlin Wall collapsed. On a very ordinary night, thousands of East Germans started crossing the dividing barrier between the communist East and capitalist West Berlin after the East German regime had suddenly opened tightly controlled border crossings. In a matter of hours, history was made. Throngs of people soon swamped the Wall and then started smashing the hated communist barrier into concrete rubble.
Trump is trying to build a far-right international
Oped, Jan-Werner Mueller, Published on 30/07/2025
» Until recently, the spectre of an international far-right alliance of populist parties in democracies around the world has been just that: any appearance of cooperation was a form of self-promotion, rather than an expression of true solidarity. Few far-right figures have made any sacrifices for one another or seriously interfered in other countries' internal affairs to prop up allies. And efforts to unite the far right in the European Parliament have fallen dismally short.
Fortress North America? My brain hurts
Oped, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 08/03/2025
» 'Today the United States launched a trade war against Canada, their closest partner and ally, their closest friend," said Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on March 4. "At the same time, they're talking about working positively with Russia. Appeasing Vladimir Putin, a lying, murderous dictator."
How Italy managed to beat fascism after WWII
Oped, Mark Gilbert, Published on 22/01/2025
» Americans are alarmed by their country's stark political divisions. But they shouldn't despair. After WWII, Italy was even more politically polarised than today. Yet by the mid-1950s, it had succeeded, against the odds, in turning the page on its fascist past and constructing a contentious but functioning democracy.
How California can tear the fascists down
Oped, Joe Mathews, Published on 16/11/2024
» I walked up on a mountain in the middle of the sky
Exploding pagers: What was the point?
Oped, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 20/09/2024
» The exploding pagers that killed at least 12 people and injured 2,800 others in Lebanon and some adjacent places on Tuesday were mostly just a new wrinkle on the exploding cellphones that Israel has used to assassinate its opponents in the past, but there was one major innovation.
Irony takes centre stage at Olympics
Oped, Slavoj Žižek, Published on 08/08/2024
» Two big cultural events this summer, the opening ceremony of the 2024 Paris Olympics and the release of Deadpool & Wolverine, both offer dazzling spectacles saturated by irony. But that is about all they have in common, and by analysing their differences, we can better appreciate the profoundly ambiguous nature of irony today.
Easing expat fears
Oped, Postbag, Published on 25/06/2024
» Re: "Ease foreign tax burden", (Editorial, June 24).
The popular decimation of India's democracy
Oped, Pranab Bardhan, Published on 18/05/2024
» India's ongoing parliamentary election, in which nearly a billion people casting their votes over a six-week period, should represent an extraordinary exercise of democracy. The bleak reality, however, is that the election appears poised to consolidate a decade-long process of democratic decay, which has included the decimation of liberal institutions and practices and weakening of political competition. After all, the leader who has presided over this process -- Prime Minister Narendra Modi of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) -- remains wildly popular.
Populism's great replacement of economics
Oped, Antara Haldar, Published on 07/02/2024
» In 1944, as World War II neared its end, the exiled Hungarian economic sociologist Karl Polanyi published The Great Transformation, a treatise that focused on the dangers of trying to separate economic systems from the societies they inhabit. Eighty years on, Polanyi's warnings about a market economy unleashed from human needs and relations may prove prescient. In fact, the future that he foretells bears a strong resemblance to Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, in which the doctor's creature runs amok and eventually turns on its creator.