Opinion

The Global Consequences of a Sino-American Cold War Monday, May 20th, 2019

The Victory of Small Visions: Scott Morrison Retains Government Sunday, May 19th, 2019

Australian politics since the 1990s has been marked by a dedicated loathing of the “vision thing”. For those keen to see policies lasting beyond the life of the May fly, disappointment lies. Federal governments, at best, have shelf lives of three short years. Governments are effectively..

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It’s Cheaper to Talk than to Cut Emissions

Earlier this month, the UK parliament declared that the planet is facing a “climate emergency,” making the United Kingdom the first country to do so after cities like Los Angeles, London, Vancouver, and Basel. It’s a move that sums up all that is wrong with climate policy: politicians are..

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ON BUDDHA PURNIMA DAY, LET THE WORLD DEDICATE ITSELF TO TIBET’S CAUSE Saturday, May 18th, 2019

In 20th century , three grave tragedies took place in the world. Two of the tragedies were the World War I and World War II, when Germany, with unconcealed greed and ambition to dominate the world and emerge as the world leader caused world wars. Millions of soldiers and innocent persons in several..

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NEED FOR CLIMATE OF GROWTH FOR INDIAN ECONOMY & SOCIETY TO GROW Friday, May 17th, 2019

Millions of Indian citizens are relieved that election campaign for 2019 parliamentary poll has now concluded. Most people felt that it has been a horrible experience for them to constantly read and hear about the abusive language used by various politicians against one another. The obnoxious terms..

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The Resilience of the Arab World’s Pouvoir

Eight years after the Arab Spring, dreams of democracy in the Arab world have been dashed by the harsh reality of autocracy, corruption, and military rule. Yet Algeria and Sudan, neither of which was swept up in the 2011 turmoil, are now trying their luck at challenging the often-surreptitious..

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Modern Monetary Disasters Thursday, May 16th, 2019

Modern Monetary Theory (MMT), a seemingly new approach to economic policy, has become a hot topic, gaining support from leading US progressives such as presidential candidate Bernie Sanders and Democratic Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. But MMT enthusiasts should heed lessons learned in..

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Is America Tired of Losing Yet?

Not content with its trade war against China, US President Donald Trump’s administration has also opened bilateral trade negotiations with Japan. Yet whatever Trump hopes to achieve with Japan, it will be far less than what he threw away when he abandoned the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) in..

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How Banning Abortion Will Transform America Wednesday, May 15th, 2019

“It was a horrible time,” recounts one Romanian gynecologist, referring to the period between 1966 and 1990, when abortion and contraception were completely banned under the dictatorship of Nicolae Ceaușescu. “Women refused to have sexual lives, resulting in family fights and abandonment,”..

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Fantasies of Humanity: The Christchurch Pledge and a Regulated Internet

It had to come. A massacre, broadcast in real time and then shared with viral automatism; the inevitable shock, and the counter from the authorities. The Christchurch shootings, inflicting fifty-one deaths upon worshippers at two mosques in quiet New Zealand on March 15 this year, have spurred..

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Why the World Needs National Development Banks

Support for national and multilateral development banks has grown worldwide in the decade since the global financial crisis. And the continued success of national development banks (NDBs), in particular, will be vital to achieve more sustainable economic growth in the future. Development banks..

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Modern Merchants of Death: The NSO Group, Spyware and Human Rights Tuesday, May 14th, 2019

Arms manufacturers of old, and many of the current stable, did not care much where their products went. The profit incentive often came before the patriotic one, and led to such dark suspicions as those voiced by the Nye Committee in the 1930s. Known formally as the Special Committee on..

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Stopping the War on Children

Over a century after its construction, the Peace Palace in The Hague – home to the International Court of Justice, the Permanent Court of Arbitration, The Hague Academy of International Law, and the Peace Palace Library – stands as a monument to the soaring ambition and dashed hopes of a bygone..

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Why the US and China See Negotiations Differently

Trade negotiations between the United States and China have broken down because the US government says the Chinese were walking back their agreement on matters that had previously been addressed. US negotiators and President Donald Trump were furious, and on May 10, Trump more than doubled US..

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Maximum Pressure in the Strait of Hormuz: The US-Iran Standoff Monday, May 13th, 2019

Hegemons are never going to sound too sensible when they lock horns or joust in spats of childish anger. Power corrupts, not merely in terms of perspective but language, and making sense about the next move, the next statement, is bound to be challenging. Otherwise justified behaviour can be read..

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The Return of Fiscal Policy

Five years ago, the French economist Thomas Piketty made a splash with his book Capital in the Twenty-First Century, in which he argued that there is an innate tendency toward wealth concentration in market economies. The mechanism to which Piketty pointed was that the rate of interest, r, is..

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Dirty Floating in Emerging Markets

Say one thing and then do something else. That pretty much sums up current orthodoxy in emerging economies regarding exchange-rate management. Countries are supposed to use the interest rate to achieve an inflation target and let the exchange rate float freely. In practice, Asian and Latin American..

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Cleaning out the Nutters: Paul Keating, China and Australia’s Security Establishment Sunday, May 12th, 2019

Inimitable to a fault, former Australian Prime Minister Paul Keating had been fairly quiet on his party’s policies till an impromptu press intervention last week. Catching two journalists of the ABC off-guard, Keating took little time to land a few blows against Australia’s foreign and domestic..

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A Confrontation from Hell

Former US Ambassador to the United Nations Samantha Power once called genocidal wars “a problem from hell.” As US President Donald Trump’s administration ratchets up tensions with Iran, the world must now reckon with the prospect of a “confrontation from hell” between the two..

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WILL USA CONTINUE TO REMAIN SUPER POWER ? Saturday, May 11th, 2019

In the last Presidential election in USA, Presidential candidate Trump used the slogan “America first” very effectively, which largely caught the imagination of US citizens and satisfied their ego. Aided by this single slogan, Trump successfully became the US President. In the last several..

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