Opinion

The Coming Nuclear Crises Monday, November 18th, 2019

Mind the Learning Gap Sunday, November 17th, 2019

Despite frequent calls for action to provide universal primary education and eliminate gender disparities, few developing countries have made much progress toward these goals. For example, although South Asia made substantial progress toward achieving gender parity during the era of the Millennium..

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Open Guidelines: The Foreign Interference Problem in Australian Universities

Education has always been a political matter, whatever the apolitical advocates of it think it is.  In Australia, it has proven sectarian, ideological, and skewed, often on the issue of funding.  At the schooling level, private institutions receive more worldly goods from the taxpayer than state..

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Abolish the Billionaires? Friday, November 15th, 2019

The march of the billionaires has seemed unstoppable. Even as the International Monetary Fund warns of a synchronized global slowdown, the wealth of the very rich continues to grow unabated. According to Oxfam, the number of billionaires in the world has almost doubled since the 2008 financial..

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Why world can not protect climate without checking population growth? Thursday, November 14th, 2019

A well researched study has been conducted about the linkages between global population growth and climate hazard. The study has been conducted by Nandini Consultancy Centre, a firm of chemical engineers based at Chennai and Singapore. The study report urges the UNO to recognize the inadequacies..

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Kalapani Belongs To Nepal Wednesday, November 13th, 2019

Nepal has been an independent and sovereign nation since the ancient times, known for its historic bravery the country upholds the title till date. Nepal has been surrounded by two emerging superpowers on each side of its borders - India and China. Due to unregulated border between the two..

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Missing the Big Picture on Poverty Reduction

This year’s Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences was awarded to Abhijit Banerjee, Esther Duflo, and Michael Kremer for their experimental approach to poverty reduction. In the Nobel Committee’s view, the economists’ use of randomized controlled trials (RCTs), a method adapted from..

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The Impeachment Blues Tuesday, November 12th, 2019

The most dismaying thing about the impeachment proceedings against US President Donald Trump is that they are falling so short of the constitutional gravamen of the issue. True, some Democrats in the House of Representatives, particularly Adam Schiff of California, the chairman of the House..

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New Hope for Indian Unity Monday, November 11th, 2019

After eight years of deliberations, India’s Supreme Court has issued a verdict that settles one of the most protracted inter-religious conflicts in the country’s turbulent history. The Court’s decision couldn’t have come at a better time. The ruling concerns a disputed site in the dusty..

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Power to the People?

People all over the world are resorting to mass demonstrations to express grievances and press unmet demands. While, in some ways, popular protests are a triumph of democratic principles and civic activism, they also carry serious risks, including violence by and against protesters. Their..

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The Rise of Nationalism After the Fall of the Berlin Wall Friday, November 8th, 2019

The fall of the Berlin Wall on the night of November 8, 1989 dramatically and suddenly accelerated the collapse of communism in Europe. The end of travel restrictions between East and West Germany dealt a death blow to the closed society of the Soviet Union. By the same token, it marked a high..

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Curfew Panda Wednesday, November 6th, 2019

It seems a tall, ambitious and very authoritarian order: imposing bans on persons under the age of 18 from playing online games between 22:00 and 08:00; rationing gaming on weekdays to 90 minutes and three hours on holidays and weekends. This is the response of the People’s Republic of China to..

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How to Deal with a Declining Russia Tuesday, November 5th, 2019

The Kremlin is on a roll. Under President Vladimir Putin, Russia has replaced the United States in Syria, continues to intervene in Eastern Ukraine, and recently hosted an African summit in Sochi. Appearances, however, can be deceptive. True, Russia retains a vast nuclear arsenal, equal in size to..

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The Hillary Clinton Resentment Machine Monday, November 4th, 2019

Only a sadomasochist would consider it a genuine prospect. A failed presidential candidate, the louse in the locks of the Democratic Party, keen to make yet another vain tilt at the White House. But in the rogues’ gallery of the defective and disturbed, Hillary Clinton can count herself as..

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Scott Morrison’s Authoritarian Streak: Crushing Anti-Mining Protest in Australia Friday, November 1st, 2019

The Prime Minister of Australia is fuming. Having made his mark on Australian politics by being the mining sector’s most avid defender, Scott Morrison was disturbed by the week’s events in Melbourne that saw clashes between police and protesters outside the sixth annual international mining and..

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Tethering Pegasus: WhatsApp takes NSO Group to Court Thursday, October 31st, 2019

A lawsuit filed in a US federal court in San Francisco on Tuesday threw up a few interesting, and disturbing considerations. In it, the Facebook-owned platform WhatsApp advanced an allegation that now seems commonplace: that the Israeli spyware Pegasus (known in computer wonderland as a remote..

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The Arab Winter of Discontent

A new wave of revolts is shaking the Arab world, with Lebanon and Iraq now joining Sudan and Algeria. Recent mass protests in each country have mobilized millions of people from all walks of life, all of whom are angry over the deterioration of economic conditions, which is seen as being..

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Boris Johnson Against Parliament Wednesday, October 30th, 2019

A pretty odd thing, this. The prime minister of Britain, supposedly of the conservative creed, making an almost violent dash against both parliament and the courts of law. While his presence is barely a patch on Margaret Thatcher, there is something about the Johnson rabble that reeks of demagogic..

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Corporate Citizens Must Become Global Catalysts Tuesday, October 29th, 2019

By last month, 183 corporate CEOs signed on to a statement affirming their commitment to move beyond the “shareholder first” mantra to account for the interests of all stakeholders, including employees, customers, suppliers, and communities – many responded with skepticism. But dismissing the..

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The Silence of the Republican Lambs Monday, October 28th, 2019

In the 1960s, the dissident poet Alexander Galich wrote about the mute complicity of Soviet apparatchiks in Joseph Stalin’s crimes, notably the Great Purges in which millions were detained or died in the Gulag. “Those who were silent became the bosses, because silence is gold,” Galich wrote...

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