Sudhirendar Sharma What women need to understand is that they too have the power to make a difference. Ancient myths and legends relegate women as proverbial sacrificial lambs in the gendered narrative of our history. Yashodhara is one such, who was made to suffer protracted isolation as her husband abandoned her in his spiritual journey to attain enlightenment as the ... Read More »
by Carlo Ratti VENICE – Some of the worst floodings in Venice’s history has submerged some of the historic city’s renowned cultural sites, including St. Mark’s Basilica on Piazza San Marco. This is only the sixth time the basilica has been flooded in 1,200 years, but the fourth time in the last two decades, and the second time in under ... Read More »
by Sally Jewell WASHINGTON, DC – When world leaders gather at the 25th United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP25) in Madrid from December 2-13, they will discuss concrete steps for meeting and increasing national emissions-reduction targets. But equally important, COP25 offers an opportunity to elevate one of the most powerful tools we have to address climate change: nature. Read More »
by Greta Thunberg, Luisa Neubauer, Angela Valenzuela MADRID – For more than a year, children and young people from around the world have been striking for the climate. We launched a movement that defied all expectations, with millions of people lending their voices – and their bodies – to the cause. Read More »
Since when does adding 2 and 2 together, or subtracting 5 from 10 ¬– and getting the answers wrong – become a punishable crime? Or for not remembering Bangabandhu facts or the lines of a Rabindranath Tagore poem? All are trivial and insignificant in the grand scheme of things and certainly does not warrant being beaten, damaged physically, mentally (or ... Read More »
by Brendan Donnelly Director, The Federal Trust 27th November 2019 – Jeremy Corbyn has rarely in recent decades feared political controversy. On issues such as Ireland, the Middle East, NATO, income redistribution and renationalisation, he has advocated with candour and persistence views that have been unattractive, even shocking to many electors. Many of his supporters thereby hail him as a ... Read More »
By Farhana Haque Rahman Farhana Haque Rahman is Senior Vice President of IPS Inter Press Service; a journalist and communications expert, she is a former senior official of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization and the International Fund for Agricultural Development. Read More »
by Karin Pettersson on 25th November 2019 @AB_Karin For Karin Pettersson, journalism has never been more challenging—and never more important. The news-media industry has long lamented about how the digital revolution has broken its business models. Today, a majority of digital advertising money goes to Facebook and Google, and media companies are struggling to reinvent themselves through digital subscriptions. But ... Read More »
By Chandra Muzaffar Any human being who values justice and freedom would condemn the coup that ousted the Bolivian president Evo Morales on the 10th of November 2019. Read More »
by Juliane Bir on 20th November 2019 @jbir_ETUC Taking the EU directive on work-life balance off the page will require determined trade-union efforts, including in challenging prejudices. Read More »
by Daphne Halikiopoulou on 19th November 2019 References to ‘the people’ are misleading. Populism is no democratic corrective. Read More »
Good education, undoubtedly, is the best investment any government can make. This is the noblest gift it can give to its people. It never falters or fails; it produces dividends for eternity and benefits all Read More »
by Lea Ypi on 13th November 2019 With the UK facing one of the most important elections in decades, the focus should be on the clear programmatic differences between the main parties, rather than weekly polling outcomes. If I were to give unsolicited advice to media pundits preparing to comment on the upcoming general election it would be the following: ... Read More »
by Adam Tooze on 12th November 2019 Adam Tooze dissects how the macroeconomic policy discourse is disabling necessary German, and European, steps forward. The autumn of 2019 is a moment of anniversaries. The 30th anniversary of German unification has garnered much attention. Rather less remarked upon has been the ten-year anniversary of the eurozone crisis. It was in the autumn ... Read More »
by David Gow on 9th November 2019 @gowdav It may be three decades since the Berlin wall came down but too many others have recently proliferated. ‘Die Mauer in den Köpfen’ (the wall in the heads) is a phrase I first heard as a German correspondent in the 1990s, not that long after the October 1990 celebrations of reunification at ... Read More »
by George Tyler on 7th November 2019 @georgertyler Democracy is threatened by politicisation of constitutional courts. Unorthodox tactics are required to restore their role. Read More »
by Delara Burkhardt on 4th November 2019 @delarabur The European Green Deal does not just aim at combating the climate crisis. It’s also an opportunity for social change. Read More »
by Stephen Pogány on 31st October 2019 Local elections in Hungary have placed a question-mark over the durability of the ‘illiberal democracy’ of Viktor Orbán. Read More »
by Albena Azmanova on 30th October 2019 @AAzmanova Why does environmental promise always fall short in practice? A new answer to the social question can bridge the gap. Read More »
by Peter Bofinger on 29th October 2019 Peter Bofinger argues that introducing central-bank digital currencies would need to be subject to very careful consideration. Read More »
By Achim Steiner UN, Oct 28 2019 (IPS) – Last week, a too-familiar human tragedy captured news headlines. 39 people were found dead inside a shipping container on an industrial estate in Essex in Southeast England; 31 men and 8 women whose individual identities, for now, remain anonymous, as authorities begin to investigate one of Europe’s worst people-trafficking cases. Read More »
By Emma Navarro Oslo – The Earth’s oceans face many threats, none of which have quick fixes. Still, the solutions are known, and with a sufficiently broad coalition of partners, we can get the ball rolling on a number of fronts. Read More »
by Paul Mason on 23rd October 2019 @paulmasonnews Paul Mason reimagines the Manchester of his birth in a postcapitalist age—and raises the challenge of getting there. Imagine this: a child is born in a city where 40 per cent of the workforce make things with machines and manual labour. The dominant social relationship is the wage relation. The social contract ... Read More »
Sudhirendar Sharma Mention of a railway journey invites memories of the good, and not-so-good travel experiences over time. More than the destination, it is the sheer experience of being on the train journey that replays through awful encounters, amusing anecdotes, and avoidable follies. Yet, there is something compelling that continues to entice people to persist with their train journeys, quite ... Read More »
By Bertrand Badré and Antoine Sire Paris – Four years after world leaders signed the Paris climate agreement and adopted the United Nations’ 2030 Agenda with its 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), the global environmental crisis shows every sign of worsening. Polar ice and glaciers are melting at an accelerating rate. Read More »
by Lee White, Tanguy Gahouma Libreville – When Gabon ratified the 2015 Paris climate agreement, its real work was just beginning. The main challenge was to find ways to conserve the country’s natu ral environment and address the growing climate crisis, while not limiting economic opportunities for its people. Almost four years later, we have a deeper understanding of the ... Read More »
by Amandine Crespy on 17th October 2019 The rejection by the European Parliament of Slyvie Goulard as French commissioner showed that ‘it’s France’ is not a sufficient excuse for special treatment. Read More »
by Alida Vračić on 16th October 2019 High emigration rates are doing massive damage to the prospects of the western Balkans—would a stronger EU perspective reverse this outflow? Read More »
By Patricia Scotland, Commonwealth Secretary-General 16 October 2019 -Trade wars, protectionism, and nationalist rhetoric are combining to create the possibility of a nightmare debt crisis that could be worse than any previously experienced. Global borrowing is now at the highest levels since the 1950s – and history suggests we should take this as a warning that a debt crisis could ... Read More »
by Karin Pettersson on 15th October 2019 @AB_Karin Karin Pettersson argues that ‘free speech’ is not a licence for politicians relying on rage to lie, and for such lies to be amplified by ‘social media’. Read More »
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