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" Books are the carriers of civilization. Without books, history is silent, literature dumb, science crippled, thought and speculation at a standstill." Barbara Tuchman:
We can set up a simple Hegelian dialectic that explains the position of things in the Middle East today. The regimes that control Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Pakistan, UAE, Kuwait, Qatar and Yemen are all extremely unpopular props of the immediate post-Colonial era.
Every one has heard the old cliche about how we are liberals when young and become conservative later in life. This cliche might have an element of truth but for those who remain liberal all their lives, this cliche seems stupid.
The case for multinationals is the case for business. When it comes to creating and distributing value, nothing compares to the world of business. Multinationals are very good at business. Multinationals are very good at creating value.
Imagine a company that has branches in many states, has its own militias, and brings down states. Imagine this multinational also illegally conducts a shady trade in drugs, and arms.
This week Africa's most populous country goes to the polls. Election season in Nigeria is crazy season. It is crazy season in Nigeria.
At dinner the other day with a group of intellectual types, the conversation is flowing like a dream. The topics flow seamlessly from comics to exotic food to sport.
The left is usually associated with the label "progressive". Being progressive implies embracing change. The left today has become the side that opposes change. Think of the long lines of protesters in Europe anytime any minor bit of change has to be made.
Children playing in your yard, Mom and Dad having stable married sex. Behind it all is fertility. The production of hormones, the deposition of sperm in a woman's vagina, and the fertilisation of ova. Fertility. That's what human obsession with sex is all about.
A leader represents his country and embodies it. In a country like Belgium the King is the very symbol of the nation , and a major part of its identity. In the television age, the image of the world leader is even more important than ever.
Idioms and proverbs are great. They convey age-old wisdom concisely and accurately. They are generally wise sayings. They even convey wisdom by themselves.
Development is a strange animal. Or maybe it is underdevelopment that melts the brain. A lot is said about it, but a not a lot is understood about it.
It's not much of a secret that some of the users at Newsvine are technically challenged. Hmm, there's not even any reason to pretend, for technically terrible, yours truely comes instantly to mind. It is probably a safe bet, that few could be worse than me.
The problem with multi-part articles on Newsvine is that great comment threads have the potential of covering the material intended for later parts. That happened a bit with this article. In the comment thread of part 1 some of the things covered here have been discussed.
Goldman Sachs projected which of the world's countries will have the 20 largest economies in 2025. The list surprisingly included such economic backwaters as are bound by Bangladesh, Vietnam, Nigeria and Pakistan. The full list is to be found here.
Cameron Doudu, the Ghanaian columnist wrote a piece in The Guardian last weekend in which he basically had a good point but managed to bury it under his poor research and bad contextualising.
The 200th anniversary of the abolition of the Trans-Atlantic slave trade has been well celebrated by the British. For them, it was a critical moment in their moral history. The celebrations in Africa have been less muted. For Africa, slavery has in many ways not ended.
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