Make Sense of the world
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Science and technology will become the lifeblood of the Chinese economy in this decade and will remain its lifeblood in the future. That is, in part, because China has become sufficiently advanced to be able to effectively compete with the US and other technological leaders in the West. It is also...
The specter of Aung San Suu Kyi, the Nobel Peace laureate, standing before the UN’s highest legal body to defend Myanmar against charges of genocide is striking. Suu Kyi was once the revered face of international human rights, but she is now defending the most indefensible of crimes. But beyond...
A succession of social upheavals over the last decade has radically realigned political power throughout the world. As a result of these tectonic shifts, what had once been on the furthest fringes of the right has now moved toward the center while the left has been pushed to the margins....
We have come a long way from the times when women were classified as militants and arrested for demanding voting rights, stepping in front of galloping horses to garner attention. In just over two years, the #MeToo movement has made us question the notion of sexual engagement, our understanding of...
Yoga gurus and cult leaders – I’ve seen a few. Four weeks ago, I unknowingly joined an alleged New-Age cult on the New Zealand coast, together with a giant kraken and some neatly dressed pensioners who would make any book club proud. They were among the 200 people of all ages preparing for a...
On October 20, Joko “Jokowi” Widodo and Maruf Amin were officially sworn in as the president and vice president of Indonesia after winning the election in April. Three days later, President Jokowi officially installed his new cabinet. The figures in the new cabinet come from various circles:...
The TED website describes Kishore Mahbubani, a career diplomat from Singapore, as someone who “re-envisions global power dynamics through the lens of rising Asian economies.” This description is not just apt for Mahbubani but also for his new book, “Has the West Lost It?” The title may...
Led by young people, climate strikers blocked traffic on two mornings at the end of last month in Washington, DC. On the first day, protesters chained themselves to a boat three blocks from the White House, and 32 activists were arrested. On the second day, activists targeted the Environmental...
With the advent of the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR), the potential to integrate technology into the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) is reaching new heights. According to Klaus Schwab, Founder of the World Economic Forum, 4IR is “blurring the lines between the physical, digital, and...
In recent weeks, Indonesia has been in the headlines due to forest fires. Having spread throughout the country in Southeast Asia, the regions of Jambi, South Sumatra, Kalimantan and Sulawesi have been severely affected while Riau Province has been the worst hit. According to the National...
Radical-right radicalization has quickly moved from being a fringe domestic phenomenon to a mainstream global movement. The radical right, albeit always internationally connected and aligned across individual states, has over the last decade moved to increasingly intertangled structures, not only...
