Archive for the ‘World current affairs’ Category
A cheery message for Christmas
December 18th, 2013 by Roger Darlington
“Already, we have forgotten the basic lesson of the [financial] crash [of 2008] : Global problems need global solutions. And because we failed to learn from the last crisis, the world’s bankers are carrying us toward the next one. The economist David Miles, who sits on the monetary policy committee of the Bank of England, […]
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Barack Obama’s complete Nelson Mandela memorial speech
December 11th, 2013 by Roger Darlington
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Madiba, we thank you for inspiring us
December 6th, 2013 by Roger Darlington
Although expected for so long, the news is still so sad. In my lifetime, I have never known the death of anyone to affect so many people so deeply as the loss of Nelson Mandela. On 11 June 1988, Vee and I attended a concert in (the old) Wembley Stadium in London to mark Mandela’s […]
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How do children in your country do at maths, reading and science?
December 4th, 2013 by Roger Darlington
Every three years, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) conducts its Programme for Internenational Student Achievement (PISA) and it has just published the results for 2012. The testing of 15 year olds is in mathematics, reading and science and this time 65 countries and regions took part. How did the UK do? We […]
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He’s one of the most powerful men on the globe, but most of the world’s citizens could not give you his name and even political observers struggle to understand him
December 1st, 2013 by Roger Darlington
He is Xi Jinping, the General Secretary of the Communist Party of China, the President of the People’s Republic of China, and the Chairman of the Central Military Commission. The “Observer” newspaper carries this profile today.
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The new Cold War: China vs Japan
November 28th, 2013 by Roger Darlington
In the East China Sea, there is a a group of islands which the Japanese call Senkaku and the Chinese call Diaoyu. Japan currently owns them but China wants them. This is the most current and visible point of conflict between China and Japan, but the divisions between the two Asian giants runs much deeper […]
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Iran comes in from the cold
November 25th, 2013 by Roger Darlington
I am really pleased that there is an international agreement with Iran over its nuclear programme which has cooled the Iran nuclear crisis. For seven years, I have been blogging about the twin dangers of Iran developing nuclear weapons and Israel attacking Iran to prevent such a development – see here. If the Iranians honour […]
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How many people should go to prison?
November 12th, 2013 by Roger Darlington
At one level, the answer might seem obvious: it depends how many people commit a crime attracting a prison sentence. But, in fact, the rate of incarceration varies enormously around the world. This means that, unless human nature is very different in different countries, the key factors are the cultural propensity to commit crime and […]
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What 70 of the world’s leading human rights organisations have told David Cameron about the British government’s reaction to the mass surveillance revealed by Edward Snowden
November 4th, 2013 by Roger Darlington
“We have joined together as an international coalition of free speech, media freedom and human rights organisations because we believe that the United Kingdom government’s response to the revelations of mass surveillance of digital communications is eroding fundamental human rights in the country. The government’s response has been to condemn, rather than celebrate, investigative journalism, […]
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Do we need an African NATO?
October 29th, 2013 by Roger Darlington
My son Richard Darlington thinks so, as he explains in this cogent article for the “New Statesman”. Not surprisingly I’m sure, I agreed with him. But I’m not just saying this because he is my son and very well informed on international matters. Six years ago, I wrote a posting on this blog about the case for […]
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