Global Politics

Turkey has a history of strict censorship which still remains a prominent issue in modern day Istanbul and shows no signs of stopping anytime soon. Media censorship is at an all time high with 140 press censorship cases already known in the country, newspapers have been shut down and journalists imprisoned. Now censorship is spreading to the […]

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Due to the International Association of Athletic Federations’ (IAAF) June 17th decision to maintain the suspension of the All-Russian Athletic Federation (ARAF), Russian track and field athletes will be largely ineligible for competition in the 2016 Olympic Games. Due to contrasting statements by the IAAF and the International Olympic Committee (IOC) on June 21st, however, there reportedly remains […]

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The United Kingdom’s exit from the European Union is certain to have far reaching consequences both domestically and internationally. Dominating early headlines is the idea that this decision could lead to the fragmentation of the UK as geographic divisions have been thrown into sharp relief. With Northern Ireland and Scotland both voting to remain – Scotland […]

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CC Image courtesy of Rareclass This piece was also published in Huffington Post on 23rd June 2016 Something we in Scotland learned the hard way in 2014 is that referendum questions are dangerous because they make both choices on the ballot paper seem equally plausible. By giving the people a choice we somehow assume that […]

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In trying to puzzle through the populism animating the right and left after the 2008 global financial crisis and the 2015 European migrant crisis, we can draw a worrying parallel between the UK referenda and social and economic populism in the US. As in the US presidential race, the UK’s Remain/Leave debate is complex: it […]

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George Orwell famously wrote that “Political language … is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.” Having lived through the Scottish independence referendum, it is hard to believe that less than two years on from that experience the people of the UK are […]

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Many parts of Europe currently face a renaissance of the xenophobic political right. Thus, it is certainly no coincidence that in a recent issue of the “New Statesman” Rowan Williams reminds us that “the toxic brew of paranoia and populism that brought Hitler to power” may not be so far away from liberal democracies as […]

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On 9th February 2016, Yanis Varoufakis, the unofficial leader of the ‘Democracy in Europe Movement 2025’, and a coalition of activists gathered together in Berlin to launch the ‘DiEM25’ manifesto.  They declared: ‘The EU will be democratised. Or it will disintegrate!’ The former Greek finance minister believes the European Union to be a beautiful conception, […]

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It’s official: Australia’s “Stop the Boats” campaign is a success. Or so the government claims. Back in 2013, former Prime Minister Tony Abbott ascended to his post in part because of his pledge to “stop the boats,” or, in less catchy rhetoric, to prevent asylum seekers – mostly arriving by sea from the Middle East […]

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  Vladimir Putin’s Russia has, especially in recent years, come under heavy criticism from many in the West. Much of this criticism, however, deals with Russian aggression toward Ukraine, the extrajudicial killings of critics of the Putin regime such as Alexander Litvinenko, or accusations of widespread corruption. All of these issues are clearly in violation […]

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Xi Jinping’s recent pledge to “resolutely contain the ‘Taiwan independence’ secessionist activities in any form” has commentators and politicians worried that tensions may be rising. Indeed, given that this comes only two months after Taiwan’s presidential election – where Beijing’s preferred KMT candidate, Eric Chu, was convincingly beaten by pro-independent candidate Tsai Ing-Wen – cross-strait […]

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By Mustapha El-Khalfi – Minister of Communications, Spokesman of the Government of Morocco With difficult global headwinds and regional instability, now is the time to embrace a new era of national unity Since 2004 $1 billion has been invested in the Moroccan Sahara, which is evident in the construction of more than 150 new local […]

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20D will go down in Spanish history. 20th of December – the Spanish write all of their most important dates in this manner – was the first time voters rejected the duopoly that had governed the country since democracy was reintroduced in 1975. For 40 years power in Spain has been held by either the […]

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On the 18th of September 2014, 84.59% of the registered Scottish public exercised their right to express their opinion through the ballot box. 55% voted ‘No’ to independence while 45% voted ‘Yes’. Although the result was decisive, it was not a landslide victory for the status quo, with 1, 617, 989 Scots voting in favour […]

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Just three weeks after entering office, Polish President Andrzej Duda’s first official visit to Berlin on August 28 allayed concerns in some quarters that his presidency would resurrect the combative foreign policy his right-wing party, Law and Justice, practiced the last time it was in power from 2005 to 2007. Back then, prickly ties with […]

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This article was originally published by The Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs in Carnegie Ethics Online on 17 August 2015. In Klaus Harpprecht’s 1995 biography of Thomas Mann, he highlights a statement which Mann wrote in 1947, which, as Harpprecht puts it, “one reads with a distinct shiver half a century later”: In […]

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At the stakeholder briefing during the ninth round of negotiations of the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), U.S. chief negotiator Dan Mullaney quipped that everyone was discussing Investor to State Dispute Settlement (ISDS) systems except the negotiators. The latter have not discussed the issue since January 2014, when the European Commission launched a public consultation, […]

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In light of wider Danish strategic priorities, Danish Foreign Minister Martin Lidegaard’s restrained reaction to Russia’s decision to target Danish military frigates with nuclear weapons was understandable. In a recent op-ed piece for the Danish daily Jyllands-Posten, the Russian ambassador to Denmark, Mikhail Vanin, wrote that Danish warships would “become targets for Russian nuclear missiles” should […]

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The European Union (EU) and the United States (U.S.) have been negotiating the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) since 2013. Intended to revive the transatlantic economies by eliminating tariffs and accepting various degrees of regulatory convergence or mutual recognition across a wide range of sectors, and solidify EU-U.S. relations, it now appears to be […]

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Gender inequality is a thing of the past. This is the narrative we are fed; that any incidences of violence or discrimination regarding gender, particularly towards women, are anomalies often attributed to developing countries. We are all quite content to think, “We’ve got this under wraps” and the discussion is closed. The fact of the […]

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