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Section: International

  • INTERNATIONAL

    Addressing the democracy deficit

    • Lizzie O'Shea
    • 07 May 2018
    12 Comments

    A common response to voters behaving badly is to call for qualifications on the franchise, such as education, or the outsourcing of public policy decisions to experts. Instead, I'd argue the opposite: the problem is not democracy, it is the deficit. It is not that too many people have a say in how society is run, but rather not enough.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    Random landings

    • Catherine Marshall
    • 26 April 2018
    2 Comments

    We're about to land, but I don't know where I'm going. The landscape spread below me is a tableau of muddy waters and tin-roofed houses poking out from palm groves. I thought I'd be flying direct to Paro, in Bhutan, but discovered once airborne that this Royal Bhutan Airways flight would be landing first at a place I'd never heard of.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    Our flailing aid created a Pacific problem

    • Eliza Berlage
    • 19 April 2018

    China and India are rising global powers, thanks to a burgeoning middle class, huge export markets and military might. So why wouldn't they take the western retreat from the Pacific as an invitation to dance? But their support comes with a crippling debt levels and the potential for a favour to be called in down the line.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    China, aid and the gift of interdependence

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 19 April 2018
    2 Comments

    In recent months comment on international politics has been about taking sides and falling into line. Against such strident calls, two apparently unrelated pieces of speculation passed with little response: the prediction of a further cut to aid, and the assertion that China wanted to establish a military base in Vanuatu.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    What comes next for surveillance capitalism?

    • Lizzie O'Shea
    • 16 April 2018
    3 Comments

    Whether Facebook fails or succeeds beyond the Cambridge Analytica scandal is somewhat beside the point - we are finally starting to have discussions about the desirability of their business model. Because of course, Facebook is not the only company that strip mines data with almost sociopathic disinterest.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    Trump's Syria pantomime

    • Binoy Kampmark
    • 16 April 2018
    4 Comments

    If anything, there seemed to be something hollow about a gesture that all but acknowledges the success of the Russian-backed regime which has taken a stranglehold over the civil war. One conclusion is that brutality is fine as long as it avoids the use of certain types of force, namely chemical weapons.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    Love answers Punish a Muslim hate campaign

    • Rachel Woodlock
    • 05 April 2018
    4 Comments

    Punish A Muslim Day has come and gone. While we won't know for a few months if there was a statistical increase in the number of reported attacks on Muslims, the campaign's real purpose was simply to reiterate a message of stigma and exclusion. This is what makes the various counter-campaigns so important.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    Don't look away from genocide history

    • Catherine Marshall
    • 29 March 2018
    11 Comments

    The repository of a superfluity of victims' faces and their heartbreaking stories leaves visitors questioning how it is possible for a country to turn on its own people like that. Why do humans turn into killing machines at the behest of their leaders, and when will we allow it to happen again?

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    Is Nixon the celebrity anti Trump we need?

    • Saman Shad
    • 27 March 2018
    1 Comment

    When Cynthia Nixon announced she was running for governor of New York the excitement was instantaneous. Not because she was a woman, as there have been no female governors of the state, nor because she once played Miranda on Sex and the City, but because she spoke in a way that captured leftie hearts the world over.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    Don't be the Australia Dutton wants us to be

    • David Holdcroft
    • 26 March 2018
    8 Comments

    There are two laws for how to get out of a hole: the first is to acknowledge you are in one. The second is to stop digging. I suspect Peter Dutton won't care too much for this advice. He is clearly enjoying his job, playing the populist card with great aplomb, including recently in his advocacy for white South African farmers.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    Finding freedom after fleeing North Korea

    • Eunhee Park
    • 21 March 2018
    5 Comments

    Freedom is a common word that is often used in our daily lives, but it is not easy to define. Freedom for me means being able to express myself and be outspoken. It means thinking for myself and being free to be curious. Finally it means preserving important economic, social, and cultural rights. I am a North Korean refugee who escaped in 2012 for this freedom.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    Russian spy games: a Novichok fact check

    • Justin Glyn
    • 19 March 2018
    15 Comments

    It's like the plot of a John Le Carre novel: A former double agent found unconscious on a park bench; allegations Mother Russia poisoned him with a secret nerve agent; diplomatic repercussions. Before assuming life imitates art, it would be well to check our facts, not least because stumbling into war with a nuclear power is a silly thing to do.

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