This time next year, the world may find the arcana of Tibetan Buddhist reincarnation taking centre stage in global politics. For the 14th Dalai Lama, who celebrated his 89th birthday a few weeks ago, has long promised to reveal his …
Xi Jinping’s cunning housing crisis
With the imposition of his “three red lines” regulations in 2020, Xi Jinping called time on China’s epic real estate boom. For the previous two decades, real estate had played a huge part in China’s economy, matched only by exports …
China’s plan to defeat the West
In the five-year political cycle of the Chinese Communist Party, the Central Committee’s Third Plenum is often considered the most important for the setting out of transformational and strategic economic goals. In reality, there have only been a couple of …
Hezbollah has made a fatal mistake
The Lebanese border with Israel shimmers with shades of yellow and green. The scene is Levantine pastoral: if Monet were Middle Eastern, this is what he would have painted. It was late October, just weeks after Hamas’s atrocities, when I …
The man who defended Orientalism
“As a young man visiting a Sufi shrine in Algeria,” remarks the writer Robert Irwin parenthetically in an otherwise scholarly essay on medieval Arabic literature, “I once encountered a jinni in the form of a cat.” No further elaboration is …
Venezuela has reached its nadir
Yesterday, those Venezuelans who have not yet fled the country received positive proof that their democracy is dead. Exit polls in Sunday’s national election showed a resounding win for the opposition to socialist dictator Nicolás Maduro. But in today’s Venezuela, …
The Iron Lady who could save Venezuela
Despite being the most popular politician in Venezuela, María Corina Machado has been banned from standing in this weekend’s election. Forbidden from flying, she must rely on cars and motorcycles — even canoes, horses and tractors when the roads are …
The Iron Lady who could save Venezuela
Despite being the most popular politician in Venezuela, María Corina Machado has been banned from standing in this weekend’s election. Forbidden from flying, she must rely on cars and motorcycles — even canoes, horses and tractors when the roads are …
Can Iran resist collapse?
While Russia and China remain the biggest threats to America and its Western allies, there is a third unfriendly power that Western leaders should remain watchful of: the Islamic Republic of Iran.
Like Russia and China, Iran is directed by …
Has Japan given up on pacifism?
“They pay in yen, we pay in blood!” Such was the refrain when, after the Gulf War broke out in 1990, Japan’s leaders decided that under the terms of its American-authored postwar constitution they could not send forces to the …
China is stealing Silicon Valley’s homework
Up until the 16th century, China was the most technologically advanced region in the world. While aristocrats ruled Europe, China’s meritocratic literati made exquisite scientific discoveries: gunpowder, the compass, papermaking and printing, among others. Now, China hopes to return to …
Arundhati Roy’s radical zeal
After bagging the Booker for The God of Small Things in 1997, Arundhati Roy made a life-altering decision: “to postpone reading Don DeLillo’s big book” about nuclear and bodily waste in order to make time for “reports on drainage”. This …
Did Justin Trudeau cover up the Chinese spy scandal?
Did the Chinese Communist Party interfere in the past two Canadian elections? A fantastic series of leaks from Canada’s Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) over the winter of 2022/23 suggests so. The leaks point to a vast CCP campaign of political …
How will the Ukraine war end?
How will the war in Ukraine end? In an election overshadowed by a grim climate of international instability, it is remarkable that the only candidate to seriously address this question so far has been Nigel Farage. Laying out Reform’s foreign …
The epidemic plaguing Aboriginals
A little over 10 years ago, as a young anthropology student, I arrived in the dusty, shrub-infested outback town of Alice Springs in a champagne-coloured Toyota Camry. It’s an extraordinary place: vast and dry and scorched. I planned to spend …