Harper’s magazine is running an essay, Wishful Thinking: The Aspirations and Failures of the United Nations, by Amanda Chicago Lewis. I guess if your name is Chicago you may be forgiven to be somewhat myopic, and present your country in the best light possible, or at least everyone else in a bad light. Over many…
Category: Liberal International Order
Muslim Views Column
I have started writing what would be a regular column for Muslim Views, a newspaper based in Cape Town. The column will deal specifically with global issues that affect Islam and the Muslim world, and muslim-majority countries like Turkey, Iran, Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan, Malaysia and Indonesia, and, of course, the people of Palestine. I will…
Armstrong Williams adds MAGAvoice to Tiresome Conversation
The arc of historical capitalism is bending down, way down from its dizzying heights of its golden age, between 1945 and the early 1970s. By the early 1990s, when liberal capitalism stood triumphant, there was a general sense among people who shared ideological solidarities and affiliations, that the war was over and the good people…
Calls for Appeasement and Status Quo Patriotism are growing louder and bolder
President Cyril Ramaphosa seems to have accepted the dismissal of Ebrahim Rasool without question, and seems to suffers from the same fear of Trump affliction that has debilitated CEOs in the USA, and driven them into what has been described cowardice. The dismissal of South Africa’s ambassador, Ebrahim Rasool, from Washington is brightening the light…
Nusantaran Boat Building and South East Asian Maritime Trade Routes
I arrived at Pulau Ketam a day after a completed boat had been launched. What remained were remnants of the craft. The workers had all retired to the Kampung in preparation of the evening prayers. ©ismaillagardien Sea explorers from Nusantara set foot on the African Continent through Madagascar since the early days of Christian era…
Video: Terengganu on the Western Shores of the South China Sea
Malaysia’s road to BRICS is laden with traps and mines
Malaysia’s decision to apply to BRICS for membership is visionary, but fraught with problems. These problems are mainly external, non-governmental, it should be said, and will probably continue to nag the application process and bedevil Malaysia’s actual membership and participation in the BRICS. The likely challenges Malaysia faces, more especially the Prime Minister, Anwar Ibrahim,…
Predictions of US collapse are premature and misdirected
I have been writing about the decline of the USA and related issue for a few years, now, without resorting schadenfreude or dancing on the grave of that country. (See here, here and here) That would be silly. My approach has not been “anti-American”. It has always had to do with at least two things, both of which are…