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Showing posts from June, 2016

Freedom, Security and Gun Laws

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M uch ado has been made about freedom in the past 70 years since the world emerged from the tragic conflagration of World War II. The relations between countries, dictated by the New World Order that emerged then, still reigns today, reflected and observed in multifaceted international issues, through massive financial crises and in the grating conservatism of international institutions, which have acted more as guarantors of Western hegemony than as impartial custodians of the international interest. The 'Freedoms' we are fed and consequently influenced to praise are derived from Western, or more specifically American, values. Due to the relentlessly pervasive iterations of the Western way of life portrayed on every media platform imaginable, every country must be willing to cede at least some cultural or spiritual authority to the West, no matter how authoritarian. This is inevitable given geopolitical realities, but more importantly also because of its almost universal reson

The Limits of Rhetoric

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Despite the bluster of the Republican presidential nominee, it seems quite unlikely that recent poll results on the popularity and support of his campaign can universally be discounted. The recent ABC/Washington Post Poll brought matters to a head, showing an immense 12% lead for Hillary over Trump. Of course, poll results vary (probably a result of both sample bias or political maneuver, but in what proportion is anyone's guess), yet there seems to be a consensus no matter which poll one looks at: Clinton is firmly in the lead. Of course, with about a hundred days left till the start of the primaries, there is hardly any certainty about the results; the volatility of recent events attests to that fact. From the Orlando shooting to Brexit, to the resulting fallout in the financial markets where more than $2 trillion in equities was wiped out, the last few weeks has been spectacularly chaotic. Politics is a vast public undertaking, relying on mass communication to  galvanize  the p

Brexit's Brunt and Causes

Britain’s commitment to leaving the European Union (EU) was concretized today, legitimized by the democratic process. Having put the decision of whether to Leave or Remain to a referendum, the voting of which was held yesterday on the 23 rd of June, British Prime Minister David Cameron inadvertently opened the path to a British ‘secession’ from the EU; now the shockwaves of that decision are rocking the economies the world over, with Cameron announcing his resignation. A few minutes after the US markets opened, the DOW dropped 500 points, although the descent was arrested. The DOW Futures went down 700 points, and bank stocks have almost universally been adversely affected. There is no point in disputing the seriousness or the monumental nature of the ‘Brexit’. All the fears that accompanied the ‘Grexit’ scare attend to the current crisis as well, and perhaps even more, given Britain’s ostensibly more pivotal role on the international stage, at least in relation to Greece. There are fe

7 things to learn from Charles Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord (1754 - 1838)