It is strange how you have to go abroad to see the ability of wildly divergent realities to persist, side-by-side, as if nothing were more natural.
On the fiftieth anniversary of the American intervention in Vietnam, one lesson might be that knowledge is never passed on, only acquired, that history is not a reality which must be discovered but must be thought about and then reconstructed.
US helicopters and their crews arrived in Saigon on December 11 1961, ostensibly to take South Vietnamese troops deep into the jungle to wage what US advisors deemed to be a new kind of war: guerrilla warfare. Many see this event as the start of the Vietnam War.
Seen as a relatively safe haven in northern Iraq, considered a terrorist threat by Turkish authorities, and currently waiting in the wings in Syria, Kurdistan and its different interest groups constitute another question mark in the political exchequer of the Middle East.
During the past few weeks, Mr. Monti has named many reforms that need to be made, not including a new electoral law. But if it is true that we have lost a great deal of sovereignty, we Italians did it willingly, a long time ago, and Mr. Monti has little to do with it.
India’s demand for resource security, potential trade and investment opportunities and a strategic partnership with the African Union is similar to that of China; but the approach that each nation has taken is rather different.
"I can never recall Britain being so friendless in the EU", writes the Director of the Centre for European Reform who thinks it spells disaster for the UK whatever the fate of the Franco-German pact.
A fresh awareness of system-failure and resource-constraint draws on the experience and ideas of the 1970s. But this time the vision of radical change is real possibility as well as urgent necessity. (This article was first published on 1 December 2011)
London’s mayoral election might be overshadowed in 2012 by royal and Olympic pageants, but it’s more revealing of the city’s heartbeat than either, says David Hayes.
The origin of the eurozone crisis lies in the overreach of the Maastricht treaty of 1992. A new process is needed to set the European Union on a new course - but this must have explicit popular consent at its heart, says Cas Mudde.
The Ethiopian government led by prime minister Meles Zenawi uses charges of terrorism to silence and intimidate its domestic critics. The political technique is now being extended by accusing independent journalists of conspiracy. One of his targets, Abiye Teklemariam Megenta, responds.
Audio: Founder of openDemocracy, Anthony Barnett, discusses the Occupy movement and its antecedents on Resonance FM show Novara hosted by Aaron Peters.
