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Created
Fri, 01/12/2023 - 00:00
Perhaps the greatest shame of the Atlantic slave trade was that it inspired no shame at all. In their own time, Britain’s slave traders were men of distinction: ‘worthy men, fathers of families and excellent citizens’, as Eric Williams put it. They founded charitable schools, hospitals, orphanages and libraries, making them ‘the leading humanitarians of their age’.
Created
Fri, 01/12/2023 - 00:00
The defeat of The Voice leaves Aboriginal culture stuck in the same queasy relationship to the white nation and its essentially European notion of history that it has been in since the early 20th century, when serious efforts to acknowledge Indigenous culture began. The result is a mixture of conservation, invented tradition and misunderstanding.
Created
Fri, 01/12/2023 - 00:00
It would be decades before younger Germans emerged from the national solipsism of their parents and recognised the suffering wreaked by German fascism on other peoples. When they did so, not least through moral repugnance at the creation of the West German army and through the appearance of active ‘atonement’ movements, the way opened to wider empathies. ‘By the 1990s, German responsibility for the Holocaust had become a civil religion that defined national identity.’
Created
Fri, 01/12/2023 - 00:00
If Parliament deems Rwanda to be a safe third country, in the face of the Supreme Court judgment, it is rejecting and contradicting the ruling of our highest court on the facts, and thus infringing the constitutional principle of the separation of powers. As a matter of law, Parliament can pass any statute it likes and the courts must obey it, but this is only half the story.
Created
Thu, 30/11/2023 - 20:45

Henry Kissinger is dead. The media mill is already churning out fiery denouncements and warm remembrances in equal measure. Perhaps no other figure in twentieth-century American history is so polarising, as vehemently reviled by some as he is revered by others. Still, there’s one point on which we can all agree: Kissinger did not leave […]

Created
Thu, 30/11/2023 - 20:00
Ambrogio Cesa-Bianchi, Richard Harrison and Rana Sajedi Recent increases in interest rates around the world, following a multi-decade decline, have intensified the debate on their long-run prospects. Are previous trends reversing or will rates revert to low values as current shocks subside? Answering this question requires assessing the underlying forces driving secular interest-rate trends. In … Continue reading Global R*