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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
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*
Created
Thu, 30/11/2023 - 11:30
Another Trump innovation Trump’s abuse of the pardon power is well known. But this analysis by Protect Democracy pinpoints three specific abuses that are unprecedented and provide a major threat in a Trump second term: During the Trump presidency, we saw three types of henchmen pardons: Self-protective pardons: Trump dangled pardons for associates implicated in Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into the Trump campaign’s contacts with Russia, notably former campaign manager Paul Manafort and his former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn, providing an incentive for them not to cooperate with the Mueller investigation into Trump and his 2016 campaign. Both were indicted, in Manafort’s case sentenced to years in jail, and later pardoned. Pardons to reward illegal political activity that accrued to his benefit: Trump pardoned 2000 Mules filmmaker and vocal ally Dinesh D’Souza, who pled guilty to using straw donors to make illegal campaign donations to a Republican Senate candidate.