John Kerry, the former U.S. Secretary of State and Special Presidential Envoy for Climate, spoke at Chatham House post-COP 30. He emphasized urgent climate action, criticizing political denialism and highlighting bipartisan cooperation’s significance. He noted significant progress in clean energy investments and the need for global commitment, particularly from major emitters like China.
Chairman Mao remains a polarizing historical figure and key communist thinker alongside Marx and Lenin. The ‘Little Red Book’ is a widely influential text that shaped leftist movements globally, emphasizing the importance of the masses in history. Despite Mao’s controversial legacy, the book’s simple yet profound ideas continue to provoke thought and discussion.
View More Review: Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-Tung “Little Red Book”
The Chatham House meeting, in collaboration with SNF Agora Institute, discussed the pressures facing democracy today amid rising authoritarianism and declining public confidence. Key topics included youth engagement, technological impact on democratic practices, and the need for practical reforms, particularly in the MENA region. The conversation highlighted the importance of resilience, collective action, and the voices of young people in shaping a more effective democracy.
View More Chatham House: Democratic resilience in a disrupted world
I love this band. They hail from Essex and totally took America by storm, exporting some of the best music the United Kingdom has to offer. Depeche Mode are cutting edge tech and way back when they were at their peak in the 1980s they were redefining music boundaries. Many…
View More Depeche Mode – World in My Eyes
Chatham House is the Royal Institute of International Affairs. It is based in St. James’ Square, Mayfair, London, a short walk from Piccadilly Circus and Leicester Square. I have been a member of Chatham House for several months but with me being based in Wales all of my interactions thus far have…
View More Chatham House: How Effective Are The United States’ Sanctions? 19.06.2023
I have previously read a lot of material on World War 2 codebreakers and the likes of Alan Turing and their critical work against Enigma and the invention of modern computing during that period. Of course, codebreaking and cryptography is not a new science and has been a critical part…
View More Review: Before Bletchley Park – The Codebreakers of The First World War – by Paul Gannon
Thomas Paine is an important writer at an important time that bequeaths us in his ‘Rights of Man’ a fundamental shakeup of what our democratic rights as citizens should be, drawing especially on the French Revolution and also American Revolution and the fundamental rights that their new revolutionary societies produced…
View More Review: Rights of Man – by Thomas Paine
If you were a hermit living in a remote cave then I expect that even you would be well aware that Prince Harry and his wife have been in the news recently quite a lot. Initially I decided I was going to avoid the mass hysteria and not tune into…
View More Review: Spare – by Prince Harry
Henry Kissinger is a very famous international American statesman. This is the first book of his that I have read. I was drawn to exploring his views as I have always noticed him throughout my life as being a key figure in international politics. The book is a neat summary…
View More Review: World Order – Reflections on the Character of Nations and the Course of History – by Henry Kissinger
This is an exciting tale from the turn of the twentieth century of an eccentric man of the world who encountered directly some of the most important global events of that era. It is a biography of Frederick Bruce Thomas or Fyodor Fyodorovich Tomas. He was born to former plantation…
View More Review: Black Russian – by Vladimir Alexandrov
Qiao Liang and Wang Xiangsui are from a new generation of Chinese People’s Liberation Army soldiers. They have mused upon the situation of modern military affairs and developed this theoretical book on war to describe the status quo as it was around the turn of the Millenium. The book is…
View More Review: Unrestricted Warfare – Wake Up, America! China’s Master Plan to Destroy America
When the Soviet Union ended and thus the Cold War ended on Christmas Day 1991, it was probably one of the biggest political events of my lifetime. This well-researched, detailed book, by Ukrainian author Serhii Plokhy, details the last 18 months of the Soviet Union’s existence. After USSR President Mikhail…
View More Review: The Last Empire – The Final Days of the Soviet Union – by Serhii Plokhy
The FARC: The Longest Insurgency by Garry Leech My rating: 4 of 5 stars This book covers a very interesting subject for what in general there is a dearth of information and that which does exist tends to be fundamentally skewed with bias. The left wing of Colombia’s forty year…
View More Review: The FARC: The Longest Insurgency
Confessions of an Economic Hitman by John Perkins My rating: 4 of 5 stars This is an easy to read autobiographical account of a confessing EHM, who feels the pangs of guilt for his work in expanding America’s global empire over the past few decades, at the expense of developing…
View More Review: Confessions of an Economic Hitman
The author has had a political career which has reached the highest levels of the Pentagon. He is obviously a very driven and intelligent man and his analysis of the new phenomenon that is Cyber War is second to none. The globality of the threat is given a context that…
View More Review: Cyberwar: The Next Threat to National Security & What to Do About It – by Richard A. Clarke