Ideology of Power

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...

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  ...

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...

Charles Maurice de Talleyrand-Perigord was a French diplomat and renowned statesman who navigated the choppy and often lethal waters of international relations. His rare skill at diplomacy is even now feted by scholars and statesmen alike.

A large part of politics is concerned with advertising. It might seem slightly distasteful that candidates making a bid for leadership positions in society, supposedly people with firm moral fiber and incorruptible characters, could be involved in self-promotion. Yet it is a truism. The endeavor is steeped in accusations ranging from the extreme of racist or misogynistic, through hypocrisy, to lighter imputations of disingenuousness and lying. Self-promotion becomes self aggrandizement: promises to fix all the ills afflicting society from poverty to fundamentalism are made regardless of the capacity to fulfill them, made only to pander to the electorate. Grandiloquence must be held together by a minimum of coherence, but the good politician knows to control his rhetoric and avoid becoming entrapped in inflexible vows – in other words lying, but painting it in other ways.  That advertisement glosses over the truth or that it involves fabricating white lies and manipulating the prese...

The tragic event of the Orlando shooting, currently making waves around the world, poses grave but crucial questions to any person living in a heterogeneous society. Given that countries have been subject to the powerful trend of globalization since the 1970s and the corresponding large movements of people, technology and culture across borders, no country can ignore the implications of cultural and ethnic schisms. And that is exactly the issue afflicting America, that melting pot of cultures which has become polarized between the strengthening voice of radical reactionaries and the weakening moderate faction. The backlash is particularly marked against Muslims by virtue of the heightening fears of terrorism: the Orlando shooting, carried out by professed Islamic Fundamentalist (though it is not clear if he had official connections with ISIS) Omar Mateen, is the 'deadliest mass shooting in US history', according to Frank Bruni, and it constitutes 'attacks on freedom itself...

During my stint as an NCO in the military, I was tasked with the unenviable but essential duty of training soldiers' physical fitness to ensure that they were able to discharge their military duties.

The past weeks have been eventful in the way of celebrity deaths. Two in particular catch the headlines: Muhammad Ali’s death presumably from the medical complications of old age and Christina Grimmie’s murder by a ‘fan’ after a concert in Orlando. The latter is this article’s principal consideration, but both are important in scoping out the nature of fame and its relation to the media.

In the course of a life, one always manages to find certain recurring personalities. Whether influenced by the familiar rhetoric espousing liberty or rejecting its teachings, more people than ever seem committed to vociferous argument. It is unclear whether this is symptomatic of a Western litigiousness or a mere consequence of the knowledge revolution (courtesy of the Internet), but the clamour is undeniable. Where political correctness holds sway, people argue that they lack rights, that rights are contravened and that they have been victimized every which way. This argument is reiterated until people no longer think it, they believe it. This belief spills over into cultish behaviour, and sometimes morphs into zealotry. Such people argue to be given certain rights or success on a silver platter for no other reason than that they feel they deserve it. This is the excess of self-confidence that one is liable to find today. Yet the lessons of History teach us that balance - the abi...

Ideology of power is run by Yann, whose interest lays primarily in philosophy. To state an important axiom: the impulse to survive is inextricable from the compulsion (psychological or physiological) to dominate, to assert or to impose. Such urges which have guided Humanity have been vilified and celebrated at different junctures throughout history, sometimes both simultaneously. Regardless of good or evil (or in spite of such insipid characterisations), and leaving simple value judgements to news pundits, Yann attempts to illustrate in broad strokes the topography of power and competition.