Ranking Cities

…as ‘high potential’ (like Shanghai and Guangzhou), ‘challengers’ (rapidly improving cities like Toronto), ‘vulnerable’ (deteriorating cities like Athens), and ‘consolidated’ (maintaining an existing high ranking). The comprehensive nature of its…

Freedom and Liberty

…their servants, serfs, or slaves. Later, the meaning shifted from ‘affection’ to ‘freedom’.  The word liberty comes through Latin liber, ‘free’, from the Indo-European root leudh, still intact in the…

A Fisherman’s Tale

…became naturalised, then westwards by mule across the Himalayan passes as far as Gilgit, and finally, in the 1950s, to the old princely state of Chitral on the Afghan border….

Empowering Women

…provides a survey of dozens of notable female poets and literary figures from tenth- and eleventh-century Muslim Spain, offering evidence of ‘the amount of freedom enjoyed by these women and…

An American in Morocco

…high school students and had spent two years in the States as a student herself. She had broken none of the Great Satan’s laws. She had no incendiary political views….

Review: The Terrible Beauty of Wikileaks

…Tunisia’s high unemployment and regional inequities. As a consequence, the risks to the regime’s long-term stability are increasing’. Ten days later in Sidi Bouzid, 26-year-old street vendor Muhammad Bouazizi immolated…

Tottenham Riots

There is something in the air and everyone can smell it, even if they don’t know where it comes from or even why it exists. The Victorians had a word…

Tahrir Square

…addressed the revolution immediately. ‘Tell me congratulations!’ he grinned. I did so. ‘We’ve finished with him!’ he exulted. ‘We’re free!’ Pictures of some of freedom’s martyrs swung from the rear-view…