At the heart of Beijing’s Imperial City lies the sprawling palace complex of the Forbidden City.  Home to China’s celestial emperors, its heavenly grounds were off-limits to ordinary mortals. In modern-day Beijing, China’s leaders talk of the capital city’s future role in much more outward-oriented and earthly terms. They look not only to embrace other...Read More

The multi-award-winning British film, “Slumdog Millionaire”, fired up interest among British movie goers, about a decade ago, to explore the parallels between British and Indian societies in the twenty-first century. The film’s reality-based grittiness mixed in with the fairy-tale saga of a poor Mumbai orphan seeking fortune on an Indian TV gameshow – purposely reminiscent...Read More

The Biden administration has created a completely unnecessary confrontation with Russia at a time when reasonable working relations with Moscow are extremely important for achieving two immediate and key administration goals: rejoining the nuclear agreement with Iran, and a peace settlement in Afghanistan facilitating U.S. military withdrawal from that country and an end to America’s...Read More

Central Banks are attacking crypto-currencies. An example is Frank Elderson, who is Vice-Chair of the Supervisory Board of the ECB, recently (March 16th) said that: “Crypto-assets are volatile. They lack any intrinsic value and there is no reliable institution backing them.” Some commentators have, users of Bitcoin for example, have argued that this is outdated...Read More