Section: The Conversation (USA)
All the Olympics are a stage, and all the athletes merely players: the rich history of the modern Games
The Olympics transfix us. Six in every ten people in the world – including both you, dear reader, and me – watched the London 2012 Olympics. Use of the word Olympics increased in relative frequency 3,300% between 1924 and 1984. But what are the Olympics to us, how are we to read them socially and politically? The Olympic Games are a theatre —...
What do the Olympic medal tables say about your nation’s sporting priorities?
from www.shutterstock.comEach time the Olympic and Paralympic Games come around, a small minority of nations tend to do well. On average, only 25% of competing nations at the Olympics will win a gold medal – and they’re pretty much the same ones year in, year out. Intrigued, we dug into data spanning back to 1948 – derived from our...
When terror goes viral it’s up to us to prevent chaos
The scent of chaos hangs heavy in the air. Donald Trump evokes it in Cleveland. Islamic State sows it in Nice, Brussels, Paris, Orlando. Britain is immersed in it after Brexit, while the EU struggles to prevent its onset amid mounting crises of migration and political legitimacy. Ukraine and Syria are being torn apart by it, and Turkey looks...
Turkey crisis: how will oil and gas supplies be affected?
Bertl123 / shutterstockThe Turkish military’s attempted coup to topple president Recep Tayyip Erdogan didn’t last long. The government restored control the following day and soon declared a three-month state of emergency, with more than 60,000 people since arrested or placed under investigation. This isn’t just Turkey’s...
Saving Project Europe: a to-do list for Angela Merkel
As the reality of Brexit sinks in, the European Union faces unprecedented challenges. While the end-times scenario painted by European leaders in the run-up to Britain’s referendum was a wild exaggeration, urgent and determined action is needed to avoid the fragmentation that threatens the European project. All eyes are on German Chancellor...
NATO summit: Despite high public support for defense spending in Europe, discord over burden sharing emerges
President Obama with UK Prime Minister David Cameron. NATOThe NATO summit in Warsaw that wrapped up on July 9 demonstrated once again that the defense spending effort of European allies remains a contentious issue in the alliance. On the eve of the summit, news reports indicated that American officials had prepared a briefing designed in part to...
NATO fights to hold western alliance together
Rumpled. Sergeant Paul Shaw LBIPP (Army)/MODGiven the various crises afflicting the EU, it would be easy to forget that NATO, Europe’s second organisational pillar, has serious problems of its own. The summit in Warsaw will put on a good show of allied resolve – but several problems are hanging heavy over it. The first, and most...
Euro 2016 enters final straight with a worried look to UEFA’s uncertain future
What will you remember most about the 2016 UEFA European Championship? For many people, the success of smaller nations such as Wales and Iceland has been notable. For others it will be the troubling scenes early in the tournament when mass hooligan violence returned to international football. Perhaps in years to come we will simply remember the...
Post-Brexit power plays put Germany firmly in charge of Europe
Irrespective of petitions, speculation about when Article 50 will be triggered and the implosion of the UK’s two leading political parties, one thing is certain in post-referendum Britain – the country has voluntarily and irrevocably surrendered its privileged place within the inner circle of EU leaders. Nature – and politics – abhors a...
A new era may be dawning again for radical right populists in Austria and Europe
This article is part of the Democracy Futures series, a joint global initiative with the Sydney Democracy Network. The project aims to stimulate fresh thinking about the many challenges facing democracies in the 21st century. After Brexit, last week delivered another potentially far-reaching result for radical right populists in Europe. On...
