Tag Archives: politics

In My Hands Today…

Posted on by
Reply

The Golden Road: How Ancient India Transformed the World – William Dalrymple

For most of its modern history, India was fated to be on the receiving end of cultural influence from other civilisations. But this isn’t the complete story.

A full millennium earlier, India’s major cultural exports – religion, art, technology, astronomy, mathematics, medicine, language and literature – were shaping civilisations, travelling as far as Afghanistan in the West and Japan in the east. Out of India came pioneering merchants, astronomers and astrologers, scientists and mathematicians, surgeons and sculptors, as well as holy men, monks and missionaries.

In The Golden Road, legendary historian William Dalrymple highlights India’s oft-forgotten position as a crucial economic and civilisational hub at the heart of the ancient and early medieval history of Eurasia. From Angkor to Ayutthaya, The Golden Road traces the cultural flow of Indian religions, languages, artistic and architectural forms and mathematics throughout the world. In this groundbreaking tome, Dalrymple draws from a lifetime of scholarship to reinstate India as the great intellectual and philosophical superpower of ancient Asia.

In My Hands Today…

Posted on by
Reply

The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine: A History of Settler-Colonial Conquest and Resistance, 1917–2017 – Rashid Khalidi

In 1899, Yusuf Diya al-Khalidi, mayor of Jerusalem, alarmed by the Zionist call to create a Jewish national home in Palestine, wrote a letter aimed at Theodore Herzl: the country had an indigenous people who would not easily accept their own displacement. He warned of the perils ahead, ending his note, “in the name of God, let Palestine be left alone.” Thus Rashid Khalidi, al-Khalidi’s great-great-nephew, begins this sweeping history, the first general account of the conflict told from an explicitly Palestinian perspective.

Drawing on a wealth of untapped archival materials and the reports of generations of family members—mayors, judges, scholars, diplomats, and journalists—The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine upends accepted interpretations of the conflict, which tend, at best, to describe a tragic clash between two peoples with claims to the same territory. Instead, Khalidi traces a hundred years of colonial war on the Palestinians, waged first by the Zionist movement and then Israel, but backed by Britain and the United States, the great powers of the age. He highlights the key episodes in this colonial campaign, from the 1917 Balfour Declaration to the destruction of Palestine in 1948, from Israel’s 1982 invasion of Lebanon to the endless and futile peace process.

Original, authoritative, and important, The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine is not a chronicle of victimization, nor does it whitewash the mistakes of Palestinian leaders or deny the emergence of national movements on both sides. In reevaluating the forces arrayed against the Palestinians, it offers an illuminating new view of a conflict that continues to this day.

In My Hands Today…

Posted on by
Reply

Foolproof: Why Misinformation Infects Our Minds and How to Build Immunity – Sander van der Linden

Informed by decades of research and on-the-ground experience advising governments and tech companies, Foolproof is the definitive guide to navigating the misinformation age.

From fake news to conspiracy theories, from inflammatory memes to misleading headlines, misinformation has swiftly become the defining problem of our era. The crisis threatens the integrity of our democracies, our ability to cultivate trusting relationships, even our physical and psychological well-being―yet most attempts to combat it have proven insufficient.

In Foolproof , one of the world’s leading experts on misinformation lays out a crucial new paradigm for understanding and defending ourselves against the worldwide infodemic. With remarkable clarity, Sander van der Linden explains why our brains are so vulnerable to misinformation, how it spreads across social networks, and what we can do to protect ourselves and others.

Like a virus, misinformation infects our minds, exploiting shortcuts in how we see and process information to alter our beliefs, modify our memories, and replicate at astonishing rates. Once the virus takes hold, it’s very hard to cure. Strategies like fact-checking and debunking can leave a falsehood still festering or, at worst, even strengthen its hold. But we aren’t helpless.

As van der Linden shows based on award-winning original research, we can cultivate immunity through the innovative science of “prebunking”: inoculating people against false information by preemptively exposing them to a weakened dose, thus empowering them to identify and fend off its manipulative tactics. Deconstructing the characteristic techniques of conspiracies and misinformation, van der Linden gives readers practical tools to defend themselves and others against nefarious persuasion―whether at scale or around their own dinner table.

In My Hands Today…

Posted on by
Reply

Tall Order: The Goh Chok Tong Story Volume 1 – Shing Huei Peh

Goh Chok Tong was an improbable Prime Minister for an unlikely country. He had neither the connections nor the cunning to rise to the top, and was even once famously derided by his mentor Lee Kuan Yew for being ‘wooden’ in his communication skills. Except for an imposing height most unusual in this part of the world, he was an ordinary man.

He lost his father at a young age, lived in a two-bedroom public flat with his mother and four siblings and needed a government bursary to complete university.Yet somehow he succeeded.

Tall Order tells the extraordinary story of his life and career over half a century, revealing how Singapore’s second Prime Minister rose through a combination of strength, wit and a political nous which many, including himself, did not know he had.

In this first of two volumes, Goh navigated years of a challenging apprenticeship to Lee, scoring numerous policy successes but also suffering political blows and humiliation. He was the man who first made Neptune Orient Lines, Singapore’s national carrier, profitable, before entering politics. The stellar corporate stint was followed by his many novel policies and institutions that have since become household names in the Medisave, Total Defence, Residents’ Committee and Nominated Member of Parliament. But the highlights were counterposed by setbacks, including overseeing the People’s Action Party’s first electoral defeat after independence at the Anson by-election.

In the hands of acclaimed author and journalist Peh Shing Huei, this authorised biography reveals the private deliberations and negotiations between Goh and Lee before the maiden leadership transfer of independent Singapore. Tall Order is the first biography of Goh. This riveting book offers rare insights into Singapore’s biggest and most important political and economic stories. .

In My Hands Today…

Posted on by
Reply

Can Singapore Survive? – Kishore Mahbubani

This book poses the question that Singaporeans must wrestle with: can we survive as an independent city-state? Kishore Mahbubani believes that Singaporeans must always ask the question because constant reflection and self-examination should be a part of the core DNA of all Singaporeans. His goal in this book is to create and enhance this culture of reflection among all Singaporeans.

He gives three answers in this book: Yes, No & Maybe.

With these three answers, he attempts to sketch three different scenarios for Singapore’s future. There is logic behind this, as we cannot predict the future. We can, however, prepare for the future by telling stories about what the future could be like.

Besides his substantive Introduction, this book offers some of Kishore’s best essays on Singapore, taken from his Think-Tank and Opinion columns in The Straits Times, as well as contributions to Guardian News, The New York Times, The New York Review of Books, Davos World Economic Forum’s Forum News Daily, and the “Innovations for Successful Societies” Oral History Project of Princeton University.