End of July, the Modi government approved a lengthy proposal to reform education policy and structures in India. This New Education Policy is presented as the stepping stone to bring india in the right position to be a main player in tomorrow’s knowledge economy. Critics fear it is rather turning India towards an imagined past of Hindu glory, under ...

The annexation of the West Bank heralds the end of the two-state solution, but also marks the beginning of a new struggle, writes Tom Kenis. “One for equal rights for all the people under de facto Israeli rule, from the river to the sea.” 

An old idea suddenly became an urgent project: Indonesia is going to build a new capital. It has no name yet, only a working title: Ibu Kota Baru, New Capital City. What do the people who live there think of that? What interests are being served? And who’s going to pay for it? Kris Vanslambrouck did what the government still hasn’t done: listen to ...

The clash between media and power is brutal in the Philippines. The real target is free speech, but the symbolic head that has to hang belongs to Maria Ressa, journalist, entrepreneur and initiator of the successful newssite Rappler. MO* had an exclusive interview with her when the coronacrisis began. The verdict in one of the court cases against h ...

The coronavirus is a magnifying glass that allows us to see the fault lines and changes in the world more sharply than ever. In the early days of the crisis, the EU showed a great inability to react in a coordinated manner, which in turn gave China and Russia much extra room to increase their influence in Eastern Europe. Are we bringing in the ...

Olivia U. Rutazibwa looks at the spread of the corona virus in Europe from a great distance as she is on a writing retreat at the Johannesburg Institute of Advanced Studies (JIAS) in South Africa, where a national total lockdown was declared on March 26th. While she’s there to write and dig into books and the past, she sees how in these extraordina ...

Underneath the fear for the new corona virus, there is the celebration of new apps and technologies that allow some of us to continue working, meeting and being somehow productive, while in isolation in our rooms and houses. But the shift we celebrate now, could be the pandemic of tomorrow, writes Eric Stryson. If we don’t flatten this curve now, i ...

‘While the world is forcing us to cooperate internationally and begging for global remedies for everything from the coronavirus to the climate crisis, there is still far too little attention to global journalism’. Gie Goris and Jago Kosolosky, current and future editor-in-chief of MO* respectively, regret that.

If humanity exists, humanity must now rise. Otherwise we will all be dehumanised.

Primeval forests are increasingly included in plans to tackle the climate and biodiversity crisis. They are the best carbon sinks, but they are disappearing rapidly. In the European Union, they are mainly located in Romania, where only 13 per cent are protected. The rest has already been turned into or is threatened to be turned into production for ...

The businessman who helped Ukrainian president Zelensky to the top, wants to build Europe’s largest ski area in Europe’s last great wilderness: the Carpathians. Logging in primeval forests near the protected mountain range of Svydovets has begun, but is confronted with unexpected civil activism. An ordinary citizen is dragging some the most po ...

No cathedral or tastings of port wine, but long lost glory. This is what you get when you join The Worst Tours for a tour in Porto. Three young and unemployed architects started their guided tours during the recession. Along the way they tell you how mass tourism and speculation have put a mortgage on their future.