This fall promises to be crucial for the future of Bosnia, a country torn by ethnic tensions, a breakaway republic and rampant corruption. Ahead of general elections and an important United Nations vote, I visited this country at the heart of the Balkans to learn more about the struggles it faces – and how the…
Category: History
When Yugoslavia disintegrated, it left behind one of the most unusual states in the world. Bosnia and Herzegovina not only consists of two and a half “countries within the country,” but also has three simultaneous presidents, fourteen parliaments and a supreme leader appointed by the U.S. and EU. In this explainer, we take a deep…
By Linus Hoeller, Northwestern University Reports Without Borders consistently ranks Austria among the best countries when it comes to press freedom in their annual investigations. In RSF’s 2021 report, Austria ranked 17th – putting into the second-highest bracket of countries altogether and near the top even of the European countries[1]. Curiously, there are some discrepancies…
Photography by Tianxiao Xu Presentation and writing by Linus Hoeller North Korea is closed off from the outside world like no other country. It consistently ranks at the very bottom of freedom indices – no free press, no free elections, no freedom of movement, assembly, speech. For three generations, the Kim dynasty has ruled the…
Thomas Edison is well-known for having had the bright idea of inventing the incandescent light bulb. The year was 1879 when this revolutionary invention was patented, and though it was initially decried by some as solely being a fad of the time, we truly couldn’t live without it today. But while the light bulb gets…
A case study by Linus Höller In 2016, Lima’s population was first estimated to have exceeded 10 million, officially making Peru’s capital a “megacity” and putting it in the same league as cities such as Tokyo, Shanghai and Ciudad de México. However, Lima was never meant to become this big, and certainly wasn’t founded in a convenient place to support…
We lead the best lives that humans have ever had. With all the doom and gloom going on in the world around us, seemingly unending wars being fought in the middle east and still all too many people suffering of extreme poverty and hunger in less economically developed countries, this is easy to forget. Yet it is true, and especially in light of seemingly unsolvable crises and problems, it is well worth slowing down and taking a look at the empirical evidence that exists, reminding ourselves that: yes, there are problems, but yes, our lives are actually pretty good.
“Too good to be true”, the Czechoslovak people’s dream of freedom, brought about by liberal reforms of the new 1968 government, came crashing to a dramatic end with the Warsaw Pact invasion of the ČSSR, just half a year after the Prague spring had begun. Though the Soviets’ reaction was forceful, one question remains: was…