"In watching the flow of events over the past decade or so, it is hard to avoid the feeling that something very fundamental has happened in world history." This sentiment, introducing the essay that made Francis Fukuyama a household name, commands renewed attention today, albeit from a different perspective. Developments during the 1980s, above all the winding down of the …

Hats off to Wikileaks.com for revealing the murderous character of the United States' war in Afghanistan though one does not know why its sources decided to reveal those top secret documents. WikiLeaks, the website that allows whistleblowers to post documents that expose corruption in governments, non-governmental organisations and transnational companies, made headlines once again this week when it announced that …

I have become increasingly alarmed at just how deeply entrenched Islamophobic views have become within our culture. It seems that many of us have stopped seeking to differentiate between the teachings of a religion and the actions of a few extremists or certain governmental/political regimes. I have often written on these pages that if I have a religion, then it …

STORY HIGHLIGHTS Outgoing head of internal oversight office says there is an "absence of strategic guidance" Ahlenius says "there is no transparency (or) accountability" Ban's spokesman calls his efforts "visionary" on a number of fronts United Nations (CNN) — A departing senior U.N. official has released a rare rebuke of her boss's performance — saying the United Nations is "drifting …

The war in Iraq led to a huge increase in the terrorist threat to the UK, the former head of MI5 has told the Iraq Inquiry. Baroness Manningham-Buller added that the decision to remove Saddam Hussein had caused a "long-term major and strategic problem" for Britain by allowing al-Qaeda time to build a stronghold in Afghanistan unnopposed. She told the …