Making sense of this crazy world

I’m continuing my look at the industrialising world by focusing on the globalisation of the industrial revolution, well at least its spread to Europe and America!

I’m looking at the first industrial revolution in Britain that did so much to shape the world we live in today and in this second episode I want to highlight the key motivating factor: the profit motive, as well as the importance of the railways.

I’m changing tack completely in this little series to look at some of the truly big events that shaped the world we live in today. And I’m beginning with the industrial revolution in Britain. Hugely significant because not only did the British economy rapidly grow, and eventually the world economy, but it did so because of a technological revolution, simple though that may have been at first, and because of, and through, a social revolution that utterly transformed society.

This week we are going to look at the UN embroiled in a civil war in the Congo at the beginning of the 1960s. A sorry tale that also serves to illustrate just what imperialism had done to Africa.

The way the United Nations is being ignored by the Soviet Union with regard to Ukraine, ignored and attacked by Israel in Gaza (more than 280 UNWRA and other UN Humanitarian personnel killed by the Israeli Defence Force), it seems as if we are witnessing the end of the UNs usefulness. But this isn’t the first time the United Nations has faced huge controversy, has seemed to be finished as an international peace-keeping body, as a force for good. There are two truly massive crises that I’m aware of that I thought would be useful to share with you.

This is my second episode looking at the Kurds, the largest ethnic group in the world without a home to call its own. Having looked at the Kurds in Turkey and in Syria, today we’ll look at the Kurds in Iraq and Iran.

I’m looking at the Kurds today, the largest ethnic group in the world without a home to call its own. That fact alone makes it necessary for us to know something about their history, I think. Well, this is the first of two episodes doing that.

This episode sets out to explain the reasons behind the schism in the Islamic world between Sunnis and Shi'ites or Shias, as well as the consequences of the schism.

A final episode on Syria taking a look at the consequences of the civil war, most importantly on people but also on the politics of the region.

I don’t want to plot the path of the war so much (though there will inevitably be a bit of that), rather I want to focus on the nature of it, its characteristics, so that we can better understand its significance today.