Stephen Holmes Journalist Profile

Articles

Russia’s Invasion of Ukraine Is a War of Demography

Dec 6, 2024 | foreignpolicy.com | Ivan Krastev |Stephen Holmes

Russia Europe Ukraine We live in a strange time marked by widespread and ongoing depopulation. The entire world is grappling with a crisis of childlessness. By 2015, the global fertility rate had dropped to half of what it was in 1965, and most people now lives in societies with fertility rates below replacement levels.
Russia’s Invasion of Ukraine Is a War of Demography

Dec 6, 2024 | archive.ph | Ivan Krastev |Stephen Holmes |Raphael Cohen |Charles Lister

We live in a strange time marked by widespread and ongoing depopulation. The entire world is grappling with a crisis of childlessness. By 2015, the global fertility rate had dropped to half of what it was in 1965, and most people now lives in societies with fertility rates below replacement levels. Populations are shrinking across rich and poor nations, secular and religious societies, democracies and autocracies alike.
The light that failed, again

Nov 20, 2024 | thisweekthosebooks.substack.com | Stephen Holmes |Ivan Krastev |Rudyard Kipling |Rashmee Roshan Lall

Welcome to This Week, Those Books, your rundown on books new and old that resonate with the week’s big news story. We now have more than 10,000 subscribers in 117 countries. Please consider supporting this news literacy effort by investing in a paid membership so that we can keep it freely accessible. If, for whatever reason, it’s not possible for you to upgrade to paid, email [email protected] and we’ll give you full access, no questions asked. 🎧 Would you rather listen?
Fish Do Not Aspire to Wetness

Aug 22, 2024 | theideasletter.substack.com | Stephen Holmes

Alexandre Lefebvre, Liberalism as a Way of Life (Princeton University Press, 2024)Today’s disheartening resurgence of authoritarianism, xenophobia, race-baiting, brazen sexism and religious zealotry, not to mention homicidal rampages in the name of ethnic identity, makes rallying to the defense of a beleaguered liberalism into an intellectual and moral imperative.
Radical Mismatch

Mar 27, 2024 | lrb.co.uk | Samuel Moyn |Stephen Holmes

Samuel Moyn didn’t begin his career as a crusading left-wing critic of liberalism. His earliest writings were on 20th-century French intellectual history: erudite studies of Emmanuel Levinas, Pierre Clastres, Claude Lefort, Pierre Vidal-Naquet. But he always had an interest in foreign policy as actually practised and in 1999, while still a graduate student, he interned at Clinton’s National Security Council, beguiled by the ‘romance’ of human rights-driven foreign policy.
Turtles at Mercury Bay Library

Oct 2, 2023 | theinformer.co.nz | Stephen Holmes

By Stephen Holmes. Kayla McCallum from Tairua Library, has taken the reins of educating young minds about the fascinating world of turtles, as part of Mercury Bay Library’s October school holiday program. With a genuine passion for wildlife, Kayla is on a mission to bridge the gap between children and these remarkable creatures. "It is so that the children can experience and touch a real live turtle. They only usually see them in the zoo. They also make good pets," Kayla says.
Kleptocat, the purr-fect crime!

Sep 18, 2023 | theinformer.co.nz | Stephen Holmes

By Stephen Holmes. Greg Healey, a local radio operator for the Coastguard, one day noticed the strange disappearance of his prized lucky fishing gloves; - quickly followed the next day by his prescription sunglasses that had also gone missing off his back porch. At first he thought that perhaps he had misplaced them or perhaps the wind had blown them under the deck or some other reasonable explanation.
The best books on Britain after Brexit

Sep 4, 2023 | shepherd.com | Peter Foster |Peter Ricketts |Ivan Krastev |Stephen Holmes

By Peter FosterWho am I? I am a journalist who spent 15 years reporting from all over the world – Kabul, Baghdad, New Delhi, Beijing, Washington D.C. – returning to London in 2015 to report on the UK’s relations with Europe. Then Brexit happened. As a reporter, I’d chronicled the rise of China and India after 9/11 and the 2008 financial crisis, but I’d failed to understand how far Britain had been consumed by the forces of populism that have roiled all Western democracies.