Tag: politics

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Noble winner Yunus asked to lead Bangladesh

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Eighty-four-year-old Dr. Muhammad Yunus, a seasoned technocrat, micro-lending pioneer, and octogenarian Nobel Peace Prize winner to head the interim government’s chief adviser – in effect prime minister of Bangladesh, world’s eighth-most populous country, after toppling the country’s autocratic leader and his personal nemesis Sheikh Hasina, who had fled to India to escape mobs marching on her house. Yunu clad in traditional Kurt and vest had flow in from Paris, where he launched a social entrepreneurship venture with the mayor and had square named after him in Dhaka.  The institutions of the old regime -police, judiciary, government were melting away. Students … Continue reading Noble winner Yunus asked to lead Bangladesh

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Dictators seeking to impose their vision

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Historian and Anglo-Polish journalist Anne Applebaum uncovers the sophisticated networks of kleptocratic financial structures, security services and professional propagandists. The main enemies of domestic demagogues fanning the flames of populism. Foreign dictators who seek to impose their vision of a new international; order and hate our freedoms in George W Bush’s sonorous phrase. Applebaum’s catchy coinage “ Who are these bad guys?” is said to be a group of autocratic regimes, such as Russia, China and Iran, who together operate “not like a bloc but rather like an agglomeration of companies, bound not by ideology but rather by a ruthless, … Continue reading Dictators seeking to impose their vision

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Bureaucratic inertia and geopolitical distraction

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Lost Decade is a bureaucratic take on American policy’ slow  pivot  to the east and to Asia-cnetric geopolitics and its implications for America’s present and future. Across the political spectrum, there is wide agreement that Asia should stand at the center of US foreign policy. But this worldview, first represented in the Obama Administration’s 2011 “Pivot to Asia, marks a dramatic departure from the entire history of American grand strategy. Both trump and Biden continued in a similar vein to little effect. In the upcoming US election, both likely candidates President Joe Biden and ex-president Donald Trump more or less … Continue reading Bureaucratic inertia and geopolitical distraction

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Struggles of America’s white working class

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Donald Trump’s 2024 Vice-Presidential Candidate J.D. Vance  who grew up in the hills of Kentucky. His family and friends were the people most of the world calls rednecks hillbillies or White trash.  In this latest memoir, Vance tells the story of his family’s demons and of America’s problem with generational neglect. How his mother struggled against, but never fully escaped, the legacies of abuse, alcoholism, poverty and trauma. How his grandparents, “ dirt poor and in love”, gave everything for their children to chase the American dream. Vance’s grandma told him: “Never be like these losers who think the deck … Continue reading Struggles of America’s white working class

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Trump hails ‘big win for democracy’ after US Supreme Court verdict

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The US Supreme Court has sent Donald Trump’s claim he is immune from prosecution for his actions while president back to a lower court. The former president had been charged with conspiracy to defraud the US, conspiring against the right of Americans to vote and corruptly obstructing an official proceeding and conspiring to do so. In a historic 6-3 ruling, the justices said for the first time that former presidents have absolute immunity from prosecution for their official acts, but no immunity for unofficial acts. The Supreme Court’s justices ordered lower courts to work out precisely ow to apply their … Continue reading Trump hails ‘big win for democracy’ after US Supreme Court verdict

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Campaigner for equal opportunity in the workplace, anti-slavery, human rights

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Social historian Jane Robinson’s Biography of Barbara Leigh Bodichon, a victorian feminist we should all be grateful to, is as entertaining as it is necessary, in histories of the women’s movement,  and from the walls of Girton College, Cambridge, where she looks out, somewhat glossy-eyed. Bodichon was both one of the finest Victorian England’s finest female painters, exhibiting at London’s Royal Academy and formidable campaigner for women’s rights, and her achievements stayed under the radar, as she defied easy categorisation. Her pamphlet “A Brief Summary in Plain Language of the Laws Concerning Women” was the beginning of a long effort … Continue reading Campaigner for equal opportunity in the workplace, anti-slavery, human rights

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Freedom for Julian Assange

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WikiLeaks Founder, Julian Assange, after seven years of self-imposed confinement and then  five years of enforced detention – was months in the making but uncertain to last.  In the end, diplomacy, politics and law that allowed Julian Assange to take off in a private jet from London’s Stanstead airport on Monday, enroute to the Northern Mariana Islands under a a plea deal with the White house to appear before a judge to admit leaking American Military secrets before flying on to Australia and freedom. In a statement, the Crown Prosecution Services (CPS) said the possibility of a plea deal “first … Continue reading Freedom for Julian Assange

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Decline of ethical standards

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Boris Johnson’s premiership was brought down by three Ps” – Paterson, Partygate, and Pincher  whammy scandals involving lobbying by a former minister, Downing Street carousing during Covid lockdowns and a government whip living up or down to his name.  Veteran Kings Counsel, John Bowers, Principal of Brasenose College, Oxford reveals in Downward Spiral, even the most unwilling Brit back to those febrile weeks towards  the end of Johnson’s administration, when he seemed to be puling apart, the conventions of good behaviour that keep the air in Downing Street smelling healthy.  The scandals eroded trust in the British government, from questionable … Continue reading Decline of ethical standards

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Untouchables and search for Democracy

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Although Bollywood keeps churning out pseudohistorical melodramas depicting colonial India, many Indians understandably hate the Brits for imposing the yoke of foreign rule and their policy of divide and rule.  But there are some who looked favourably on the British Empire like the Untouchables whose story is the backdrop to The Incarcerations. Alpa Shah, professor of anthropology at LSE, beings her account with the Battle of Bhima Koregaon of 1818, when the Untouchables fought alongside the East India Company to defeat their high-caste Peshwa oppressors. To them, British victory held the possibility of social mobility. Alpa Shah pulls back the curtain … Continue reading Untouchables and search for Democracy

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William Wragg resigns party whip over Honeytrap malicious communications

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William Wragg, the MP, has voluntarily given up the Conservative whip, after admitting sharing fellow MPs personal phone numbers with someone on dating app targeted by a suspected  Westminster honeytrap plot. Mr Wragg, the MP from Hazel Grove, who has also given up his roles on the 1922 backbench committee and the Public Administration Committee, will now sit as an independent MP in the House of Commons.  Mr Wragg after chatting with someone on an app sent explicit uncompromising pictures and who subsequently asked him for the telephone numbers of other MPS, said “ They had compromising things on me. … Continue reading William Wragg resigns party whip over Honeytrap malicious communications