Cambridge Union I don’t believe the US has any right or any ability to put in place a democracy in any other country. Nor do I believe, by the way, that American democracy functions as a real democracy anymore on the life and death issues… This is not democracy. This is a game. And it’s Continue reading »
USA
The new liberal consensus, born of a shared “exhaustion,” is that it is time to “tune out,” or “take a break,” or simply close one’s eyes and ears. I simply cannot figure American liberals and “progressives”—’pwogwessives,’” as the late Alexander Cockburn used to call them. They do nothing when faced with calamitous events and call Continue reading »
Donald Trump and the MAGA gang point to the ‘massive mandate’ he obtained to justify any policy he may implement. There is, of course, a lot of debate about so-called mandates which seem to be less about some enduring principle and more about a flexible justification for what you want to do. Looking at the Continue reading »
Yu-Book Lim used to head a Singapore think tank and was Executive Chairman of IMC Plantations before that. He has just published an extended, thought-provoking essay: “Xi Jinping’s “Once-in-a-Century Upheaval” Prophecy. Towards the end of this article, Mr Lim confidently argues that: “The US will become a has-been like the UK, albeit still suffering from Continue reading »
In late February 2022, I was walking on a street in Irkutsk (in the middle of Russian Siberia) when I met a former female student of mine who had just come from her work office. She was upset by the invasion of Ukraine but even more so by the attitude of some women in the Continue reading »
Neither State Department nor MOFA is gonna like this piece. Wang Yi and Marco Rubio, the respective top diplomats of China and the U.S., held their first phone call on Friday, January 24, 2025. Below are a few points I want to make. First, the State Department, now under Rubio, misidentified Wang’s job title in Continue reading »
Addressing Donald Trump at the National Cathedral’s inauguration service, the Episcopal bishop of Washington, looking the incoming president in the eye, pleaded with him: “to have mercy on people who are scared and help those facing persecution”. Bishop Mariann Budde did not mince her words. In particular, she referenced the LGBTQI community following the president’s Continue reading »
Donald Trump’s return to power for a second term has sent ripples across the globe. On his first day in office, he wielded executive authority with vigour, signing many executive orders, including withdrawing the US from the Paris Agreement for the second time. This move reversed the country’s climate commitments yet again, signalling Trump’s prioritisation Continue reading »
Seems like in all the chaos after the power transition in the US, this was largely missed: Musk-led “Department of Government Efficiency” will have access to all unclassified US government records.
It’s always the unassuming, irrelevant looking stuff like that that people need to pay attention to.
The rise of Joseph Stalin as the leader of the Soviet Union really got going when he became the General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. At the time, the position was what it said on the can, a purely administrative job with no real political power.
Throughout the history of the Soviet Union, a position of Premier (roughly a “Prime Minister”) existed. Premiership was the ultimate post in the government and whoever held it was the leader of the country. At least initially.