Politics (Page 304)

Shortly after four Arab countries – Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Egypt – imposed an embargo on Qatar in 2017, I flew into the country’s capital Doha. Hamad airport – usually buzzing with visitors from the Gulf countries (one of every four visitors to Qatar in 2015 came from Saudi Arabia) – was eerily quiet. The four countries severed ties with Qatar in June 2017 after they accused Doha of supporting terrorism. They demanded the shutdown of Qatari news network al-Jazeera as well as calling on the country to downgrade its relations with Iran. Doha defiantly rejected the accusations and agreed to mediation from Kuwait and the US to end the standoff. Qatar has estimated its lossesContinue Reading

Politics doesn’t have to be a raging fire destroying everything in its path Two weeks after the storming of the US Capitol by the followers of his predecessor, in the middle of an out-of-control pandemic that has killed more than 400,000 Americans, Joe Biden — the 46th president of the US — tried to contain the blaze in his inaugural address. As aspiration, the speech was pitch perfect. Biden rightly took on the present of America’s most serious domestic crisis since the Civil War. Coronavirus, the Capitol attack, economic loss, immigration, climate change and social injustice were confronted: We’ll press forward with speed and urgency for we have much to do in this winter of peril and significant possibility. MuchContinue Reading

Derick Hudson/Shutterstock In non-pandemic times, a person goes missing every 90 seconds in the UK, either intentionally, accidentally or because they are forced to. While many missing people are found quickly or return voluntarily, some do come to emotional, physical and sexual harm, including self-harm. It is crucial that we try to understand the impact that current lockdowns across the UK will have on the rates and types of people who go missing to try to prevent trauma, injury and death. Figures from the first UK lockdown suggest a decrease in missing people reports to the police. In a report (which is presently under peer review for an academic journal), we compare missing person reports in the first UK lockdownContinue Reading

As Washington hosts a presidential inauguration under strict security lockdown, the US has rarely been more divided and unhappy. The shocking mob invasion of Capitol Hill is the most obvious manifestation of this – but in the background lurks the the COVID-19 pandemic. This has taken a horrific toll on human life and wellbeing – the US currently leads the world in confirmed cases and fatalities. According to the Johns Hopkins University database, by January 14 2021 more than 23 million Americans had contracted the disease and nearly 400,000 had died from it. The disease itself and government efforts to combat it have precipitated a major economic crash and huge social dislocations culminating in a riot in the nation’s capital.Continue Reading

After the dramatic flight into Moscow by Russian opposition figurehead Alexei Navalny – who arrived on a plane full of journalists, live streamed his defiant speech on arrival and was promptly detained at passport control – the basic question is: “What’s his plan?” It had been clear for some time that he would be arrested as soon as he set foot in Russia – the authorities issued a warrant for his arrest on December 29. The message was clear: stay out of Russia, or face prison. Navalny defied the Kremlin and came anyway. The dissident politician was jailed for 30 days by a Moscow court within 24 hours of stepping off the flight, on the grounds that he had violatedContinue Reading

Political commentators both inside Russia and around the world are comparing Alexei Navalny’s return to Moscow with Vladimir Lenin’s “sealed train” journey from Switzerland to St Petersburg in April 1917. It was eight-day journey that, as Winston Churchill wrote, “turned upon Russia the most grisly of all weapons. They transported Lenin in a sealed truck like a plague bacillus from Switzerland to Russia”. As we know, the plague bacillus spread and, by the end of the year, Lenin and his Bolshevik supporters were in control. Is this something that Navalny had in mind when making what appears to be a foolhardy return to his home country, bearing in mind that he was poisoned with a nerve agent the last timeContinue Reading

In the wake of the shocking events in Washington, DC, the EU’s foreign policy chief, Josep Borrell, published a blog laden with sound and fury, beseeching Europeans to heed the “wake-up call for all democracy advocates around the world world” and to “stand up immediately to every violation of the independence of democratic institutions”. Many Europeans have felt downcast about the precipitous slide away from cardinal values, including democracy, instigated under President Donald Trump since his 2016 election. Egged on by the continued egregious allegations by Trump of election fraud, a large body of his supporters seized the opportunity to surround and ultimately break into the Capitol Building while members of Congress endeavoured to approve the results of the 2020Continue Reading

Political commentators both inside Russia and around the world are comparing Alexei Navalny’s return to Moscow with Vladimir Lenin’s “sealed train” journey from Switzerland to St Petersburg in April 1917. It was eight-day journey that, as Winston Churchill wrote, “turned upon Russia the most grisly of all weapons. They transported Lenin in a sealed truck like a plague bacillus from Switzerland to Russia”. As we know, the plague bacillus spread and, by the end of the year, Lenin and his Bolshevik supporters were in control. Is this something that Navalny had in mind when making what appears to be a foolhardy return to his home country, bearing in mind that he was poisoned with a nerve agent the last timeContinue Reading

Political commentators both inside Russia and around the world are comparing Aleksey Navalny’s return to Moscow with Vladimir Lenin’s “sealed train” journey from Switzerland to St Petersburg in April 1917. It was eight-day journey that, as Winston Churchill wrote, “turned upon Russia the most grisly of all weapons. They transported Lenin in a sealed truck like a plague bacillus from Switzerland to Russia”. As we know, the plague bacillus spread and, by the end of the year, Lenin and his Bolshevik supporters were in control. Is this something that Navalny had in mind when making what appears to be a foolhardy return to his home country, bearing in mind that he was poisoned with a nerve agent the last timeContinue Reading

Forty-eight hours before Ugandan voters went to the polls the country’s Communications Commission (UCC) imposed a social media blackout. It had been a bitter and violent election campaign pitting the 76-year-old veteran president, Yoweri Museveni against Robert Kyagulanyi – better known as Bobi Wine – a 38-year-old pop-star-turned-politician. Museveni has been in power for 34 years and a victory in this election would be his seventh in a row in a tenure marked, say his critics, by a slide towards authoritarianism. According to BBC reports, the shutdown affected not only popular social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp, Signal and Viber, but more than 100 virtual private networks (VPN) which people were using to circumvent restrictions. The BBC alsoContinue Reading