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51 - 60 from 772 . In "Opinion / Editorial"
Tunisians deserve better leaders
THE first round of Tunisia’s presidential election has passed off peacefully. Tunisians had the opportunity choose a replacement for the late Beji Caid Essebsi, their country’s first freely-elected leader since it triggered the so-called Arab Spring revolts in 2011. Unfortunately, less than half of the electorate bothered to take part. Moreover, the two candidates destined for the run-off to be held before November are both anti-establishment figures.These two factors combine to demonstrate that the majority of Tunisians have lost most of their faith in the political process and the personalities who have led their country since the ouster of Zine El Abidine Ben Ali. Tunisians seized democratic government with both hands. But the problem from the outset was there were too many figures...
September 16, 2019

Tunisians deserve better leaders

Mugabe’s unheroic legacy
THE late Robert Mugabe was indeed a hero in resisting by force and then through statesmanship bringing an end in 1980 to white majority rule in what was then Rhodesia. But some 15 years into his almost forty years of rule, he ceased to be heroic.The sidelining of his fellow insurgency leader Joshua Nkomo led to massacres of Nkomo’s minority Matabele tribe. Mugabe’s Shona people came to dominate the new Zimbabwe’s politics and military. After seven years as prime minister, Mugabe won the presidency and became increasingly autocratic. It was always something of a mystery that the international community chose to overlook the killing of up to 30,000 members of the Matabele people in a five-year campaign — the so-called Gukurahundi massacres — by the Zimbabwean military. While these...
September 13, 2019

Mugabe’s unheroic legacy

Trump’s Afghan error
US President Donald Trump has announced that as far as he is concerned, his peace talks with the Taliban are “dead”. But his concern needs to go a lot further, because if the talks really are dead, then so too will be many more people, mostly Afghans, who are currently alive and dreaming only of peace.If this is Trump running a script from his seminal book “The Art of the Deal”, then hopefully he has a carefully formulated plan. What he has done is tear up a provisional agreement that had been worked out over nine tortuous bargaining sessions between the Taliban and US special envoy Zalmay Khalilzad. Hosted by Qatar, because clearly the Taliban feel safe in the emirate, the talks had led to an outline deal for Washington to withdraw its troops within 20 weeks. In return, the...
September 10, 2019

Trump’s Afghan error

Tehran’s blatant lies
In order to secure the release of an arrested oil tanker, Iran gave a solemn undertaking that it would not be delivering its cargo to Syria. The authorities in Gibraltar, which had detained the Adrian Darya-1, accepted this pledge. Last week, after slow steaming around the Mediterranean, the tanker arrived in Syrian waters off the port city of Tarsus. On Sunday, the foreign ministry in Tehran confirmed the oil had been landed in Syria.It is hard to think of a more blatant lie or a greater diplomatic insult. For Gibraltar, read the United Kingdom, which at the “request” of the autonomous Gibraltarian authorities, sent Royal Marines to board and stop the tanker as it passed into the Mediterranean. It had loaded its crude in Iran way back in April but had avoided the Suez Canal, sailing...
September 09, 2019

Tehran’s blatant lies

Is the British parliament at odds with the people?
BRITISH politics are in chaos. New Mrime Minister Boris Johnson took office promising to take the UK out of the European Union on Oct. 31, with or without a deal. The date had been an extension of the original March deadline because parliament three times voted down the departure agreement achieved by Johnson’s predecessor Theresa May. The ostensible reason for that rejection were the border arrangements for Northern Ireland which abuts EU member Ireland. This sensitive part of the UK would have remained for a transition period within the European customs union until Brussels alone agreed the relationship could be ended following the agreement of a new UK-wide trade deal. Though some MPs regarded this as an egregious infringement of British sovereignty, many of those who threw out...
September 06, 2019

Is the British parliament at odds with the people?

Hong Kong’s Lam backs down
HONG Kong leader Carrie Lam’s announcement she is scrapping her controversial extradition bill after five months of increasingly violent protests, may not be enough to convince the demonstrators to quit the streets. Had she done this in April instead of merely shelving the bill, the extensive physical damage to Hong Kong itself and to its reputation, would have been avoided.As it is, the civic protestors have increased their demands, which now include the dropping of the prosecution of arrested demonstrators, an end to calling them “rioters”, an independent inquiry into police conduct and free elections to be preceded by the resignation of Ms. Lam herself.Lam has already set up an inquiry into how hard-pressed law officers handled the protests. However, given the mood of distrust...
September 05, 2019

Hong Kong’s Lam backs down

The BJP’s illegal migrant campaign backfires
“They are like termites, eating the grain that should go to the poor”. Thus did Amit Shah, home minister in Narendra Modi’s new Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government describe illegal immigrants in India. In the run-up to the spring election, the BJP was loud in denouncing Muslims who had fled the 1971 independence struggle in Bangladesh and settled in the northeastern Indian state of Assam. Now the results of a new National Register of Citizens (NCR) in Assam have effectively taken away the civic and residential rights of some 1.9 million people. These unfortunates were unable to produce documentation to prove that they or their forebears had been living in Assam before 1971. Assam is one of India’s poorest states, with low literacy levels in both the Muslim and Hindu...
September 03, 2019

The BJP’s illegal migrant campaign backfires

German politicians must unite against neo-Nazis
Germany is not in a good place. Europe’s strongest economy teeters on the edge of recession. Its once all-powerful chancellor, Angela Merkel has announced her departure by 2021 but there are serious doubts that she will complete what would be sixteen years in power. Not only are there questions over her health - she has had three bouts of violent shaking in public - but also her political power base is in danger.This year a poll suggested that Merkel, known affectionately as “Mutti” (“Mummy”) still enjoyed a remarkable 67 percent popularity rating. This, however, is probably a reflection of the rising tide of anxiety among voters and illustrates the words of the English writer Hilaire Belloc who warned children “Be sure and always cling to nurse, for fear of finding something...
September 02, 2019

German politicians must unite against neo-Nazis

Italy new chance for an humane migrant policy
THE political fall of Italy’s Matteo Salvini will be a cause for rejoicing in Brussels because of this populist leader’s promise to challenge the European Central Bank and the structure of the euro with a rule-busting budget. It will also come as a great relief to those who deplored Salvini’s racist and Islamophobic treatment of migrants. By effectively shutting Italian ports to a vessels carrying migrants rescued from flimsy craft in the Mediterranean, the fallen Italian leader was rejecting humanitarian norms and playing to the fear that Italy was being swamped with asylum-seeker arrivals. Salivini’s main argument was that Italy should not be expected to shoulder the migrant burden by itself. If Brussels deplored his blockade of newcomers, then fellow EU states should be prepared...
August 30, 2019

Italy new chance for an humane migrant policy

International heft needed for the Rohingya Muslims
IT is now two years since soldiers, police and Buddhist vigilantes, led by fanatical monks drove hundreds of thousands of Rohingya Muslims from their Myanmar homes. At least nine thousand were killed in the state-sponsored violence and approaching a million are cowering in squalid refugee camps in neighboring Bangladesh. Despite this blatant ethnic cleansing by a regime led by a Nobel Peace Laureate, the international community has done precisely nothing.The shame of this genocidal crime and the appalling tragedy it has created rests not simply with the regime but with every country around the world that has chosen to look away.In Bosnia, after racist killers massacred seven thousand at Srebrenica, the world finally acted. NATO sent warplanes to assault the Bosnian-Serbs and punish their...
August 29, 2019

International heft needed for the Rohingya Muslims

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