Also, Have to say that I’ve never seen people actually rioting during covid days anywhere. Yes, there were stupid fights over toilet paper etc. But to happen in China of all places, One can only imagine how the actual situation is and how much the authorities there covered up the impact of Covid.
It has come to a breaking point. They are sick of getting cut off from the rest of the world. My friend who is Malaysian does not dare to go home to Malaysia because it will be so difficult for him to get back to work in Shanghai. And news of them separating young children from parents with the parents not knowing what is happening to their children is heartbreaking. But then the media will be downplaying this as just a small part of the bigger population in Shanghai. My friend has already had 7 PCR tests getting poked in his nose in just less than 2 weeks of lockdown.
Like i said , this is probably indicative of how the initial pandemic was there in China and how much damage that was caused. We’ll never know the true figures
I’ve lived in Singapore and yes , It’s a peculiar case there. While the leaders might claim that Singapore is a democracy, It probably doesn’t classify as one in most people’s eyes.
But as @gasband says, The people are happy under the system there.
One thing i will say is that it’s far easier to manage a smaller country like Singapore with limited population etc etc than have to be a democracy in a larger country for example. I think the Singapore PM’s comments about democracy in India and how democracy is thriving in Singapore were naive. I’ll be the first to admit that India has some shit leaders. But that happens in a democracy.
Nobody from the famed Bhutto dynasty can be progressive.
Comparatively speaking. Imran Khan was nicknamed Taliban Khan for instance. It’s like deciding between three right wing parties and deciding which one of them is more comparatively more centrist.
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Cannot claim to know alot about them but perhaps whoever gets elected, its equally important that the government has absolute separation from the military.
A summary I can definitely agree with.
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That can never happen. In Pakistan, The Army rules the country. They can pretend to have elections etc etc but at the end of the day, only the candidates backed by the army setup will win.
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Egypt, Pakistan, and Myanmar are (for a long, long time) Army ruling in civilian uniforms.
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Sorry Red, did you mean overestimate?
This speech of Salman Rushdie sums up Imran Khan perfectly. This was when Imran Khan refused to attend a conclave when Rushdie was invited.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tNzGgYvz92s
In better days for India then ofcourse as well
I remember reading the impact of, for example, the Canadian truck drivers’ protests causing the entire Canada/US supply chain to be disrupted, resulting in weeks of backlogs?
Might be wrong though.
I didn’t read too much into that particular issue in Canada but I think Trudeau was on the verge of declaring an emergency.
Maybe @Arminius can explain better.
There was actually a state of emergency declared, though that was more in reaction to the protests in Ottawa. The one that was disruptive of supply chains was the blockade of the Detroit-Windsor bridge, which is the point of crossing for something like 40% of all non-conducted trade (i.e. pipelines and electrical transmission). That was only tolerated for a few days. In Ottawa, the occupation lasted for weeks.
What is truly striking is how completely the social media content around those protests collapsed once Yuri and Ivan in Moscow stopped shitposting about Trudeau and moved on to Ukraine.
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What was the reason for the protests ? Or is it as inane as truckers refusing to get vaccinated ?
Shabhaz Sharif the new PM for Pak
“New”
He’s the younger brother of Nawaz Sharif. Apparently, he’s been a good administrator for the state of Punjab. But his family does have their share of corruption as well.
If it’s any consolation , the Sharif generally are closer to the US than they are with China. No doubt they’ll still try to play one side against the other and aim to benefit from both the countries in terms of aid etc.
It was an expression of populist frustration and discontent, ostensibly provoked by a vaccination requirement to cross the Canadian border being extended to include truckers. The reality was that the vast majority of actual crossborder truckers were vaccinated and fine with the requirement, not least because it mirrored the US requirement. To be in the US trying to cross back into Canada, a trucker would already have to have been vaccinated.
It morphed into broader anti-vax/anti-mask/other sentiment, and then was sort of weaponized against the Trudeau government - it was absolutely amazing to hear how many of them would be raging against restrictions imposed by provincial governments, not the federal authority. It is probably best understood as the closest has come to Trumpist populism. It was frustrating to watch - a first cousin of mine got caught up in the ‘movement’, believing so much misinformation. The lockdowns and disruptions to family life had taken an obvious toll on him since March 2020, and starting sometime in Summer 2021 that metastasized into radical right wing politics - based on the idea that someone has to be to blame.
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