‘Of course he shot the fucking elephant.’ The sharpness of Sonia Orwell’s defence of the authenticity of the event on which her late husband based one of his most famous essays tells its own story. Without the experiences enjoyed or endured by Eric Blair, Etonian, colonial enforcer, schoolteacher, down-and-out, grocer, infantryman, there would have been no George Orwell, writer.
Author Archives: lookingbeyondborders
This One Is Scary
The last paragraph of a fascinating book on what is the world’s biggest problem — population.
“Over the next 15 years some 2 billion new babies will be born, 2 billion children will need to commence school, and 1.2 billion young adults will need to find work. In addition, the fastest-growing age group globally will be over 60s. Acknowledging the importance of age-structural change, and ensuring that it is integrated into national and international policymaking, will be essential as the globe transitions from a predominantly younger to a predominantly older world.”
We all need to think about this one.
(Excerpt from: How Population Change will transform Our World by Sarah Harper)
How Think Tanks Became Engines Of Royal Propaganda
Think tanks are odd institutions. Experts solemnly line up, often to defend a specific political or economic cause, and whether they represent the Heritage Foundation or the Brookings Institution, and no matter how fine the expert, his or her findings will, most likely, be in line with the ideological leanings of the institution.
How Statistics Lost Their Power – And Why We Should Fear What Comes Next
In theory, statistics should help settle arguments. They ought to provide stable reference points that everyone – no matter what their politics – can agree on. Yet in recent years, divergent levels of trust in statistics has become one of the key schisms that have opened up in western liberal democracies.
What The F!
Obscene language presents problems, the linguist Michael Adams writes in his new book, In Praise of Profanity, “but no one seems to spend much time thinking about the good it does.” Actually, a lot of people in the last few decades have been considering its benefits, together with its history, its neuroanatomy, and above all its fantastically large and colourful word list.
Donald Trump And His Known Knowns
People all around seem rather agitated with the start of a new regime in the United States. And yes, I am using the word regime, which the Western media usually uses for rogue and unpredictable governments for only one reason: the new administration in Washington is unpredictable and can indeed go rogue, or so some Americans would want you to believe.
Donald Trump, the new president, has ignited passions in a manner unseen in recent memory – upsetting not only hordes of Americans, but also intelligent folks around the world who seem to widely believe that he might be the ultimate disaster to hit all of us.
However, it is not the end of the world, Not yet.
Let’s be fair to Trump and the process of democracy that brought him to power. Those who are complaining are Americans who either did not vote for him or many like us who are citizens of other countries and, therefore, ineligible to vote in U.S. elections. Both these constituencies have no reason to crib, so let’s hear what Trump is saying. There is a fair chance that if he is making sense to some, he might start making sense to all.
Lets also understand that Trump, who has never held a government office or been in military, will click very differently than many of his predecessors who were active in politics or military before they assumed the high office.
Since Trump is essentially a businessman, an unabashed profiteer and a salesman (who has done well to create his own brand across many countries), for him world affairs, global diplomacy and international trade will always be about negotiations and deals – both of which he is good at.
Should we complain about a man – whatever his past may be (and Trump’s not exactly without in-your-face blemishes) – just because he is different from his predecessors and doesn’t conform to our “global” definition of a politician or a president?
Eventually what matters to Trump and those who voted for him is whether he delivers what he promised to. There is no problem with his “America First” for Americans. If the rest of the world has a problem with it, it is not Trump’s problem and the 45th U.S. president seems to know it well – at least for the time being.
China, Europe and even Indian IT companies can fret because Trump’s policies can hit their businesses in the United States; for Trump what matters is looking after his country’s interests – whether they be jobs, infrastructure or Islamic radicals. As president of his country he is first answerable to and responsible for the people of his country. In short, national interest will drive him just as it did his predecessors.
We may not appreciate his front-foot statements and awful tweets, his name-calling and his orange hair or even lack of political and diplomatic etiquettes. What, however, we do need to remember is the world will have to deal with President Trump at least for the next four years.
Governments and businesses will have to, therefore, quickly learn to deal with his idiosyncrasies, his unpredictability, his awful spokespeople, his son-in-law who Trump says will resolve the issues in the Middle East and his purported closeness to Russia and its president Vladimir Putin. Americans will also have to deal with a man who doesn’t’ fit the role; the very reason he got elected and one who will do everything to undo whatever his predecessor Barack Obama did.
In the weeks and months ahead all of us have to get used to a new narrative from Washington. We have to get used to dealing with a penny-pinching, hard-bargaining businessman who will keep his interests (or should we say America’s interests) high on his list of things to do.
And that brings me to what former U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld’s once-considered-gobbledygook theory of the known knowns, the known unknowns and the unknown unknowns. I’d put Trump in the first category. We do know him, and we also know what he will do — not very different than what he has been saying he would. What we still don’t probably have the foggiest idea about is that whether he is going to be around for four years or eight.
Good luck, everybody!
RS
Small Town Vignettes
The paperwallah
In the name of god
Waiting to cook
Shower time
Afternoon siesta
Blowing the breeze
Will China Find The Next Tutankhamen In Egypt?
It has been nearly a century since the British archaeologist Howard Carter discovered the burial place of King Tut in the famed Valley of the Kings in Egypt.
That was the first, and as yet the last, fully intact tomb of an Egyptian Pharaoh to have been found. While archaeologists have kept digging since, they have not discovered any that hasn’t already been ravaged by gravediggers in the ancient times.
Now, it is the turn of the Chinese to try their luck.
Chinese archaeologists are expected to start digging in Egypt for the first time, as authorities of the two nations are in discussion of a cultural cooperation project, Xinhua reported.
Institute of Archaeology under the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences will collaborate with Egyptian experts to carry out archaeological excavations, cultural relics protection, and safety monitoring and control in key sites in Egypt, Wang Wei, director of the institute told.
The institute will also train Egyptian experts in protecting archaeological discoveries.
“This will be the very first time that two of the four ancient civilizations join hands in archaeology — it could be a milestone in the history of bilateral cultural exchanges,” said Wang.
“Working in Egypt, one of the oldest civilizations in the world, is a dream and an honor for most archaeologists,” he said. “We will likely start with the Egyptian temples.”
Egypt has conducted more than 200 excavation and cultural-relics protection projects with foreign institutions, but none of them with China.
Chinese archaeological teams own the world’s leading three-dimensional remote sensing and three-dimensional imaging technology, as well as advanced indoor testing and analysis techniques, said Wang.
China also has rich excavation and research experience with large-scale historical sites, like big cities and palaces, which could help Egypt.
Dragon Flu | For A Global Power, It Is Necessary To Speak
The inability of the world’s second-biggest economy, its representatives and its leaders to communicate and interact with the world is plain bad news for everybody. If you are not able to tell your story, people tend to make up their own tales. Perceptions matter and as Beijing would know, the Chinese aren’t the most loved people in the world.
India May Not Like It, But Sri Lanka Can’t Move Completely Away From China
Buried under billions of dollars of Chinese debt, Colombo has little option but to go along, albeit at a pace slower than earlier. After all, Chinese money did prop up the war-battered economy and created jobs. and this did help the government in ending the war against the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam. The Chinese know that while the wicket might be sticky at this point, the pitch will eventually help the ball turn their way.
This Day And That 