On the 7th of September last year, El Salvador’s new “Bitcoin Law” went into effect. This law makes Bitcoin legal tender in El Salvador, alongside the US dollar. This controversial law was introduced to the legislative assembly by President Nayib Bukele, El Salvador’s populist leader. President Bukele is infamous for his “attempted coup” on the…
As objectively great as democracy is, it does have serious flaws. In this article I’ll be looking at some of the biggest flaws in democracy and how to address, or at least reduce, them. Short-termism: One of the biggest criticisms of democracy is that it encourages short-term thinking. With politicians serving short terms and having…
Barbados has just become a republic, stripping the Queen of her few remaining powers. So, what does that mean? Well, the position of Governor-General has been removed, and replaced with a Presidency. The President of Barbados is the head of state and of the armed forces, and is the source of executive power. In practice…
Sometimes it seems that faith in democracy is waning in the West. As countries like China appear to speed ahead, there appears to be an increasing tendency in the West to attribute its own perceived failures to the most obvious difference between it and its rivals: democracy. In this series of articles I’ll talk about…
I recently watched one of the oddest ads I’ve ever been shown. I was about to watch a video, and this really peculiar and completely unrelated ad popped up: it was published by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Japan, and was talking about the name of the Sea of Japan. The video first makes…
Mr. Hakainde Hichilema recently won the Zambian elections in a landslide victory (he won nearly 60% of the vote, with a 70% voter turnout). He assumed power on the 24th to become the 7th president of Zambia. He has unsuccessfully run for president 5 times (though sometimes on a knife’s edge), starting with the 2006…
While the G7 summit this year was disappointing to some, mainly due to unambitious contributions to the climate fight and vaccine donations, one interesting thing they did manage to get through was “Build Back Better World” (B3W). It is intended to be an alternative to China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) which has been one…
The Nord Stream 2 project is an under-construction gas pipeline that would go from Russia to Germany which has been the subject of a lot of controversy recently. So let’s look a bit deeper into it. Nord Stream 2 is an expansion of the original Nord Stream gas line, creating two additional pipelines along the…
The hijacking of a passenger plane by Belarus is a huge threat to international aviation, being as it is a hijacking perpetrated by the state itself. In doing this Belarus broke multiple International Civil Aviation Organisation Treaties guaranteeing the free passage and neutrality of airspace, possibly broke the European Convention on Human Rights (they never…
Today the EU and Japan signed the “EU-Japan Green Alliance” during the 27th EU-Japan summit, which also occurred today. So what’s happened? Firstly, European Council President, Charles Michel and European Commision President, Ursula Von der Leyen represented the EU at this summit while Japan was represented by their PM Yoshihide Suga. What did they discuss…
The South China Sea has the three most important seafaring routes of East Asia and carries about one third of global shipping or $5.3 trillion annually. Almost everything going from or to the numerous nations in the region needs to go through the South China Sea. It controls access to the Strait of Malacca, among…