Category: TRENDS IN GEOPOLITICS

The tension between China and the U.K. increased last week after Beijing barred BBC World News from televisions across the country in response to British media regulator Ofcom’s decision earlier this month to revoke the license of the China Global Television Network (CGTN) to broadcast in Britain. The BBC said it was “disappointed” by Beijing’s decision. The BBC noted Radio Television...

The Biden administration said Friday that one of its goals is to close the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba, which currently holds 40 inmates. In 2019, NPR reported the U.S. spent more than $6 billion to operate the facility for the past 19 years. Even with 40 inmates, the prison costs American taxpayers $380...

Well into its third month, the farmers’ protests in India continue.  Last week, Twitter found itself at odds with government officials who demanded that the social media platform block some pro-farmer handles.  The Wall Street Journal reported that Twitter conducted an investigation and found some of the accounts it had restricted in the country should...

As we have been reporting in the Trends Journal, tens of thousands of protesters, ranging from students to government workers, have been taking to the streets in Myanmar (“Burma” is the name of this country that is recognized diplomatically by the U.S.) demanding the military release leader Aung San Suu Kyi and hand back power...

President Biden visited the Pentagon for the first time last week. Following his visit, President Biden announced a task force that will form a policy to counter China during his term in the White House after he called Beijing “our most serious competitor,” a report said. The Wall Street Journal reported that the team will be comprised...

Violent protests erupted on Friday in Chile in the southern city of Panguipulli after a police officer shot a young street juggler for what had been reported as his refusal to give the officer identification papers.  Videos emerged showing the cop firing shots at Francisco Martínez Romero, 27, as he was juggling two “blunt” machetes...

We have been reporting since mid-November on the protests of hundreds of thousands of farmers in India, in response to Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s push for deregulation laws that farmers fear will sink them deep into poverty.  They contend the new farm laws, passed in September in secrecy, strip them of earning potential, allowing major...

Bobbi Wine, Uganda’s opposition leader who lost last month’s election to incumbent Yoweri Museveni, announced he is seeking to overturn the election in court.  Wine, who pulled in 35 percent of the vote in the 14 January election to Museveni’s 58 percent, has been a vocal critic of what he called an intimidation campaign on...

China’s Education Ministry issued a notice last week warning that a troubling number of young men in the country have become too “feminine” and called on schools to begin “cultivating students’ masculinity.” The initiative called the “Proposal to Prevent the Feminization of Male Adolescents,” urged schools to tap former athletes to serve as role models...

As reported in this Trends Journal, the Chinese government is taking measures to de-feminize its male population. Over in Turkey, however, students at Istanbul’s Bogazici University last week protested the appointment of Melih Bulu as the school’s new president over allegations he targeted LGBT freedoms in the past, the Financial Times reported.  The report said the protests...