Latest news with #CharlesTaylor
IOL News
4 days ago
- IOL News
The peasants are revolting; know your place meddling woman or lose your head! and a murdering president
Charles Taylor Ex Liberian president, warlord and war criminal in court awaits his fate. What happened on this day in history: May 30 1381 England's Peasants' Revolt begins. Also called Wat Tyler's Rebellion, it was the first great popular rebellion in English history. Its immediate cause was the imposition of the unpopular poll tax, which brought to a head the economic discontent that had been growing since the middle of the century. 1431 Unjustly condemned, French heroine Joan of Arc is burnt at the stake by the English. 1536 England's King Henry VIII marries Jane Seymour, a lady-in-waiting to his first two wives. Married the day after the execution of Anne Boleyn, Seymour's only known involvement in national affairs was met with a blunt reminder of the fate that her predecessor met when she 'meddled in his affairs'. 1806 Future US president Andrew Jackson kills Charles Dickinson in a duel after Dickinson accused Jackson's wife of bigamy. 1815 The British troopship Arniston is wrecked at Waenhuiskrans (Arniston) after the captain mistakes Cape Agulhas for Cape Point, and heads north for St Helena thinking he has rounded the Cape. The ship grounds. 1883 A stampede on New York's Brooklyn Bridge, caused by a rumour it was going to collapse, kills 12 people. 1899 Wild West outlaw Pearl Hart (1871–1955) holds up a stage coach in Arizona. It is one of the last stagecoach robberies in the Old West. 1900 Lady Violet Cecil writes to Britain's Lord Salisbury on conditions in Bloemfontein, noting: 'Far more have been killed in our hospitals than by Boer bullets... Men are dying by the hundreds who could easily be saved.' 1942 Japanese submarines shell naval bases in Australia and Madagascar. 1967 Daredevil Robert 'Evel' Knievel jumps his motorcycle over 16 cars in Gardena, California. 1972 Members of the Japanese Red Army carry out the Lod Airport massacre near Tel Aviv in Israel, killing 24 people and injuring 78. 2012 Former Liberian president Charles Taylor is sentenced to 50 years in jail for war crimes. 2017 A suicide bomb in the diplomatic quarter of Kabul, Afghanistan, kills more than 150 people and injures 400. 2024 Vermont becomes the first US state to pass a law requiring fossil fuel companies to pay for damages caused by climate change. DAILY NEWS
France 24
16-05-2025
- Politics
- France 24
ICC prosecutor, under investigation, steps aside temporarily
The UN Office of Internal Oversight Services started started its investigation in November, with reports saying Khan was accused of sexual misconduct towards a member of his office. Khan, 55, denies the allegations. Khan "communicated his decision to take leave until the end" of the UN internal investigation, and his deputy prosecutors will run the office in his absence, it said in a statement. The British lawyer took up his position with The Hague-based court in June 2021. Throughout his career -- from courtrooms in England and Wales, to leading cases before international tribunals -- he has faced down controversy for his legal work. Stints included defending Liberia's former president Charles Taylor against allegations of war crimes in Sierra Leone, Kenya's President William Ruto in a crimes-against-humanity case at the ICC that was eventually dropped, and the son of late Libyan leader Moamer Kadhafi, Seif al-Islam. Khan also secured ICC warrants against Russian President Vladimir Putin, and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and senior Hamas figures, over alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity. The ICC investigates and prosecutes genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity and the crime of aggression. While its rulings are binding on member countries, it lacks the ability to enforce them. Khan was born in Scotland and studied undergraduate law at King's College, London. His father was Pakistani, his mother British and he is a member of the minority Ahmadiyya Muslim sect. He became a practising lawyer in 1992, and went on to cut his teeth in international law at the former Yugoslav and Rwandan war crimes courts from 1997 to 2000. He later represented survivors and relatives of victims of the 1970s Khmer Rouge regime in Cambodia at its UN-backed court in the late 2000s. His other roles have included a stint at The Hague-based Special Tribunal for Lebanon, set up to bring to justice the killers of Lebanese ex-PM Rafic Hariri in 2005.
Scroll.in
29-04-2025
- Politics
- Scroll.in
Why ads rarely depict caste and religious minorities
In contemporary India, visual culture serves as a stage where national identity is rehearsed and reasserted. Advertising, which saturates our visual world, offers a carefully composed image of who belongs to the aspirational citizenry. It presents a cheerful nation, dressed in festive hues, speaking in softened accents, consuming with quiet confidence. But this ideal India is often conspicuously homogeneous. The billboarded nation largely excludes religious and caste minorities, and increasingly confines representations of diversity to the safe terrains of region, accent, or culinary difference. This absence is not simply a failure of representation. It reflects a deeper anxiety about who belongs in the imagined middle-class consumer-citizenry. In a country where Muslim presence in everyday public life has become increasingly precarious, and caste continues to structure access to dignity and visibility, the world of advertising acts as both a filter and a fantasy of homogeneity. In an age of emboldened majoritarianism, this aesthetic curation is not accidental – it is ideological. Yet, paradoxically, when minority figures do appear in advertisements – when a woman coded as a Muslim by her dupatta or hijab smiles from a billboard, or when a Dalit-coded figure is portrayed not as suffering but as stylish – the moment can carry powerful resonance. This is the paradox of commodified recognition. Even when mediated through the market, representation can matter. Recognition without redistribution The concept of recognition, as developed in political and philosophical thought – especially by thinkers like Axel Honneth and Charles Taylor – highlights how human dignity is tied not only to rights or redistribution, but to being seen and affirmed as a full subject. In the domain of advertising, recognition often comes stripped of its political teeth. It is tied instead to consumer subjectivity: one is recognised as a potential buyer, a lifestyle, a demographic. In her work Authentic™, Sarah Banet-Weiser outlines how brands have begun to deploy 'authenticity' and 'diversity' as marketable traits, aligning themselves with progressive social causes without committing to structural change. This is what she calls the rise of brand culture, where inclusion is repackaged as affect and sentiment, not politics. In another collaborative work titled Commodity Activism Banet-Weiser and other contributors show that progressive representation in advertisements can offer moments of symbolic validation, even as it participates in neoliberal narratives of individual empowerment. But these frameworks, developed in the context of American race and gender politics, require careful translation when applied to the Indian context – where caste is not a 'diversity' category in the corporate imagination, and where Muslimness is often treated as a liability in public discourse. Absence as strategic Writing on the Urdu newspaper industry, Robin Jeffrey pointed out a telling contradiction: despite decent circulation, Urdu newspapers have attracted little advertising revenue, especially from consumer brands. This, the publishers and editors said, was because their largely Muslim readership was perceived to lack purchasing power. But by the 1990s, a distinct segment of the Muslim middle class had emerged, aspirational and consumer-oriented like others in their class. Still, leading Urdu dailies continued to be bypassed by major advertisers. This reveals a critical asymmetry in Indian media: the growing numbers of Muslim and Scheduled Caste individuals in the middle class did not get translated into their recognition as paying publics in mainstream advertising, even as the Muslim and Dalit masses are recognised in digital attention economies as audience. The issue, then, is not merely one of who appears in advertisements, but of who is seen as worth addressing. Addressing a community does not always require showing its members. To be seen can also mean having one's culture acknowledged through naming festivals and anticipating buying rhythms. Eid, for instance, rarely figures in national ad campaigns as a meaningful economic or emotional moment. Unlike Diwali, which is saturated with consumer messaging, Eid passes with minimal commercial acknowledgment even when Muslim consumers are significant participants in the markets for clothing and food. Christmas has been absorbed into the visual grammar of aspirational urban India not as minority culture but more as global consumer aesthetics. Its acceptance reveals the global political economy of desirability and phobias. There is no vocabulary within mainstream advertising to depict caste, unless it is entirely sublimated into euphemisms like 'rural consumers' or 'aspirational India'. Dalit presence is at best symbolic, as in rare campaigns that foreground 'change-makers' from marginalised communities – most often as part of a corporate social responsibility narrative rather than commercial branding. "People across the world wait to celebrate this festival (Diwali). The people have not liked this ad": Aashutosh Srivastava, Supreme Court Advocate, on the #FabIndia row — NDTV (@ndtv) October 19, 2021 Why visibility still matters Given the wider conditions of exclusion and violence, it is easy to dismiss such representational politics as hollow. And yet, affect resists easy dismissal. To deny the emotional weight of being seen, to write off recognition as mere ideological bait, is to misunderstand the lived experience of erasure. Advertising may not be the site of justice, but it remains a terrain of imagination. A working-class Muslim child who sees a character like herself in a school uniform on a digital platform might not read it as a political act but it can shape her sense of possibility. Elizabeth Chin's ethnographic work on Black children in the US (Purchasing Power, 2001) illustrates how advertising and consumer culture shape affective worlds. While it promotes materialism, consumers can see advertisements as offering scripts for self-worth and social imagination. When someone long pushed to the edges of visibility in Indian society sees their likeness in aspirational media or is addressed without being reduced to suffering or charity, it can offer a quiet moment of affective affirmation. Holding the tension It is true that mere noble imagery cannot undo dispossession and violence. An advertisement that showcases interfaith harmony, for instance, may soothe some viewers, but it does not interrogate the ongoing criminalisation of Muslim presence in the polity. It risks becoming, as one trenchant critic put it, a form of 'passive-aggressive majoritarianism' – a sentimental mask over structures of exclusion. Lauren Berlant characterised the promise of belonging that depends on the denial of structural violence, 'cruel optimism'. Yet, it is precisely this tension that requires attention. Public representation today is not just about ideology; it is also about affective economies – about how people feel, dream, and imagine belonging. In a country where to be seen with dignity is a rare achievement for many communities, visual representation and being addressed as consumers does not feel superficial to those who are ghosted by market forces. It can be humiliating to spend your money in a marketplace that takes your business but refuses to acknowledge your presence, your festivals, or your dignity. It is not just an economic exclusion, but a failure of the moral economy. The task, then, is to hold this tension without collapsing it. To be seen is not a substitute for justice. To be addressed is not liberation. But it is not nothing.
Yahoo
27-01-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
29 ruthless former leaders who stole BILLIONS from their people
Engaging in theft on the grandest scale, some of the world's most corrupt modern leaders have shamelessly looted their nations' treasuries to fund a life of luxury while their impoverished citizens struggled to make ends meet. From African despots to Eastern European tyrants, read on to discover 29 of the most notorious rulers ranked in order of the total wealth they reportedly stole. All dollar amounts in US dollars unless otherwise stated. Figures have been adjusted for inflation. One of two Filipino leaders who milked the developing country for all it was worth, Joseph Estrada was convicted in September 2007 of netting himself in excess of $80 million via bribery and other dubious dealing. That's the equivalent of $121 million (£98m) in today's money. His three-year presidency ended in 2001 when he was removed following mass protests. However, he was later pardoned by his successor and went on to serve as mayor of Manila. Liberia's president from 1997 to 2003, Charles Taylor stole or diverted almost $100 million ($170m/£138m today) from the nation's coffers during his time in power. He used the money to finance everything from flash homes and cars to illegal weapons. Largely responsible for the brutal internal conflict that ravaged Liberia in the 1990s, Taylor was also behind a number of atrocities that were committed during neighbouring Sierra Leone's civil war. The infamous tyrant was sentenced to 50 years in prison in 2012 for crimes against humanity; he filed an appeal in 2013 but this was rejected. One of the most notorious despots in modern history, Idi Amin was president of Uganda from 1971 to 1979. Up to 500,000 people died during his reign and gross economic mismanagement also characterised Amin's regime. While putting a figure on the total he and his associates looted is practically impossible, online estimates suggest the tyrant's fortune was at least $100 million at the time of his death in exile in 2003, the equivalent of $170 million (£138m) today. In 2004, the anti-corruption organisation Transparency International ranked the world's 10 most corrupt leaders by order of funds embezzled. With the aforementioned Joseph Estrada placed 10th on the list, Nicaragua's Arnoldo Aléman took the ninth spot. The president of the Latin American nation from 1997 to 2002, Aléman is said to have stolen a total of $100 million (around $174m/£141m in 2025). He was sentenced to a 20-year jail term in 2003 for his crimes, but the conviction was controversially quashed in 2009. Ukraine's prime minister from 1996 to 1997, Pavlo Lazarenko cheated the nation out of up to $200 million, according to UN reports and Transparency International's 2004 list (he ranked eighth on the latter). That's the equivalent of $390 million (£316m) in 2025. Lazarenko fled to America, where he later served time for his financial crimes. However, thanks to a well-funded legal defence, he remains wealthy to this day and has yet to face justice in his home country. In 2024, the US Department of Justice signalled its intent to confiscate $200 million (£162m) from the former leader to benefit Ukraine. Kurmanbek Bakiyev was president of the Central Asian state of Kyrgyzstan from 2005 to 2010 when he was ousted during an uprising and forced to flee to Belarus. Together with members of his family, the deposed leader has been accused of misappropriating up to $300 million ($432m/£350m today) from a Russian loan worth several billion that was intended to fund the building of a hydropower station and terminate the lease on a US base. Like Idi Amin, Jean-Bédel Bokassa was behind the deaths of countless innocent civilians. He also had a penchant for raiding public funds, which saw him splashing a third of the impoverished nation's annual income on an elaborate coronation ceremony for himself in 1977. President of the Central African Republic between 1966 and 1979, he also styled himself as the nation's emperor. He's said to have stolen at least $170 million, around $734 million (£595m) in today's money, which he spent on a host of emperor essentials, including jewels, a jet plane and prime chunks of real estate across Europe. Ranked in seventh spot on Transparency International's list of the world's most corrupt leaders, Alberto Fujimori served as Peru's president from 1990 to 2000, a decade that reportedly saw him misappropriate up to $600 million from the country's finances. That's the equivalent of almost $1.1 billion (£890m) in 2025 money. In 2009, the disgraced former leader was handed a 25-year jail term for murder and corruption charges. He received a presidential pardon in 2017, but his was overturned by Peru's supreme court, and Fujimori returned to prison in 2019. However, his release was approved in 2022 by the nation's Constitutional Court. Fujimori died in September 2024. Currently living in exile in Equatorial Guinea, Gambia's fugitive former leader Yahya Jammeh is reported to have purloined at least $975 million ($1.2bn/£970m in 2025) before he fled the country in 2017 after 22 years in power. Wanted back home for "myriad crimes", the corrupt former president spent his people's money on luxury cars, private jets and high-end real estate, including a mansion in the US that has since been confiscated. Cuba's president from 1976 to 2008, Fidel Castro's Marxist-Leninist values based on fair distribution of wealth didn't stop him from accruing an immense personal fortune off the back of his struggling people if Forbes' 2006 estimate of his wealth is to be believed. Back then, the business magazine pegged Castro's net worth at $900 million, the equivalent of $1.4 billion (£1.1bn) in today's money. While Castro insisted to Cubans that he lived off a modest salary, he reportedly controlled several state-backed interests, including a pharmaceuticals company and a retail chain. Forbes reported that former Cuban officials accused Castro of skimming profits from these businesses for years. Castro died in 2016 at the age of 90. Bashar al-Assad ruled Syria from 2000 until December 2024, when he was overthrown by rebels and fled to Russia. Under his leadership, the nation became a totalitarian police state blighted by civil war while Assad himself became rich. After he was ousted, reports of his lavish belongings, including a luxury car collection, were widely published. The true extent of his wealth is uncertain. In 2022, the US State Department estimated Assad and his wife had amassed a fortune of up to $2 billion (£1.6bn), but this personal wealth is likely a tiny portion of the total. It's thought the despot took billions of dollars from the Syrian economy, though an exact figure has never been reported. Transparency International placed Haitian dictator Jean-Claude 'Baby Doc' Duvalier in sixth place on its 2004 list. Picking up in 1971 where his despot father François 'Papa Doc' Duvalier had left off, Duvalier presided over a murderous regime until he was overthrown in 1986. During his 15-year rule, he plundered up to $800 million ($2.3bn/£1.9bn today) from the destitute nation's coffers, including the 2025 equivalent of $12 million (£9.7m) to pay for his 1980 wedding. He returned to Haiti from exile in 2011 and died of a heart attack in 2014. The communist leader of Romania from 1965 until his death by firing squad in the Romanian Revolution of 1989, Nicolae Ceaușescu lived in the lap of luxury while his citizens had to fight hard to put food on their tables. Among the many extravagances that the despot and his family enjoyed were an opulent palace, solid gold cutlery, fine jewels and expensive furs. They were also said to have squirrelled away more than a billion dollars in foreign bank accounts, which would be worth over $2.5 billion (£2bn) today. The prime minister and later president of Zimbabwe from 1980 to 2017, Robert Mugabe presided over the economic collapse of the once affluent nation, which he looted heavily to enrich himself and his family. Leaked US diplomatic cables published by Wikileaks show that the leader, who owned a number of farms, high-end residences, and other prized possessions at home and abroad, had amassed assets worth more than $1.75 billion by the turn of the millennium, the equivalent of $3.2 billion (£2.6bn) today. Mugabe was effectively forced from power in 2017, although he insisted he had resigned. He died in Singapore in 2019 at the age of 95. Daniel Arap Moi was president of Kenya from 1978 to 2002. During his time in office, he was alleged to have funnelled somewhere between $1 billion and $4 billion into his family's business empire, gaining interests in oil companies, banks, shipping firms and much more. Unsurprisingly one of the country's richest people, Moi was worth $3 billion at the time of his death in 2020, the equivalent of around $3.6 billion (£2.9bn) today. Turkmenistan's leader from 1985 until his death in 2007, Saparmurat Niyazov was known for his narcissistic tendencies and eccentricities. These included renaming the month of January in his honour and erecting a $12 million (£9.7m) gold-plated statue of himself. Reports suggest he accrued a personal fortune of more than $3 billion by siphoning off the country's oil wealth to the detriment of his people. This would be worth around $4.5 billion (£3.7bn) in 2025 money. The supreme leader of North Korea from 1994 to 2011, Kim Jong Il is estimated to have stolen $4 billion ($5.6bn/£4.5bn today) from the nation while many of its citizens were starving to death. The despot's so-called 'slush fund' was managed by Ri Su-yong, North Korea's former ambassador to Switzerland, who deposited the cash in clandestine Swiss bank accounts. After allegedly clashing with Kim Jong Un over how to manage his father's money, Su-yong was reportedly executed in 2013. Military despot Sani Abacha was the de facto leader of Nigeria from 1993 until his death in 1998. His time at the helm of the country was marked by widespread human rights abuses and endemic corruption. Experts estimate that Abacha robbed the nation of between $2 billion and $4 billion (up to $7.7bn/£6.2bn today), hiding much of it in secret Swiss bank accounts. Slobodan Milošević, who died in 2006 while on trial at The Hague for war crimes, was the leader of Serbia from 1989 to 1997. As reported by the BBC, Milošević is suspected to have stolen up to $4 billion of public money, the equivalent of $7.8 billion (£6.3bn) today, during his time at the top. However, Transparency International suggests the figure is a more modest $1 billion, which puts him in fifth place on its 2004 list of most corrupt leaders. Mobutu Sese Seko was president of Zaire, now the Democratic Republic of Congo, from 1965 to 1997. Just as free and easy with his people's money as the other leaders in our round-up, the autocratic leader is estimated to have helped himself to a total of $5 billion, or around $9.7 billion (£7.9bn) today. In third position on Transparency International's 2004 list, Seko owned palaces in Zaire and grand residences in Paris and Switzerland and was partial to lavish luxuries including vintage Laurent Perrier pink champagne. Military officer Omar Al-Bashir led a coup that overthrew the democratic government of Sudan in 1989 and served as president from 1993 to 2019 when he himself was ousted in a coup. All in all, the wanted war criminal had stowed away $9 billion of his people's money by 2010, according to diplomatic cables shared by Wikileaks. That's around $12.9 billion (£10.5bn) in today's money. The Sudanese authorities have since managed to recover $4 billion (£3.2bn) from Al-Bashir, his family and their associates. Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, the former leader of Tunisia, is thought to have controlled between 30% to 40% of the nation's economy during his time in power. Together with his family, he held ill-gotten assets estimated to be worth around $10 billion in 2011 ($13.9bn/£11.3bn today), the year he was ousted. Ben Ali died in exile in Saudi Arabia in 2019, having escaped justice at home. Callous and corrupt, Ferdinand Marcos was president of the Philippines from 1965 to 1986. Together with his wife Imelda, who was infamous for her vast collection of designer shoes, the despot embezzled up to an estimated $10 billion ($28.6bn/£23.2bn today) from the public purse. Marcos occupied the runner-up position on Transparency International's 2004 list. Astonishingly, all appears to be forgiven, with the Filipino people electing his son, Ferdinand 'Bongbong' Marcos, as president in 2022. Suharto was president of Indonesia for 31 years until his forced resignation in 1998. The military despot, who was named the most corrupt world leader by Transparency International in 2004, plundered up to $35 billion ($67bn/£54bn today) during his grip on power through a system that his opponents summed up as "corruption, collusion, nepotism". One of the most monstrous dictators of all time, Saddam Hussein not only ruled Iraq with an iron fist from 1979 to 2003, he also purloined huge sums of the nation's oil income. According to CBS News, estimates of the tyrant's misappropriated wealth stretch as high as $40 billion, translating to an incredible $68.2 billion (£55.3bn) in today's money. Ali Abdullah Saleh, the president of Yemen from 1990 to 2012, is thought to have stolen up to $64 billion from his people during his 22 years in power. For context, that's more than double the country's current GDP, and the equivalent of $87.4 billion (£70.8bn) in 2025 money. The explosive allegation was contained within a 2015 report presented to the UN Security Council. The second Ukrainian leader to make our list, Viktor Yanukovych was president of the country from 2010 to 2014, when he was ousted as part of the Revolution of Dignity. Corrupt to the core, the pro-Russia politician and his cronies are estimated to have stolen up to $70 billion ($92.8bn/£75.2bn today), money that the current government has been working hard to recover. Egypt's Hosni Mubarak was removed from power in 2011 after serving 30 years as president of the country. According to British newspaper The Guardian, the politician relieved the Egyptian people of $70 billion ($97.6bn/£79.1bn in today's money) during his time in power, though estimates vary widely. A report in The Washington Post suggests the sum could have been 10 times higher, while US Intelligence experts put the figure at a more reserved $5 billion (£4bn). The leader of Libya between 1969 and 2011, Muammar Gaddafi is estimated to have accumulated a fortune that would easily have made him the richest person on the planet. Following his death in 2011 at the hands of rebel fighters, it was revealed the dictator had channelled a staggering $200 billion into covert bank accounts, shady investments and dubious real estate deals during his 34 years in power. That's the equivalent of $279 billion (£226bn) today. Now discover Sign in to access your portfolio
