Latest news with #technocrats
Free Malaysia Today
28-07-2025
- Politics
- Free Malaysia Today
Anwar's replacement would face same economic headwinds, says veteran newsman
Anwar Ibrahim was the subject of a rally last weekend, calling for his resignation as prime minister. PETALING JAYA : Veteran journalist A Kadir Jasin today warned that any successor to Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim would face the same economic challenges of creating a sustainable economy and ensuring the fair distribution of wealth. In a Facebook post reflecting on the Turun Anwar rally last Saturday, Kadir said Anwar's 'handicap' was a perceived lack of foundational knowledge in economics. A Kadir Jasin. 'The current economic hardship faced by the people is largely due to Anwar's over-reliance on technocrats and corporate figures who are disconnected from the general public. 'These elites operate based on profit and loss, taxes and revenue,' he said. He said such individuals did not feel accountable for the people's suffering as they saw it as a 'politician's job'. 'For them, if they manage to build strong economic fundamentals and earn praise from international rating agencies, they consider their job done,' he said. The Turun Anwar rally was organised by PAS Youth, with protesters calling for Anwar to step down as prime minister over the rising cost of living, among others. According to PAS, some 500,000 protesters turned up although Kuala Lumpur police estimated that only 18,000 people took part in the rally. Kadir said a single protest was not enough, and that the opposition must keep up the momentum if it was serious about removing Anwar. 'Especially since Anwar himself has 'challenged' them to do so,' he said, referring to opposition leader Hamzah Zainudin's hint that a vote of no confidence would be tabled. Charles Santiago. Meanwhile, DAP's Charles Santiago said it would be 'disingenuous' to ignore the fact that some of the protest's organisers were 'far from altruistic'. He said many of the loudest calls for Anwar's resignation came from 'disgraced politicians and their operatives', whom he said once drained the public purse and weaponised race and religion but now 'masqueraded as reformists' because they had been shut out of power. 'Their rallying cry isn't justice. It's vengeance dressed in street theatre,' the former Klang MP said in a Facebook post. He urged the people not to mistake opportunism for leadership, adding that protests lose moral authority when they are hijacked by 'those with dirty hands and no vision beyond their personal vendettas'. However, he also warned that the rally should serve as a wake-up call, not only for those in power but also for those aspiring to replace them. He said if the current government could not deliver on its promises of economic justice, inclusivity, and clean governance, it would continue to 'haemorrhage public trust, no matter how corrupt its critics are'. Adding that Malaysians were tired of being asked to choose the lesser evil, he said there was still time for Anwar. 'The remainder of his term must be spent on bold, redistributive policies that protect the most vulnerable and restore faith in the state,' he said.
Al Jazeera
23-07-2025
- Politics
- Al Jazeera
Sudan's competing authorities are beholden to militia leaders, say analysts
In June, the Sudanese Armed Forces appointed Prime Minister Kamil Idris to lead the civilian cabinet in Port Sudan, the wartime capital on the Red Sea coast. Idris wanted an overhaul, to appoint a team of technocrats to run the new government. But Gebreil Ibrahim and Mini Arko Minawi – leaders of two powerful armed groups from Darfur – refused to leave their posts, and army leader Abdelfattah al-Burhan overruled Idris to keep them there. 'Burhan's concession to Ibrahim and Minawi allows them to keep ministries that control [government] revenue,' said Suliman Baldo, the founder of the Sudan Transparency and Policy Tracker, a think tank. Al Jazeera sent written questions to army spokesperson Nabil Abdullah, asking him why al-Burhan overruled Idris. No response had been received by the time of publication. On the other side of the war is a coalition of armed groups that have, de facto, divided Sudan in half after more than two years of civil war. The Rapid Support Forces paramilitary, which is battling the army, has formed an alliance with smaller armed factions and declared its intention to form a parallel government that will ostensibly represent all of Sudan. The RSF-backed coalition has already unveiled its leadership council, on which the leaders of armed groups feature in prominent positions. Analysts told Al Jazeera that SAF and the RSF are trying to meet the demands of powerful militias in a bid to keep their respective battlefield alliances intact. In February, the RSF announced that it had formed an alliance with the Sudan People's Liberation Movement-North (SPLM-N), an armed group from the Nuba Mountains led by Abdel Aziz al-Hilu. From the beginning of the war, it had remained neutral, shocking observers when it allied with the RSF to form a new alliance and parallel government, which they named Tasis (foundation). The SPLM-N governs large swaths of South Kordofan and Blue Nile states, and has been at war with the army – as well as the RSF, which used to be the army's ally before they turned their guns on each other – for 40 years. SPLM-N was born out of the SPLM, which emerged in the early 1980s to fight for southern independence and to end its marginalisation by the elites of northern and central Sudan. The Nuba – a group of about 50 communities from what was then central Sudan – was part of the SPLM. But when South Sudan seceded in 2011, Nuba fighters rebranded as SPLM-N and continued their rebellion against Khartoum, fighting and defeating the RSF, which was deployed to fight them by former President Omar al-Bashir in 2016. Nearly a decade later, on July 2, Tasis announced a 31-member senior leadership council, with Hemedti as its head and SPLM-N's al-Hilu as deputy. While the full list of the 31-member council is not yet public, it also includes Tahir al-Hajar, the head of the Darfur-based Sudan Liberation Gathering Forces (SLGF), according to an interview he gave Al Jazeera Mubasher. Tasis will soon roll out a government to help the RSF and its allies in their fight against the army, Kholood Khair, Sudan expert and founder of Confluence Advisory think tank, believes. The RSF wants to exploit the guise of a formal government to better profit from aid groups, buy sophisticated weapons such as fighter jets that can only be sold to states, and boost its stance in any future negotiations with the army, she explained. 'They do not want to go into any kind of mediation as a rebel group. They want to be seen as a government [to boost their legitimacy],' Khair said. Al Jazeera asked Tasis spokesman, Alaa Nugud, to respond to accusations that the alliance was simply formed to garner international legitimacy for armed groups on the ground. While he did not respond before publication, Tasis portrays itself as the cornerstone of a 'New Sudan' seeking to protect historically neglected and persecuted communities, even as the RSF stands accused of committing ethnic killings and genocide against sedentary communities known as 'non-Arabs' in Darfur. However, 'this is just a group formed out of war dynamics despite their entire narrative of it being a coalition of the marginalised,' said Hamid Khalafallah, an expert on Sudan and PhD candidate at the University of Manchester. On the Port Sudan government's side, Gebreil Ibrahim and Mini Arko Minawi lead the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM) and the Sudan Liberation Army – Mini Minawi (SLA-MM), respectively. The two armed groups mainly comprised sedentary farming 'non-Arab' communities from the vast western region of Darfur who came together to fight a rebellion against the central government in 2003. Their stated aim was to end the persecution and neglect of their communities, but like most of Sudan's armed groups, they ended up using their weapons to negotiate access to state coffers and prominent posts in government instead. 'What this whole war has shown is if you pick up a gun, then you can get power,' Khair said. 'The RSF are really the poster children for this model,' she added. The RSF in its current form was born during the Darfur war, which started in 2003, when al-Bashir tapped Mohamed Hamdan 'Hemedti' Dagalo and his feared 'Arab' Popular Defence Forces (Janjaweed) militia to crush the rebellion there. Al-Bashir rewarded Hemedti, who took part in countless atrocities against 'non-Arabs', by repackaging the Janjaweed into the RSF in 2013, with Hemedti at its head and a place with the army. As part of the state, Hemedti was able to consolidate control over lucrative gold mines, expand recruitment and lease out fighters to partake in regional wars for tens of millions of dollars. When al-Bashir was deposed by a popular uprising in April 2019, a wealthy, powerful Hemedti became al-Burhan's deputy in the Transitional Military Council. Tasis, as well as the army-backed government in Port Sudan, are beholden to armed actors, which means more local commanders could expand recruitment and acquire weapons, hoping to get strong enough to gain political power, analysts warn. Mohamed 'al-Jakomi' Seid Ahmed, an army-aligned commander from northern Sudan, made a statement a few weeks ago that hinted at his aspirations, Sudan Transparency and Policy Tracker's Baldo said. Al-Jakomi said that he would be training a whopping 50,000 men in Eritrea to protect Sudan's Northern State from possible incursion by the RSF. He confirmed his plan in an interview with Al Jazeera Mubasher. In addition, Baldo referenced Abu Aqla Keikel, whose force was instrumental in helping the army recapture the agricultural heartland of Gezira state three months after defecting from the RSF to the army in October 2024. Human Rights Watch (HRW) and Al Jazeera's reporting point to atrocities committed by Keikel's fighters, prompting the European Union to sanction him on July 18. Still, analysts say his power is growing and he may harbour ambitions to secure some form of political power. 'These are individuals who can hold the army hostage through their autonomous militias … as a way to secure seats around the cake when it is divided,' Baldo told Al Jazeera. To appease armed actors that they want to keep onside, the army-backed government will likely create new positions as rewards, Jawhara Kanu, an expert on Sudan's economy, said. 'The government will just have to keep swelling … with as many ministries as possible to reward as many people as possible,' she told Al Jazeera. However, neither Port Sudan nor Tasis will be able to hand out political posts forever, especially if the war continues and more powerful militias emerge. The army doesn't have enough revenue – a result of losing control of nearly half the country, which encompasses profitable gold mines and agricultural lands, according to Khair. She added that Hemedti and his family are unlikely to cede much of their private wealth to pay recruits. Throughout the war, the RSF incentivised its fighters by allowing them to plunder the cities and villages they attacked. But as loot runs dry, militias may resort to building their fiefdoms by setting up checkpoints to heavily tax people and goods passing through, warns Khair. 'The new predatory behaviour, supported by the state in RSF and army areas, will be checkpoints. And these checkpoints will mark one rebel leader's area from another,' she told Al Jazeera. 'In a decade's time, it may eventually be difficult to tell which militia is loyal to the army and which is loyal to the RSF,' Khair added.
Russia Today
23-06-2025
- Politics
- Russia Today
Green agenda is killing Europe's ancestry
Western Europe's new green regime reorders the continent through policies of territorial cleansing and restriction, replacing the lifeways of rooted peoples with a managed wilderness shaped by remote technocrats and mandated compliance. What arrives with the language of environmental deliverance advances as a mechanism of control, engineered to dissolve ancestral bonds. In the soft light of the northern dawn, when the fog rests over fields once furrowed by hands and prayers, a quiet force spreads, cloaked in green, speaking in the language of 'sustainability,' offered with the glow of planetary care. Across Europe, policymakers, consultants, and unelected 'visionaries' enforce a grand design of regulation and restraint. The new dogma wears the trappings of salvation. It promises healing, stability, and ecological redemption. Yet beneath the surface lies a different pattern: one of compression, centralization, and engineered transformation. This green wave comes through offices aglow with LED light and carbon dashboards, distant from the oak groves and shepherd chants that once shaped Europe through destiny and devotion. Traditional Europe lived through the pulse of the land, its customs drawn from meadows, its laws mirrored in trees, its faith carried by the wind over tilled soil and cathedral towers. The terms arrive prepackaged: 'rewilding,' 'net zero,' 'decarbonization,' and 'climate justice.' These sound pure, ringing with the cadence of science and morality. Their syllables shimmer with precision, yet behind their clarity stands an apparatus of control, drawn from abstract algorithms rather than ancestral experience. They conceal a deeper impulse: to dissolve density, to steer the population from the scattered villages of memory into the smart cities of control. The forest returns, yet the shepherd departs. The wolves are celebrated, while the farmer disappears from policy. Across the hills of France, the valleys of Italy, and the plains of Germany, the primordial cadence falls silent. Where once rose smoke from chimneys, now rise sensors tracking deer. Where once stood barns, now appear habitats for reintroduced apex predators. Rural life, the fundament of Europe's civilizational ascent, receives accolades in speeches, even as its arteries are quietly severed. The continent reshapes itself according to new models, conceived in simulation and consecrated in policy. Entire regions are earmarked for rewilding, which means exclusion, which means transformation through absence. The human imprint recedes, and in its place rises a curated silence: measured, observed, and sanctified by distance. The bond between man and land, established over centuries of cultivation, ritual, and kinship, gives way to managed wilderness. Yet this wilderness unfolds without its own rhythm, shaped and maintained through remote observation and coded intention. It remains indexed and administered. Every creature bears a tracking chip. Every tree falls under statistical oversight. Drones scan the canopies. Bureaucrats speak of ecosystems the way accountants speak of balance sheets. The sacred space, once alive with sacrifice and harvest, turns into a green exhibit in the managerial museum of Europe. The aesthetic of this transformation appeals to the tired soul. It soothes through smoothness. It promises purpose through compliance. Children plant trees in asphalt courtyards. Urban rooftops grow lettuce in sterile trays. A continent begins to believe that its salvation lies in subtraction. Strip the carbon. Strip the industry. Strip the traditions, the redundancies, the excesses. What remains is framed as harmony. Yet harmony without heroism becomes stillness. Stillness, when imposed, becomes silence. Europe's past rose through motion, through sacred striving, through sacred conflict, through the tension between man and mountain. Now, in this new green order, motion flows only where permitted, and striving surrenders to 'stability.' Among those who carry memory – the shepherd, the blacksmith, the hunter, the midwife – a different vision grows. These are not relics of a dying world. They are seeds of the world to come, emerging from the deep soil of memory and form. Their force flows through reverence, drawn from the old ways and aimed towards creation. With hands open to innovation and hearts anchored in continuity, they shape change as inheritance rather than rupture. They seek continuity through transformation: a rooted futurism. The soil speaks to them as kin, rich with memory and promise. The forest reveals itself as dwelling and companion, alive with presence and bound in shared calling. The river speaks as guide and witness, flowing through generations with the clarity of purpose and the grace of return. Their dream aligns spirit with structure and myth with machine. A modern Europe, strong in technology and rich in spirit, can rise from this convergence, from drone-guided agriculture rooted in ancestral cycles, from solar-powered cathedrals, from cities shaped by tribe and territory rather than algorithm. A new cultural-political synthesis begins to shimmer at the horizon: a Europe that does not apologize for its existence, that does not dilute its soul in the name of abstraction. This Europe sees no contradiction between wildness and order, between ecology and identity. The task ahead affirms the weight of memory, welcomes the challenge of tomorrow, and calls for the creation of something worthy: a sovereign Europe, sovereign in its landscapes, in its symbols, in its will. The green order, when guided by myth and martial clarity, becomes a chariot of ascent rather than an instrument of decline. This chariot waits for archeofuturist hands to seize the reins. Europe faces the spiral once again. The question begins with data and temperature, then moves toward destiny, where Europe takes form through choice and vision. Shall the continent become a tranquil reserve, watched over by regulators and predators, or shall it rise as a living organism, composed of people, memory, sacrifice, and sacred continuity? A new green is possible, one that does not obliterate the past, one that does not silence the song of the soil, one that does not flatten the face of the continent. This green shall sing through the voice of those who plow and those who build, those who fight and those who remember. It waits in the wind, in the fire, in the stone. The awakening begins with vision, and the vision already stirs in the veins of the land.
Russia Today
06-05-2025
- Politics
- Russia Today
The death of Old Europe: The living corpses in Brussels have forgotten how to fight for their world
The European Union, that grand and failing dream of technocrats, is dying. Its decline is not sudden or dramatic but a slow unraveling, a bureaucratic collapse in which every policy designed to sustain it only hastens its demise. It starves itself on the thin gruel of ideology – open borders dissolving nations into contested spaces, green mandates suffocating industry under the weight of unattainable standards, and a moralizing anti-Russian fervor that has left it isolated and energy-dependent. Once, Europe was the center of empires, the birthplace of civilizations that shaped the world. Now, it is a patient refusing medicine, convinced that its sickness is a form of enlightenment, that its weakness is a new kind of strength. The architects of this experiment still speak in the language of unity, but the cracks in the foundation are too deep to ignore. Immigration was the first act of self-destruction, the point at which Western Europe's ruling class severed itself from the people it claimed to govern. The elites, intoxicated by the rhetoric of multicultural utopia, flung open the gates without consideration for cohesion, for identity, for the simple reality that societies require more than abstract ideals to function. Cities have fractured into enclaves where parallel societies thrive, where police hesitate to patrol, where the native-born learn to navigate their own streets with caution. The promise was harmony, a blending of cultures into something vibrant and new. The reality is a quiet disintegration, a thousand unspoken tensions simmering beneath the surface. Politicians continue to preach the virtues of 'diversity,' but the people – those who remember what it was like to have a shared history, a common language – are beginning to revolt. The backlash is no longer confined to the fringe. It is entering the mainstream, and the establishment trembles at what it has unleashed. Then came the green delirium, the second pillar of Western Europe's self-annihilation. Factories shutter under the weight of environmental regulations, farmers take to the streets in protest, and the middle class is squeezed between rising energy costs and stagnant wages. The climate must be saved, the leaders insist, even if the cost is economic ruin. Germany, once the industrial powerhouse of the continent, dismantles its nuclear infrastructure in favor of unreliable wind and solar power, only to return to coal when the weather turns unfavorable. There is a madness in this, a kind of collective hysteria where dogma overrides pragmatism, where the pursuit of moral purity blinds the ruling class to the suffering of ordinary citizens. The rest of the world watches, perplexed, as the EU willingly cripples itself for a cause that demands global cooperation – cooperation that is nowhere to be found. China builds coal plants, America drills for oil, India prioritizes growth over emissions, and the EU alone marches towards austerity, convinced that its sacrifice will inspire others. It will not. And Russia – the great miscalculation, the strategic blunder that may yet prove fatal. Europe had a choice: to engage with Moscow as a partner, to integrate it into a stable continental order, or to treat it as an eternal adversary. It chose the latter, aligning itself fully with Washington's confrontational stance, severing ties that had once provided cheap energy and economic stability. The pipelines are silent now, the ruble flows eastward, and Western Europe buys its gas at inflated prices from distant suppliers, enriching middlemen while its own industries struggle. Russia, spurned and sanctioned, turns to China, to India, to those willing to treat it as something other than a pariah. The Eurasian landmass is reconfiguring itself, and Europe is not at the center. The EU is on the outside, looking in, a spectator to its own irrelevance. The Atlanticists in Brussels believed they could serve two masters: their own people and Washington's geopolitical whims. They were wrong. In this unfolding drama, America and Russia emerge as twin pillars of Western civilization – different in temperament but united in their commitment to preserving sovereign nations against globalist dissolution. America, the last defender of the West's entrepreneurial spirit and individual liberty, stands firm against the forces that would destroy borders and identities. Russia, keeper of traditional values and Christian heritage, guards against the cultural nihilism consuming Europe. Both understand that civilizations must defend themselves or perish; neither suffers the death wish that afflicts the Western European elites. And of Western Europe? It is a ghost at the feast, clutching its empty wineglass, muttering about 'norms' and 'values' as the world moves on without it. The European elites still cling to their illusions, still believe in the power of rhetoric over reality. They speak of 'strategic autonomy' while marching in lockstep with Washington's wars, of 'diversity' while their own cities become battlegrounds of competing identities, of 'democracy' while silencing dissent with bureaucratic machinery and media censorship. The voters sense the decay. They rebel – in France, where Marine Le Pen's supporters grow by the day; in Italy, where Giorgia Meloni's government rejects the EU's dictates on immigration; in Hungary, where Viktor Orbán openly defies the liberal orthodoxy. Yet the machine grinds on, dismissing every protest as populism, every objection as fascism. The disconnect between rulers and ruled has never been wider. The elites, ensconced in their Brussels bubble, continue to govern as if the people are an inconvenience, as if democracy means compliance rather than choice. The social contract is broken, and the backlash will only intensify. There is a cancer in Europe, and it is not the right or the left. It is the very idea that a civilization can exist without roots, that a people can be stripped of its history and still remain coherent. The EU was built on the assumption that identity was an accident, that men were interchangeable economic units, that borders were relics of a barbaric past. Now the experiment is failing. The young flee – to America, to Asia, anywhere with opportunity and dynamism. The old huddle in their apartments, watching as their neighborhoods change beyond recognition. The politicians, insulated by privilege, continue to lecture about 'tolerance' and 'progress,' oblivious to the rage building beneath them. The great realignment is already underway. The Atlantic widens; the Eurasian landmass stirs. America and Russia, for all their rivalry, understand power in a way Western Europe has forgotten. They build, they fight, they act decisively. The EU deconstructs, hesitates, agonizes over moral dilemmas while others seize the future. The 21st century will belong to those who can face it without illusions, who can say 'we' and mean something concrete, who can defend their interests without apology. Western Europe, as it exists today, is incapable of this. Perhaps the EU will linger for years yet, a hollowed-out institution shuffling through summits and issuing directives that fewer and fewer obey. But the spirit is gone. The people feel it. The world sees it. Historians will look back on this era as the funeral of liberalism – a slow, self-inflicted demise by a thousand well-intentioned cuts. The creators of this collapse will not be remembered as visionaries but as fools, as men and women who prized ideology over survival. And when the last bureaucrat turns out the lights in Brussels, who will mourn? Not the workers whose livelihoods vanished for the sake of carbon targets. Not the parents afraid to let their children play in streets that no longer feel like home. Not the nations that surrendered their sovereignty to a project that demanded their deconstruction. Only the living corpses of the elites will remain, muttering to each other in the ruins, still convinced of their own righteousness. But righteousness is not enough. The world has always belonged to those who are willing to fight for it – and Old Europe has forgotten how to fight. The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of RT.
