Analysis - GulfToday

Analysis

Is May’s offer another one of her attempts to kill off a Final Say?

It’s a trap. Theresa May’s offer of a parliamentary vote on a fresh referendum, as part of the last-ditch attempt to pass her Withdrawal Agreement Bill sounds fantastic. You might imagine it to be some sort of death-bed conversion by the prime minister, who has previously refused

20 hours ago

As robots arrive, working people are losing hope

We are living in an age of surveillance capitalism where technology is used to turn our daily lives into data sources to line the pockets of CEOs in Silicon Valley. Whereas once the big money makers were industrialists and manufacturers, now the big winners are the data giants who harvest our every click,

20 hours ago

Alarming lessons from Facebook’s push to stop fake news

The world’s largest election has become something of a test case in how technology giants handle fake news after years of scandal. It’s not working out so well. India had as many as 900 million voters in an election that culminated this week, with Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s ruling coalition

20 hours ago

Salvini is an opportunist than an ideologue

Politics in Italy is often likened to theater. So Verona, the legendary setting for Romeo and Juliet, seemed the perfect place to catch up with Italy’s most powerful, far-right politician, Matteo Salvini, a master of the theatrical gesture. Leader of the Lega (League) party and interior minister, with aspirations

20 hours ago

The heart of the problem lies with algorithms

Social networks such as YouTube and Facebook have the power to make content go “viral,” spreading it at an unprecedented and uncontrollable pace. That seems innocent enough when you’re looking at a cat video, but if it’s murder, for example, the lack of a way of stopping the virus becomes glaring.

21 May 2019

Evidence for Trump’s proposed Ukraine probe is painfully thin

Volodymyr Zelensky, the former comedian who turned to politics and unexpectedly won Ukraine’s presidential race, marked his inauguration with the announcement of a snap parliamentary poll. But it is the coming election in the US in which his troubled country is set to play the most fractious and controversial role.

21 May 2019

Nuke war is still possible no matter the positive trends

One of the most striking facts of today’s world is that young people do not seem to worry very much about nuclear war. Climate change is by far the larger concern, while nuclear war is seen as a threat of the past. As Chapin Boyer, who is in his late 20s, wrote in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists a few years ago

21 May 2019

India’s ambitious plan for sustainable cooling

India’s new comprehensive Cooling Action Plan targets an increase in sustainable cooling for the good of its population, while helping to fight climate change As UN Environment pointed out, four years after temperatures hit the high forties in India, claiming over 2,000 lives, parts of the country

21 May 2019

Trump’s ‘maximum pressure’ on enemies hits its limit

In two years as president, Donald Trump built a foreign policy strategy on applying as much pressure as possible on enemies — and even some allies — to make them bend to America›s will. Venezuela, North Korea and Iran have all been targets of the administration›s “maximum pressure” approach. Under Trump,

20 May 2019

Only revoking Article 50 can save UK from no-deal oblivion

“A week is a long time in politics” was a famous saying of Labour prime minister Harold Wilson. It means a month is an eternity. A lot has changed since the UK was set on a course leading, unexpectedly, to the European elections this Thursday in the UK to vote in British MEPs. That set of events was triggered

20 May 2019

May 23: A day to celebrate India’s electoral exercise

On May 23, the seven-week long Indian election process will come to an end. The votes will be counted and a winner will be declared. No matter who wins, the real winner will be India’s democracy. I say this as an Indian American who has had the privilege of living in the two largest — and, I would add, greatest — democracies in the world.

20 May 2019