This is a transcript of Bearly Political’s most recent podcast. Listen to the full episode here. Zachary: Like a lot of people during the pandemic, I took up a new hobby: hiking. At the time, I was living in Southern France, near these alpine foothills, and every week or so I’d trek across those Mediterranean mountaintops […]
Tag: #World
Changing Climate, Changing Politics: the Presence of the Environment in Germany’s 2021 Election
Germany doesn’t elect its leaders based on charisma. Descriptions of Angela Merkel, like many adjectives thrown around German affairs, consist of stoic, calm, and unemotional, both in her politics and her public presence. Part of this is due to Germany’s political system, one in which the charismatic, ceremonial head of state, the president, is an […]
China Picks Up Where the West Has Failed
Nobody said democracy was easy, but the concept of a liberal democracy championed by the US and democratic European nations has taken a massive blow in the last year with its two biggest projects. Afghanistan and Myanmar are known as major sources of opium, and now also as failed Western experiments to try and bring […]
Sarah Edwards and Beyond: Building Cities That Are Safer For Women
3rd March 2021 was not a peculiar day for most living in South London. It was yet another day of lockdown amid the COVID-19 pandemic mandated by the Boris Johnson government. A woman was walking home at night from a friend’s house in Clapham Common. She went missing on the same night. Six days later, […]
The Art of State Engineering
Under the guise of development and democracy, state architecture is being used to conceal the centralization of power in both Malaysia and Singapore as leaders grapple with how to literally engineer the perfect, coordinated society. How does one engineer a harmonious state? Singapore’s People’s Action Party (P.A.P.) and Malaysia’s U.M.N.O. Party will argue that you […]
Technology with Chinese Characteristics: China’s Strategic Vision in 2019
Standing before the 17th General Assembly of the Chinese Academy of Sciences just over a year after his election to office, Xi Jinping opined, “we cannot always decorate our tomorrows with others’ yesterdays.” Five years later on October 1st, 2019, President Xi echoed that sentiment while addressing a crowd of thousands in Tiananmen Square, declaring, […]
Ethiopia’s Narrowing Window For Peace
Meskel Square, despite its lack of even one traffic light, is the busiest intersection in Ethiopia. It is a fitting representation of Addis Ababa, the bustling capital city of 3.6 million people which it resides in. However, on October 9th of this year, Meskel Square was ordered completely shut down. On the same day, an […]
Years in the Making: How Hindu Nationalism Has Shaped Indian Policy Towards Kashmir
A phone blackout. Military troops deployed to enforce a statewide curfew. Foreign journalists banned from entering a region the size of Idaho. Thousands arrested — including protesters, activists and politicians. In the Indian state of Jammu & Kashmir, this has been the reality since August of 2019. And it could get worse. Jammu & Kashmir […]
Gangs and Gulags: How Vladimir Putin Utilizes Organized Crime to Power his Mafia State
“I’m sorry, the Russian Mafia is after me.” While this statement sounds like it’s straight out of a 1960s Bond movie, it was actually uttered by disgraced NFL defensive lineman Justin Bannan on October 16th after non-fatally shooting a woman in a building he partly owned. The validity of Bannon’s claim is for prosecutors to […]
The Raucous Minority (Myth?)
Featured Image: Masses gather to grieve and pray outside of St. Anthony’s Church, Kochikade On the 21st of April 2019, three churches and three luxury hotels were targeted in a series of coordinated suicide bombing attacks across Sri Lanka. The attacks were linked to the National Thowheeth Jama’ath (NTJ), a local Islamist terrorist group whose […]