Powerhouse Ranking Needs Some Updating

You can watch the first four here.

Who Served As Labour Party General Secretary the Longest?

When Kalyanee Juggoo resigned as General Secretary of the Mauritius Labour Party recently Arvin Boolell wondered if the 13 years she had served in that position wasn't the longest. We knew she didn't but went to find out. 

Why Recall Elections Are Seriously Overdue in Mauritius

Big B At 80

It's difficult to remember exactly how big a fan of megastar Amitabh Bachchan I was when I was growing up. That's because there was also Pele. Then Cruyff. Then Sting and The Police. Zeenat Aman somewhere in there. Followed later by plenty others including his Airness. Plus Bolt. I do recall perfectly though that in the 1970s and early 1980s when I saw him on a movie poster I had to go see that flick. And boy was that a treat! 

One of the most exciting moments about my connection with AB was when our parents told us that they had a secret to tell us: Big B was coming to Mauritius! Fate would have it otherwise though. AB got hurt on the set of Coolie and almost lost his life in July 1982. It's great that he recovered and went on to do so much work. Watching the movies of the Angry Young Man who Truffaut dubbed a one-man industry is great but adding a listen of him talk about his craft and life trajectory is priceless.

Why Ukraine Conflict Was Predictable

Listen to this interesting talk by John Mearsheimer and get many obvious answers: Ukraine is a badly-divided country, the Monroe Doctrine and more. 

Discussing Electoral Reform With ReA

I spent plenty of hours over a number of years doing just that quite a long time ago with their strongman Ashok Subron. I had to stop talking to him when he told me that he was against double candidacies only to announce in a press conference afterwards that he was for them. Since then it has appeared in their electoral manifesto. While the obligation for a candidate to declare herself in one of the four dumb categories has to go we don’t need or want a dose of PR to do that. And we’re definitely not going to Viv to Morisianism with the resultant chronic political uncertainty and drastic loss of accountability which would accompany the corrupting of our FPTP system, the best electoral system in the world.

I spent about one hour with another long-standing member after he said he was in favour of a dose of PR. I hadn’t finish my explanation that he told me two things: “my god, what we've been proposing is so dangerous!” and “thank you so much for explaining this to me.” I went on to share some other implications of a dose of PR that are seldom discussed.

A third member told me he was for a dose of PR for the same fallacious reasons ReA have kept on harping for way too long. I showed him what Mauritian voters have been able to do with their PMs via our excellent FPTP system and how we'd lose this powerful tool with a dose of PR. His arguments were wishy-washy but he said he was open to changing his mind. By the way, I showed the same clip to a prominent member of Lalit and that gave her pause.

During my last discussion on electoral reform with a ReA member the latter agreed with my point that it indeed didn't make any sense to have 20 PR MPs each time because the lopsidedness that they sought to correct was not the same in every election. However, he told me that the political uncertainty a dose of PR would create is good. And that he had a solution. It's been almost two years. And still no sight of a solution.

Where Main Parties Stood When We Voted in November 2019

The three main blocks were very similar at the time. Lalit was right on all but one major issues.

Yoga is A Lot More Than A Bunch of Postures

The No. 1 Reason Mauritius is in Such A Deep Mess

Putting the Ukrainian Crisis in Perspective

Mauritian Data Confirms Sputnik Offers Best Protection Against Covid Death

As of early last November no one who was jabbed with the Russian vaccine had succumbed to Covid. And as of a few weeks back it also had the smallest rate of side effects – twice better than the next one and 14X better than AstraZeneca. This is something which has been found elsewhere. And now there’s even a nasal spray vaccine which will reduce infections and transmissions. The Mauritian authorities should buy it. 

Sputnik V Generated Almost 14 Times Less Side Effects Than AstraZeneca

That’s what was recently revealed in Parliament. Indeed more than 1/2 of a percent of those who took the India-manufactured version of the British jab here experienced side effects. No data was published for Pfizer and Moderna.

Independent Mauritius Catches Up With One of His Most Brilliant Sons

1971 All Over Again

When you dig a bit deeper in the current conflict between Russia and Ukraine you can’t help notice the similarity with the Bangladesh Genocide that happened fifty one years ago. At that time West Pakistanis who spoke mostly Urdu and had fairer skin didn’t want to transfer power to Bengali-speaking East Pakistanis after they had won a general election even though both sides were overwhelmingly Muslim. 

Now, West Ukrainians don’t like East Ukrainians because they speak Russian although 80% of the population of the country are Christians. Russia has also moved in Ukraine because Ukraine hinted at joining NATO and this is an unacceptable security risk for the biggest country in the world. The above video is from the Kremlin-sponsored RT but a 2015 documentary by French journalist Anne Laure Bonnel essentially corroborates its content.

Russia Makes Move After West Turns Deaf Ear Again

Why Sputnik Didn’t Roll Out Its Delta-specific Jab

Because the original 2-dose mix-and-match version performed well against the deadliest Covid variant so far. Will it have one for the Omicron variant? It could by the end of next month – and have an initial 100m dose ready – but this will depend on how the first version holds up against the milder but way more infectious virus. Results from several studies in Hungary and Italy have shown that the Russian vaccine offers better protection against Omicron than Pfizer and is the best jab in preventing deaths and the second best in avoiding infections. It may also help us avoid 3-4 boosters a-year which would overload our immune system.