FEAST OR FAMINE

 

 

The Age of the Strongman: How the Cult of the Leader Threatens Democracy around the World by Gideon Rachman (2021) is an account of recent and current global authoritarian leaders since about the year 2000.   These leaders – all men – include (in chapter order): Russia’s Vladimir Putin,  Türkiye ’s   Recep Tayyip Erdogan, China’s Xi Jinping, India’s Narendra Modi, Hungary’s Viktor Orban, United Kingdom’s Boris Johnson, America’s Donald Trump, Philippines’ Rodrigo Duterte, Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu, Saudi Arabia’s Prince Mohammed bin Salman, Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro, and Ethiopia’s Abiy Ahmed.    What do these leaders have in common? ‘These leaders are nationalists and cultural conservatives, with little tolerance for minorities, dissent or the interests of foreigners,’ and who ‘encourage a cult of personality,’ says Gideon Rachman.    Rachman discusses the emergence and rise of the strongman since the new millennium, in terms of how and why – stemmin...

France 24  reports that the oldest known person has died at the age of 118 and 340 days. French nun Lucie Randon, known as Sister Andre, was born in southern France on 11 Februrary 1904, and she died in her sleep at her nursing home in Toulon on 17 January 2023.   The record for the oldest person ever goes to Jeane Calment who died in 1997 in Arles, southern France at the age of 122. And in 2022, Japan’s Kane Tanka died at the age of 119, leaving Sister Andre as the oldest known person in the world. The  Guinness Book of World Records  officially acknowledged her status as the oldest living person in April 2022. With Lucie Randon’s death, the title of the oldest living French person is now likely to go to 112-year-old Marie-Rose Tessier, a woman from Vendee. They are all regarded as supercentenarians.   Sister Andre was the only girl among three brothers, living in a Protestant family in Ales, 40 kilometres (25 miles) from Nimes. She worked as a governess in Ver...

 

Flashback Wednesday to my visit to the Waxworks at Mtatsminda Park in Tbilisi, Georgia, in 2017,     and the   Madame Tussauds Wax Museum in Washington DC, on 14th Street in 2013. Both display a selection of life-sized figures of celebrities, sporting figures, politicians, and presidents.   Anna Maria Grosholtz (1761-1850, born in France, worked for Dr Philippe Curtius, a physician and wax sculptor in Paris. His first exhibition of waxworks was shown in 1770 was a French artist who sculpted figures in wax. In 1777 Anna Maria created her first wax figure of Voltaire. When Curtius died in 1794 he left his collection to Anna Maria. She married Francois Tussaud and moved to London, where she established a Wax Museum in Baker Street in 1835. Her museum has expanded to branches in Amsterdam, Bangkok, Sydney, Hong Kong, Las Vegas, Shanghai, Berlin, Washington DC, New York, and Hollywood.   In Washington DC, the photographs show: Fidel Castro, Julia Roberts, Larry ...