Rough Estimate

The Softest Authoritarians

The Softest Authoritarians

South East Asia’s competing political models

As I write this article — while sitting in a cafe in downtown Saigon — a few streets away a group of protesters have just been re-sentenced to prison for advocating publicly for freedom of speech. Rather strangely this is something that their country’s own constitution includes among its citizen’s rights, but of course these rights only really apply under certain circumstances.

At the same time, just over 1000 kilometres to the north, the Vietnamese Communist Party (VCP) is ending their annual congress in Hanoi. Giant LED screens attached to office buildings are now showing the overweight, balding party leader solemnly explaining the great job that the party has done containing the coronavirus in Vietnam.

The Crimes of Tedros Adhanom

The Crimes of Tedros Adhanom

Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, as well as being the first WHO director without a medical degree, also has a somewhat political background compared to his predecessors. On his online biography, the WHO lays out his qualifications as Ethiopian Minister of Health from 2002 to 2012, impressive stuff.

Aside from his medical credentials, Tedros happens to be a member of the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) which is an organisation about as peaceful as its name suggests. Founded as a communist revolutionary party that came to power in 1991, it led a guerrilla campaign against the Mengistu dictatorship and formed a coalition with two other ethnic parties after his exile.

Is the Wuhan Coronavirus a Bio-weapon?

Is the Wuhan Coronavirus a Bio-weapon?

Unravelling the conspiracy

In a now widely circulated 2018 interview with Chinese state TV, military scientist Chen Hu was asked about the capabilities of an engineered bio-weapon. Hu described the effects of such weapons as ‘devastating’ and ‘equaling that of an atomic bomb’. He then went on to appeal the need for creating defensive capabilities against such events.

A year after he gave that interview Dr. Chen was dead at age 57. In his obituary the numerous achievements of the scientist were outlined, among them the fact that despite being a military doctor, he had helped develop groundbreaking research using CRISPR gene editing; specifically the mice embryos that had been given an engineered resistance to HIV in 2017.

My Time with the Alt-Right

My Time with the Alt-Right

Who they are and what they believe

Over the last few years there have been numerous articles of people who have “infiltrated” an alt-right group, and tried to expose its inner workings to the public. This will not be one of those articles. This is not an expose or an attempt to name and shame. I spent over a year with an alt-right group from 2017 to 2018 and wish to write an article that represents what members of the alt-right community worldwide actually believe in as factual a way as I can.

I first attended a meeting with an overtly alt-right group in 2017 in the Netherlands where I was living at the time. The Dutch elections were right around the corner, and in trying to find online news about the election, I found several videos from a group covering them in English from an alt-right perspective.

The Best Books of 2019

The Best Books of 2019

We wrote this list because we frankly felt that most of the “best books” list that we see online are pretty poor and tend to only represent a small range of fiction books that appeal to a limited demographic.

We wanted to cover the most interesting books this year that we read between the two of us, this means that there’s a slight bias towards authors that we were already familiar with but there are several books on this list from author’s we had never read before.

Escape from Limbo

Escape from Limbo

How the rest of the world can avoid following Japan into economic slumber


“A thought crossed his mind: How do you make poor people feel wealthy when wages are stagnant? You give them cheap loans.”

― Michael Lewis, The Big Short


Racism, the toxic social issue that dominated the social discourse of the ‘90s and early 2000s, is soon to be replaced by an even uglier phenomenon: Ageism - as each social group pulls towards its opposing financial incentives.

According to research by the Insured Retirement Institute (IRI), 45% of baby boomers in the US have no retirement savings at all. Only 55% of boomers have some retirement savings and, of those, 28% have less than $100,000. This means that half of American retirees are, or will be, living off Social Security benefits. The UK and Europe paint an even gloomier picture.

Why China Won't Reform

Why China Won't Reform

Facing up to the new threat

In 1994, US President Bill Clinton gave a press conference in China to discuss relations between the two countries, and the state of human rights development. Five years after thousands had been gunned down in the streets of Beijing and hundreds more killed in Tibet, they were looking less than optimal.

Ever the optimist though, Bill made it clear that although there were serious human rights abuses continuing in China, he was sure they were dreadfully sorry about what had happened in 89, and felt things were improving. Just like Korea and Taiwan, he said, it was clear that as Western products flooded into China, democratisation would inevitably follow. China even enjoyed most favoured nation status with the US all throughout the 1990s in an attempt to accelerate this process. Putting up with the show trials and labour camps were just the cost of doing business.