Two scholars, Kalev Leetaru and Philip A. Schrodt, have done some extraordinary research in a project called Global Data on Events, Location, and Tone. What they have done is coded every political protest in the world from 1979-2010 and mapped it out. John Beieler, a doctoral candidate at Penn State, has adapted these data into striking maps, one of which was posted in Foreign Policy. FP is a paywalled site, but I am hoping that many of you can access the map by using a library or educational institution computer. Visually, the map communicates a very powerful message: the number and intensity of political protests in the world has been increasing dramatically since 1979.
There were two explosions outside of Sunni mosques in northern Lebanon today, killing at least 37 people and wounding more than 350. The bombings followed similar explosions last week in Lebanon and represent a major escalation in Sunni-Shia violence. The war in Syria has spread throughout the region, and there doesn’t seem to be any countervailing pressure at all.
President Obama is paying a significant political price for inaction after reports of another chemical weapons attack in Syria. The damage is self-inflicted since Obama himself described the use of chemical weapons as a “red line.” The dithering over whether the weapons were used is embarrassing after the video reports of so many children dead with no visible wounds–it is roughly similar to the semantic game over whether the military coup in Egypt was in fact a “coup.” Statespeople must be very careful to say only what they mean. If they do not, then their words will be ignored in future situations.
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