World Politics News   Articles for World Politics Course

I apologize for being off the map for the last few days–I have been preoccupied with an influenza bug that laid me low.

Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu’s Likud Party secured 30 seats in the new Israeli Parliament, while Labor only secured 24 (interestingly, the three Arab parties came in third). The polls had suggested a better showing for Labor, but Netanyahu made a number of appeals to the more conservative elements of the Israeli polity in the last few days of the campaign.   Those promises included: a statement that, contrary to his earlier statements, he would never support statehood for the Palestinians; a promise to build even more settlements in the Occupied Territories; and a warning that his opponents were encouraging Arabs to vote “in droves” to defeat him (Arabs make up 20% of the Israeli electorate).  These statements clearly appealed to parts of the Israeli electorate, but will clearly complicate Israel’s relationship with Europe and the US.  In particular, Netanyahu’s repudiation of a Palestinian state makes nonsense of the American negotiating position since the Oslo Agreements.

Tunisia has been one of the success stories of the Arab Spring revolutions.   Despite some setbacks, Tunisians have been able to keep violence at a minimum and have kept open peaceful processes of change.  Today, however, extremists attacked the national museum in Tunis, killing 17 foreign visitors and 2 Tunisians.  It seems clear that the extremists were deliberately targeting tourism, one of Tunisia’s main source of revenue.  As of the most current reports, it is not clear whether any of the artifacts in the museum were also targets of the attack.

It is estimated that about 1.5 million Brazilians protested the Rousseff administration, demanding that the President be impeached.  The immediate causes of the protests are concerns over corruption in Petrobras, one of the world’s largest oil companies.  But there are also larger issues looming that revolve around the rapid deterioration of the Brazilian economy in recent months.  A few years ago, Brazil was considered one of the world’s most promising emerging economies.  Its decline has been quite sharp and painful for the majority of Brazilian citizens.