Author Archive
On 8 July, a leader of the protest movement against Indian control of parts of Kashmir, Burhan Wai, was killed by Indian security forces. Since that time there have been numerous protests against Indian control of a primarily Muslim population. The strife has been omnipresent since the division of India into Muslim-dominated Pakistan and Hindu-dominated India, but it flares up periodically into violent protests. The recent spate of protests is related to a sense of hopelessness among Muslim Kashmiris over the rule of an India ruled by the nationalist government of Narendra Modi, a Hindu nationalist. It is remarkable how little attention the Western press pays to this conflict.
The hajj begins this weekend. The pilgrimage to Mecca is one of the Five Pillars of Islam and all Muslims who are physically and financially able are expected to make the pilgrimage at least once in their lives. Mecca is in Sunni-dominated Saudi Arabia, but many of the pilgrims will be from Iran, a Shia-dominated country. The two states are divided more by geopolitics than by religion, but both use religion to contest each other’s influence in the Muslim world. And each accuse the other of being un-Islamic.
The Ka’bah in Mecca
Austria has threatened to sue Hungary if the country refused to take back migrants who crossed their mutual border. The Austrian state is under pressure by the success of the anti-immigrant Freedom Party which has taken a very hard line against the flow of refugees into Europe. Disagreements among European Union members about migrant policies are tearing the Union apart.
Cultural diversity seems to be an issue in polities all over the planet. Politicians are raising the specter of disloyal “outsiders”, a term that is ambiguous and certainly misleading. Immigration concerns are only the tip of the iceberg–questions are being raised about the authenticity of citizens who believe in a specific religion or who speak a different language. In a globalized world, these types of distinctions are meaningless to a discussion of what it means to be a citizen. The range of attitudes toward “others” is quite striking across different cultures.
José Manuel Barroso was the President of the European Commission but was recently appointed to be a non-executive chairman of Goldman Sachs. In his new capacity, Barroso will be advising Goldman Sachs on the possibilities for investments in Europe, topics about which he may have had exclusive and possibly confidential information in his prior role. The conflict of interest is apparent to many, including the Ombudsman of the European Union. While no laws were broken, it seems clear that this incident is but the most recent example of the revolving door between politics and powerful private economic interests.
Cyberwarfare is only dimly understood as it is just a recent addition to the arsenal of states. We know very little about the technical capabilities of adversaries and even less about the vulnerabilities of incredibly complex societies. The evidence about recent Russian hacking of various election sites in the US is one example of how mysterious the process is. Even though there appears to be little doubt that the hackers reside in Russia, we do not know if they are operating under orders from the government. We also have no idea of the purpose of the hacking. One possibility, which is actually a lethal blow to the idea of representative democracy, is that the hackers simply want the American people to mistrust the outcome of elections. If people cannot be certain that the election results are valid, then the principle of governance itself is open to question.
Philippines President Duterte is scheduled to meet with US President Obama in a side meeting of the annual Association of Southeast Nations (ASEAN) conference. Duterte fears that Obama will raise the issue of human rights since almost 2.400 alleged drug dealers and criminals have been killed in vigilante-style justice since Duterte’s election. The issue clouds the usually strong relationship between the US and the Philippines–it is difficult to see either one successful in the region without the help of the other.
The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) has issued a report on the effects of climate change on the world’s oceans and its conclusions are sobering. The oceans act as a great sink for excess heat in the atmosphere. According to The Guardian:
“The ocean has absorbed more than 90% of the extra heat created by human activity. If the same amount of heat that has been buried in the upper 2km of the ocean had gone into the atmosphere, the surface of the Earth would have warmed by a devastating 36C, rather than 1C, over the past century.”
Oceans temperatures remain a big unknown in the calculations of the climate models. But these results begin to give us a sense of what might be happening.
Hong Kong was returned to the control of the government in Beijing in 1997. As part of the handover of the former British colony was made in a deal that guaranteed that certain political freedoms in Hong Kong would be retained until the year 2047. Many in the city have worried that the Communist Party seeks to erode those freedoms and to place the city under the same type of single-party rule as is the case in the rest of the country. In the most recent municipal elections, the student leaders of a protest movement in 2014 called the Umbrella Movement, won seats on the Legislative Council. The election assures that there will continue to be enough votes in the Council to preserve the political freedoms in Hong Kong.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democratic Party came in third in the state election in her home district of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania. The Social Democrat Party came in first but, surprisingly, the anti-immigrant, anti-EU Alternative for Germany (AfD) came in second. The results show a serious weakening of Merkel’s hold on the German polity and suggest that the EU’s strongest member may reduce its commitment to the Union.
Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yildirim announced in a speech on Sunday that the Kurds will never be allowed to establish a separate state in northern Syria. The announcement was made as Turkish forces continue to push out the forces of Daesh (the Islamic State) with the invaluable help of Kurdish forces. The Kurds clearly expect to be rewarded for their help in defeating Daesh, but it is hard to see how an accommodation between Turkey and the Kurds can be forged.
The African elephant population is declining rapidly due to loss of habitat and poaching. The numbers are frightening. Research indicates that there were about 20 million African elephants before European colonization and about 1 million in the 1970s. According to the researchers:
“Elephant populations in survey areas with historical data decreased by an estimated 144,000 from 2007 to 2014, and populations are currently shrinking by 8% per year continent-wide, primarily due to poaching.”
The data are depressing enough for the African elephant, but they also suggest the difficulty of protecting other species. The world is clearly moving in a direction that may be irreversible.
The Bongo family has ruled Gabon since 1967: Omar Bongo ruled from 1967 to 2009, and his son, Ali has ruled since 2009. Gabon has just held an election and Ali claimed victory for another seven year term, but his opponent, Jean Ping, has claimed election fraud. The charge led to an outbreak of violence in which three people were killed and over 1,000 people have been arrested. Gabon relies heavily on the export of oil and its government revenues have been dramatically cut die to the decline in price of oil. As is the case with many countries dependent upon oil revenues, corruption is a serious problem in the society.
There have been dueling protests in Venezuela. Opponents of President Maduro are demanding that he step down, but Maduro has well-organized supporters as well. The country is in a serious economic situation with widespread shortages of basic necessities and an inflation rate that is out of control. Maduro’s party controls the court system and all legislative attempts to rein in his power have been derailed by the judiciary.
During the Cold War, the US and the Soviet Union waged wars of disinformation in order to undermine the support of allies and to foster internal dissent within each other. Russia, under the leadership of President Putin, has revived the practice and refined it into a formidable weapon. We had the first experience of the Russian expertise in cyberwarfare in Crimea in 2014 where Russian soldiers were sent into Ukraine without insignias on their uniforms and social media was adroitly used to confuse the situation. Apparently the Russians are now infiltrating databases and then altering documents to create false narratives. These activities are especially worrisome given the break-ins that have occurred in various political entities in the US as well as the voter records of several American states.
I have posted several articles recently that discuss the controversy over free trade pacts. Ambrose Evans-Pritchard has written an article for The Telegraph that address the link between free trade and the liberal world order that was constructed in 1945. His sense of the collapse of European support for the pacts is similar to what I believe is true in the United States as well.
The evidence is overwhelming that Syrian President Assad has ordered Syria’s military to deliberately attack medical facilities in besieged areas of the country. The strategy is designed to terrorize and paralyze civilian opposition to his rule. The end result will be that if Russian support assures that he continues in power, then Syria will be essentially ungovernable since no one will be able to trust Assad. The disjuncture between military strategy and political objectives is staggering. One wonders if Assad and the Russians believe that the civil war will simply be unending.
The Brazilian Senate has voted overwhelmingly to impeach President Rousseff. Rousseff has presided over a sharply declining economy and an incredible wave of charges of corruption that seems to pervade the Brazilian political establishment. Many of the Senators who voted to impeach Rousseff are also being investigated for corruption. The Vice-President, Michel Temer, who is from a different, more conservative party than Rousseff, was quickly sworn in as President. He is expected to introduce some painful austerity measures to attempt to restore economic growth to the country.
The Trans-Pacific Partnership and other trade deals such as NAFTA and the Trans-Atlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) have been controversial issues in world politics and have figured prominently in the current American presidential election. I suspect that trade negotiations will be placed on the back-burner for a while because of the controversies (both the French and the German governments think that the TTIP is dead). One key part of these deals is a method of dispute arbitration that sidesteps the normal judicial review of sovereign states–the Investor-State Dispute Settlement (ISDS) clause. The clause gives companies the right to seek damages if the laws or regulations of a state change in a way that damages the profits of the company. But instead of going to court, the ISDS clause creates an arbitration panel that is comprised usually of corporate lawyers. These clauses undermine the integrity of law and should not be adopted by any state.
The Indo-Gangetic Basin stretches east to west over 618 million acres and supplies fresh water to Bangladesh, India, Nepal, and Pakistan. 750 million people rely upon this water, but scientists have found that 60% of the water is too contaminated by either salt or arsenic to drink safely. Moreover, the groundwater is being pumped out at an unsustainable rate. Addressing the problem of access to safe water is going to be the most important issue facing the people in this region for the foreseeable future.
Most Americans do not think very much about how the US military is staffed. Since the onset of the volunteer army, most citizens no longer worry about the draft (even though men at age 18 must register for the draft). Unfortunately, the composition of the US military has changed dramatically in recent years and the trend is for lower-income individuals to join. This change has gone unnoticed, but it has important effects on how the country cares for its veterans, most of whom lack the necessary financial resources to afford the medical care they require. Secondly, lower-income individuals also lack the political clout to make sure that sufficient resources are allocated toward the medical conditions of veterans. When Americans are polled very few are aware of the socioeconomic reshaping of the American military in ways that are significantly different from previous militaries.
The International Geological Congress will be debating whether to declare a new geological epoch: the Anthropocene. We are familiar with earlier epochs such as the Jurassic period or the Cretaceous period. These epochs are determined by some sort of a sharp break with a previous period. For example, the end of the Jurassic period is marked by a dramatic increase in the geologic presence of Iridium, a residue of a meteor strike on the planet that ultimately led to the demise of large dinosaurs. The beginning of the Anthropocene Epoch might be marked by the presence of radioactive elements associated with the development of nuclear weapons, the presence of plastics, or the ubiquity of chickens which could not have survived in such numbers without the careful cultivation by human beings. If the Congress decides to label the present period the Anthropocene Epoch, it will mark the end of the Holocene Epoch which has lasted about 12,000 years and was characterized by a warmer climate which allowed humans to become a dominant species. The determination would also indicate that humanity has become a primary shaper of the earth’s geology.
If climate changes develops the way scientists believe it will unfold, the consequences for animal life will be serious. Just like humans, animals will have to move to more hospitable areas if temperatures rise. Nature Conservancy cartographer and analyst Dan Majka has put together a map showing the most likely migration routes and it is an extraordinary graphic. But for these migrations to succeed, humans will have to make sure that the animals can move freely.
The Congressional Budget Office has issued a new report, “Trends in Family Wealth, 1989 to 2013”. Its analysis of the distribution of income in the US is grim:
“In 2013, families in the top 10 percent of the wealth distribution held 76 percent of all family wealth, families in the 51st to the 90th percentiles held 23 percent, and those in the bottom half of the distribution held 1 percent. Average wealth was about $4 million for families in the top 10 percent of the wealth distribution, $316,000 for families in the 51st to 90th percentiles, and $36,000 for families in the 26th to 50th percentiles. On average, families at or below the 25th percentile were $13,000 in debt.”
This maldistribution of wealth is now worse than it was in 1929, just before the onset of the Great Depression. And the trend is toward even greater inequality.
The lefty publication, Jacobin, has published an interview with the economist Elias Ioakimoglou about the unending crisis in Greece. The perspective is Marxist and the analysis is instructive. The European Union has imposed a neoliberal framework on Greece and it has led to a Depression much deeper and more extended than the Great Depression of the 1930s. Sadly, there is almost no chance of an economic recovery in Greece unless the neoliberal policies are rejected.
Rodrigo Duterte, the new President of the Philippines, has been accused of waging a relentless vigilante war against alleged drug dealers and gangsters. The death toll has surpassed 1,800 extrajudicial killings so far, and there does not seem to be any end in sight. There are many in the Philippines that oppose such action, but so far it appears as if Duterte has strong support, even among the most educated classes. What support for working outside of the law means for the future of democracy in the Philippines is unknown, but it is a very dangerous idea.
One possible solution to the growing problem of income inequality is to enact redistributive tax mechanisms. In many respects, most modern societies employ this method by implementing social welfare programs, such as food stamps, for the very poor. But these mechanisms only address the symptoms of poverty and not the underlying inequality responsible for the poverty itself. Curiously, Robert Shiller, an economist at Yale, has written a short essay on the obstacles to a more full-throated approach to solving the problem of inequality and finds that support for using taxes to address that problem is remarkably thin across cultures and among the poor themselves.
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