Greek Prime Minister Tsipras accused Greece’s creditors of “criminal responsibility” and of trying to humiliate Greece. The harsh rhetoric did not sit well with the economic ministers that are scheduled to meet for the last time this weekend. Tsipras is holding to a very hard line, but the troika is doing so as well. Such rhetoric is not unusual at the moment just before a crisis breaks, but both sides are going to have a difficult time walking back their words if a compromise is eventually found.
It did not take long for Russia to respond to the US decision to place heavy equipment and more troops in the Baltic states and other eastern European states. Russia President Putin announced that Russia would increase its intercontinental ballistic missiles by 40 in order to address what he termed as the US attempt to place anti-ballistic missiles in eastern Europe. President Putin has referred to the Russian nuclear capability on a number of occasions since the Ukrainian crisis developed, and the implicit message is that Putin believes that Russia should be taken more seriously in world affairs because of that capability. It is a strong but dangerous message.
Abdel Bari Atwan is one of the Arab world’s most respected journalists and he has written a new book on the Islamic State that will be published in September. It is reviewed in The New York Review of Booksand the book apparently does a very good job of explaining the attractiveness of the Islamic State and its ability to run the affairs of the caliphate in the manner of a traditional state. Its application of sharia law seems barbaric to many in the West, but Atwan argues that the Islamic State is a very disciplined and ordered state. The West would be well advised to shed its misconceptions about the IS and deal with the group as an adversary not completely dissimilar from other non-liberal states that it has faced in the past.
The US Congressional Research Service is well-known for its ability to present information in a fairly objective manner (no source is free of bias). It has released an analysis of US-Israel relations which is substantive and filled with information that is not readily available from news sources. It was released on 1 June and is up-to-date.
The IMF has just issued a report on income inequality which essentially refutes the distributional model of market capitalism which is colloquially termed “trickle-down.” The report finds that:
“We find that increasing the income share of the poor and the middle class actually increases growth while a rising income share of the top 20 percent results in lower growth—that is, when the rich get richer, benefits do not trickle down.”
The study seems to be fairly comprehensive: ““159 advanced, emerging, and developing economies for the period 1980–2012.” It remains to be seen whether the IMF pays any attention to its own research.
The US is planning to send heavy military equipment and about 5,000 troops to the Baltic states and other eastern European countries. The move, which has not yet been fully approved by the Defense Department, is designed to send a message to Russian President Putin that NATO is not willing to accept any further Russian moves like the one in Crimea. Of course, the Russians will interpret the move as an attempt by the West to encircle and contain Russian aspirations. A classic case of the security dilemma.
The slow motion train wreck that has impoverished Greece over the last five years seems to be coming to a head, although many have thought the end point had come many times earlier. So one should not think that a Greek default is inevitable. But talks between the Greeks and the troika broke down over the weekend and the Greeks refused to make any changes to their pension plans. The complete Greek payment to the IMF is due on 30 June, but the Greeks have already missed the full installment and it is unlikely that the Greeks can come up with the full amount if they could not make the first payment.
Today is the 800th anniversary of the signing of the Magna Carta. It was an agreement between King John of England and 40 nobles who were tired of being taxed by the King to finance his failing war against France. Many regard the document as the beginning of what we now know as liberal society. Its most important clause reads: “no free man shall be seized or imprisoned, or stripped of his rights or possessions, or outlawed or exiled, or deprived of his standing in any other way, nor will we proceed with force against him, or send others to do so, except by the lawful judgment of his equals or by the law of the land.” King John repudiated the document a month after it was signed, but the idea of restraints on the monarchy was an idea that refused to die.
A South Korean videographer asked a number of international students in Japan how they recognized Americans traveling abroad. The stereotypes are fascinating. Like all stereotypes, they are both offensive and amusing (which is probably the reason why humans indulge in such weird analysis).
The Jubilee Debt Campaign is a non-governmental organization dedicated to erasing many of the onerous debts held by many governments, both rich and poor. Thus, it has a clear point of view and one has to take that point of view into account when reading its material. But its estimate of how much the IMF has made from its loans to Greece (€2.5 billion since 2010) seems to me to be about right. The human costs of the repayment have been very high for the Greek people, and one is not unreasonable when one asks if profit made from the suffering (not the actual repayment of the loan) is justifiable.
In fiscal year 2014, the US Federal government gave out $444 billion in contracts. Over $117 billion–nearly 27%–went to just 10 companies and all ten are military contractors. The top contracts went to Lockheed-Martin and the most expensive contract to that company was for the development of the F-35 fighter plane which has been under development since 2001, or 14 years. The F-35 has been plagued with all sorts of problems and its total cost over the 55 year life of the program is likely to be $1.5. trillion. Lockheed-Martin “saw over $5.5 billion in profit, and paid its CEO more than $70 million in 2014. And the $32 billion it received from the U.S. government made up more than seventy percent of its total sales.” The SNAP program, which offers money for food to almost 47 million Americans in 2015, has a total cost of about $74 billion.
Officials in Myanmar have issued an edict that prevents Rohingyas from leaving the country. The edict comes in response to the horrific stories of Rohingya refugees being turned away from other Southeast Asian countries, and the exposure of the terrible treatment the Muslim minority has received. Speigel has published a report on the conditions in which the Rohingya live, and the Kafkaesque circumstances which prevent them from either living comfortably or leaving the country.
Hyperinflation is a difficult concept to describe verbally. Zimbabwe has experienced hyperinflation for some time, but has finally decided to scrap the Zimbabwean currency and use the US dollar or the South African rand instead. In order to retire the old currency the government is using the following exchange rate: $1 for 35,000,000,000,000,000 old dollars. It is hard to imagine that the central bank had to print a one hundred trillion dollar bank note:
The Obama Administration is thinking about adding a network of bases for additional US soldiers operating in Iraq. There are at least 3500 US soldiers there already. They are supposed to be there only to train and to give advice, but there is a fine line between such activities and combat. It is difficult for me to see the long-term objective of such incremental moves. The strategy is opaque and I suspect that not even Obama’s advisers can define an end game with any great precision ore clarity.
One of the uncertainties about global warming has to do with the effects of warmer temperatures on agriculture. Some have argued that plants will thrive with higher temperatures and more carbon dioxide. A new study, however, suggests that, while some areas might benefit such as Russia and Canada, the net effect will be negative. In fact the new study concludes that:
“In fact, on a global scale, the authors predict that the Earth will lose a whopping 11 percent of its annual suitable growing days by the year 2100 under a business-as-usual scenario.”
Apparently, there are no silver linings at all to global warming.
In 1492 Jews in Spain were given a choice: convert to Catholicism or be burned at the stake. Today Spain is considering a law to give the descendants of those who fled Spain a chance to gain Spanish citizenship (about 90,000 such people) in a measure of atonement for the historical crime.
We tend to think about extremists who use the mantle of Islam as justification for their actions as being fairly monolithic. Nothing could be further from the truth. As groups become more extreme. minor ideological or theological differences can become paramount. The Guardian has an excellent article on the competition between the Islamic State and al Qaeda. If one has only a passing interest in the competition, then the article will be quite challenging. To follow the struggle between the two groups requires close attention to detail. It is precisely such differences that the opponents of these groups must exploit if they are to succeed in defusing the threat of extremism.
The European Parliament has passed a strong resolution calling upon the European Commission to take steps to prevent “financing of political parties in the EU by political or economic stakeholders outside the EU.” The resolution specifically condemns the financial assistance Russia has given to right-wing parties in Europe. Not unsurprisingly, the nationalist Members of Parliament, such as the British representative of the UK Independence Party, voted against the resolution. It is widely believed that the right-wing groups, such as the National Front in France, have received substantial contributions from Russia.
Even though we have yet to see the complete version of the Trade Bill, there have been sufficient leaks (Thanks, Wikileaks!) to get a rough idea of some of the essential components of the bill. What is extraordinary is the size of the campaign contributions given by corporations in order to gain support for the bill. One cannot help but be discouraged by the degree to which money influences legislation that affects every citizen. The playing field is far from even.
“I was brought up, like most Englishmen, to respect free trade not only as an economic doctrine which a rational and instructed person could not doubt but almost as a part of the moral law. I regarded departures from it as being at the same time an imbecility and an outrage. I thought England’s unshakable free-trade convictions, maintained for nearly a hundred years, to be both the explanation before man and the justification before heaven of her economic supremacy. As lately as 1923 I was writing that free trade was based on fundamental truths ‘which, stated with their due qualifications, no one can dispute who is capable of understanding the meaning of the words'” John Maynard Keynes, “National Self-Sufficiency” 1933
The recent Turkish election was more significant than initially believed. In addition to preventing the AK Party from achieving a Parliamentary majority, it appears as if the new Parliament will be more diverse than any other in Turkish history. A large number of Kurds will elected, but 97 women were elected and will account for 17 percent of the Parliament. Christians were also elected to the body as well as a two Yazidi and a single Roma. One can expect a real struggle between the new Parliament and President Erdogan.
In his recent election campaign, Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu promised to speed up building of settlements in the Occupied West Bank. In order to do so, Israel wanted to bring in migrant construction workers and made agreements with Bulgaria, Moldova and Romania. Israel also made an agreement with China for workers, but China has decided that these workers cannot be used to work on settlements in the West Bank. China claims that the ban is because of safety concerns, but it more likely signals China’s disapproval of Israel’s settlement policy in the Occupied Territories.
One can never be sure, but it appears as if Greece might be nearing the end of the road in its talks with the troika over reforms. The troika continues to insist that Greece cut the pension benefits of millions of Greeks and the Greek government so far has refused to take that step. It is hard to imagine a compromise at this stage of the negotiations–both sides have invested too much of their credibility in their positions. So the only route now is for capitulation, and the Greeks will have to choose between that outcome and default. Both are miserable outcomes.
Today is World Ocean Day and it would be impossible to overstate the significance of oceans for world politics. The oceans are the main transmission routes for most of our cultural interactions, the most important trade routes, and the subject of many disputes among nations. To celebrate the Day, the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center has made a video that is quite impressive:
South Korea has experienced an outbreak of Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS). MERS is a zoonotic virus since we believe that it jumped from animals to humans. It is a particularly virulent virus–about 36% of sufferes die from the disease, although South Korea’s death rate thus far is considerably below that percentage (only 4 patients of the 41 who contracted the disease have died). Since it spreads rapidly, this is an outbreak to keep an eye on.
The Supreme Court rendered a decision today that concluded that the “power to recognize foreign governments is exclusive to the president.” In the case, Zivotofsky v. Kerry, the Supreme Court ruled that Menachem Zivotofsky, who was born in Jerusalem to an American mother could not list Israel as his place of birth on his passport. Israel took control of Jerusalem in the 1967 war, but the US government has never recognized Israeli sovereignty over the city. Congress passed a law in 2002 which allowed such persons to put Israel as their place of birth on their passport, but the Supreme Court invalidated the law. The victory for the Executive Branch clarifies a long-standing constitutional debate.
Jon Stewart is a brilliant political analyst and I truly enjoy most of his monologues. Unfortunately, in this particular monologue, Jon Stewart’s choice of words is highly offensive. So you may wish to skip viewing this episode. But his analysis of American foreign policy in the Middle East is spot on. He manages to capture the idiocy of many decisions made by the US, most of which were made in ignorance of what the essential dynamics of Middle East politics really were.
Temperatures in Alaska are unusually high–on 223 May the temperature reached 86 degrees F while on the same day in Phoenix it was 83 degrees F. Anchorage only recorded 25 inches of snow last winter (while Boston had 109 inches last winter). The temperatures are likely the result of the emerging el Niño and should be a cause of great concern. There truly is something strange going on.
The Turkish election on Sunday brought an end to 12 years of uninterrupted, stable single-party rule by the Justice and Development Party (Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi or AK). The AK Party took about 41 percent of the votes leaving it well short of the outright majority President Erdogan had sought as he hoped to make some major constitutional changes. The Kurdish Party apparently won sufficient seats to be represented in the new Parliament, the first time it has achieved such power. The question now is whether Erdogan will accept the outcome or try to subvert it with an alliance with the nationalist party.
Thousands of protesters have assembled outside of the G7 meeting in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Germany. The protesters are a mixed bag of anarchists, socialists, communists, and liberals who are opposed to the proposed trade agreements between the EU and the US (Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership [TTIP]). The protesters are also concerned about the lack of progress on climate change talks. The meeting is also supposed to deal with the problem of the Islamic State and the continuing sanctions against Russia for its actions in Ukraine.
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