Three months after the election, the Social Democrats in Germany have voted to join a coalition with Angela Merkel’s Christian Democratic Party. The alliance means that Merkel has won a third term as German Chancellor. The vote by the center-left party to align with the center-right was overwhelming, suggesting that the coalition will be durable. The price for their support is a higher minimum wage that had been opposed by the Christian Democrats, and looser pension rules for some workers. These reforms are not consistent with the austerity policies that Germany has been insisting upon from economically troubled members of the European Union. The inconsistency is not lost upon the Greeks, the Italians, the Spanish, and the Portuguese.
The American Civil Liberties Union has opposed the surveillance techniques of the US National Security Agency. It has decided to use humor to make its case, and has done so quite effectively.
Want to see a satellite photograph of many of the military bases the US maintains throughout the world? You can now do so, due to the dedicated efforts of Josh Begley who has compiled them from published sources. The US has over 700 military bases all over the world. It is truly a stunning display.
Bucholz Army Airfield (Kwajalein), Marshall Island
The projective military power of the US is a fact not lost on other countries in the world. Today, Russian President Vladimir Putin announced a dramatic increase in his country’s military spending, saying that “Let no one have illusions that he can achieve military superiority over Russia. We will never allow it.” The speech, which was delivered to a joint session of the Russian Parliament, was largely directed against the military ambitions of the US, but the rhetoric could hardly have been lost on other countries in the world. At a time when defense budgets in the US and Europe are going down, the dramatic increase in Russian spending cannot help but raise fears of Russian ambitions.
I try in my classes to note how the arts contribute to political understandings. Indeed, my personal belief is that the arts lead the way to new ways of social thought: I cannot, for example, imagine the Enlightenment without thinking about how Renaissance art changed the way humans viewed the world. It is, however, difficult to articulate the linkage between the arts and politics. Jacobin, a reliably lefty blog, has a great, thought-provoking essay on that linkage. A representative paragraph from the essay makes this point:
The Belgian philosopher and art historian Lieven De Cauter has distinguished between “good politics,” which needs to be decisive in its goals and practices, and “good art,” which is by its nature ambiguous about moral and political commitments. To describe a character in a novel as “good” does not necessarily refer to their morality or politics but may describe the success of the artist in capturing a truth, passing on insights, taking us into exciting or troubling uncharted territories. This seems especially relevant to the present moment. With left politics in limbo, and being at an early stage in building the hope, confidence, and capacities for moving beyond capitalism, the current counter to fatalism is not certitude but possibility and experimentation –terrain that would seem to give special weight to the contribution of “good art.” The weight of art within the political is likewise reinforced by the fact that understanding often begins with the emotional and only then moves on to a concern with the structural limits on our lives.
A new protest movement, labeled the “Pitchforks Movement”, has emerged in Italy. It is clearly a grass-roots movement, and its protests have been small but widespread. The movement is comprised of members of the hard-left and the hard-right, students, pensioners, truck drivers, and farmers. It started in Sicily in 2011 as a response to austerity measures imposed on Italy by the Eu, the IMF, and the European Central Bank, and its rise has been meteoric. A march on Rome is being planned and the already shaky Italian government is in danger of losing its ability to govern.
Location of the Pitchforks protests so far
Bangladesh executed Abdul Quader Mollah for crimes committed during its war for independence in 1971. The execution will deepen the conflict between the ruling Awami League and the opposition Bangladesh Nationalist party (BNP), a conflict which has rendered Bangladesh weaker in the face of difficult problems. An ally of the BNP is the Jamaat-e-Islami (JI), of which Mollah was the assistant secretary general, and everyone fears that the terrorist group will strike back hard against the execution.
Kenya celebrated fifty years of independence. Just as his father did, Uhuru Kenyatta addressed crowds at midnight, and called upon the world to recognize, finally, African independence and equality. The drive for independence in the 1950s was a bloody struggle, and many Kenyans believe that Britain has not yet faced up to its crimes against the Kenyan people. The damage colonialism caused can never be undone or repaired; the honest recognition of the damage is, however, a necessary precondition for moving forward.
Suthep Thaugsuban, the leader of the opposition movement to oust Thailand’s current Prime Minister, Yingluck Shinawatra. has issued a deadline of Thursday for her resignation and the dissolution of Parliament. Thaugsuban has called on the police to arrest Shinawatra for treason and to replace the current Parliament, now controlled by Shinawatra’s Puea Thai Party, to be replaced by an unelected “People’s Council.” The cleavages with the Thai polity are serious, but it seems as if the primary divide is between the rural population who support the Shinawatras and the Thai establishment. The ultimatum issued by Thaugsuban may push an already violent protest movement into a serious civil conflict.
Thaksin Shinawatrin
The Indian Supreme Court has overturned an earlier court ruling that ruled against laws against homosexual sex. The Supreme Court held that only the Parliament could rescind laws. The battle for equality thus returns to the political process, as it is no longer possible to think about sexual preference as a right. The reinstated law was a colonial-era law that held that homosexual sex is “against the law of nature.” The political battle to overturn the law will be a difficult one in India at this point in time.
There is nothing that could ever reduce the significance of Nelson Mandela to South Africa and to the world. But he does raise important questions about how best to confront tyranny and injustice, and the role of violence in a liberation movement has always been a divisive one within the ranks of those who wish to eliminate both of those scourges from human existence. Ta Nehisi Coates has written a very thoughtful essay about this very difficult question.
Canada’s Foreign Affairs Minister, John Baird, announced today that Canada intends to claim the North Pole as Canadian territory. This claim places Canada in direct opposition to both Denmark and Russia which have made similar claims. Canada intends to claim sovereignty on the basis of its continental shelf which it believes extends all the way to the North Pole. The continental shelf is an accepted means of claiming territory under the Law of the Sea Convention. Canada claims that the Lomonosov Ridge is an extension of its continental shelf, and as you can see from the map, the Ridge does protrude far into the north. We will see how the Russians respond to this claim.
One of the interesting conundrums of the climate change debate is the recent “pause” in the rise of global surface temperatures over the last 15 years. Those who do not believe that climate change is occurring have seized upon this pattern have used it to suggest that climate change is not taking place. There is a recent study, however, that suggests that this “pause” is not an issue, and that much of the temperature increase during that period has occurred in the oceans and not on the surface. Needless to say, the study does not settle the matter, but it does pose an interesting alternative.
Ukrainian riot police have surrounded all the protesters in Independence Square in Kiev, and it appears as if President Yanukovich is determined to settle the protests by force. It is difficult to say how the protesters will react to the suppression of the protests–much depends on whether an excessive amount of violence is used. But no matter what happens, it seems clear that the protests will continue, if not even deepen. The financial situation in Ukraine continues to deteriorate, as investors fear that Ukraine may not be able to meet its financial obligations.
Protests have broken out in most unlikely place on the planet: Singapore. Singapore is a “very tightly controlled city-state” that is also one of the wealthiest political entities in the world. The rioting began among foreign workers (remember the protests against Ethiopians in Saudi Arabia). The violence was precipitated by a traffic accident in which a guest worker was killed, but the rapidity of the violence suggests that there is a deep-seated resentment simmering below the surface.
A 19-year old Somali woman has been sentenced to 6 months of home confinement for reporting her rape to authorities. The journalists who wrote stories about her rape were sentenced to jail for crimes of “defamation and insulting state institutions.” The two men accused of the rape were not arrested. The non-governmental organization, Human Rights Watch, had criticized the Somali government for the similar handling of an earlier rape case.
The protest in Ukraine seems to be growing deeper and stronger every day. But the government is moving hard against the protests, dismantling the barricades and the offices of the opposition. Several news outlets lost the ability to report to the outside world today, so the information we are getting is sporadic and incomplete. But it clearly looks as if President Yanukovich is going to mimic the hardline approach to protests similar to those of President Assad in Syria. Such an approach would undoubtedly fail: European interests are too heavily entrenched in Ukraine to allow the country to fall into such disarray.
We’ve talked an awful lot about growing dissatisfaction with the state all over the world. That dissatisfaction is not confined, obviously, to the left; it is also deeply embedded in the right, in both the conservative and libertarian wings of the right. As protesters in Kiev pull down the statue of Lenin, here’s a libertarian in the European Parliament criticizing the policies of the state:
Jennifer Grout, a 23 year old from Massachusetts, did very well on the show, “Arabs Got Talent”, in Beirut, Lebanon. What is extraordinary is that she only knows a few words in Arabic (and she does not have a Boston accent at all). Her singing is quite lovely.
One of the more interesting aspects of the Iranian nuclear deal is that the sanctions against Iran appear to have been very successful. It is rare for sanctions to have such a dramatic effect since they are very often violated. It seems as if the world had the technological means to put the squeeze on Iran in ways that could not be subverted–in a real sense it was an NSA surveillance-type operation on financial transactions. Additionally, the sanctions against Iranian oil exports was accomplished without significant disruption to global petroleum markets. The key to that success was the new fracking techniques that allowed the US to increase its petroleum production by about 2 million barrels a day.
China has refused to participate in legal proceedings at a United Nations arbitration tribunal over its maritime territorial claims. China has claimed large areas of the South and East China Seas as part of its sovereign territory (the map below shows the extent of Chinese claims–it is known as the “nine-dash line”) and the Philippines filed a suit under the 1982 UN Law of the Seas Convention against the Chinese claims. Both countries have signed the convention (the US is not a signatory), but the Chinese have refused to participate in the proceedings of the tribunal which effectively moots any decision the tribunal may make. Cases of non-refusal to participate are unusual but not unprecedented. In 1986 Nicaragua sued the US in the International Court of Justice because the US had mined Nicaraguan harbors to prevent weapons from being imported by the Nicaraguan government (which was quite hostile to the US). The US refused to participate in that suit. The ICJ ruled against the US but lacked any ability to enforce its judgment.
The Nine-Dash Line
Thitinan Pongsudhirak teaches at Chulalongkorn University’s Institute of Security and International Studies in Bangkok and has written an essay which links the current turmoil in Thailand with protests that are occurring elsewhere in the world His analysis is that liberal democracy is failing and that elites in a number of countries are failing to recognize the dangers of this failure. He is undoubtedly correct that there is a widespread feeling in many countries that governance is breaking down, but I think that the breakdown is also evident in non-democratic states as well. The real question is whether political systems are capable of dealing with the demands of the people in a globalized world.
The World Trade Organization has finally delivered a global trade agreement after nearly 20 years of trying. Many analysts had argued that global agreements were being bypassed in favor of regional trade agreements such as the Trans-Pacific Partnership and the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership because the difficulties in obtaining a global agreement were insurmountable. We will need to look carefully at the new agreement which promises to increase trade by nearly $1 trillion in a matter of a few years. Some analysts fear that the increased trade opportunities will increase the leverage of large corporations over developing countries by making it easier to move factories to the lowest cost countries.
The French are sending a peacekeeping mission to the Central African Republic after reports of escalating violence in the capital city of Bangui. The violence is occurring between rival groups, Muslim and Christian, over control of the potentially rich country. The violence has been going on for a very long time, but the central government has been unable to control the rival groups and the number of civilian deaths seems to be rising dramatically. The French are clearly uncomfortable in sending troops to a former colony, and this intervention follows a similar French intervention in Mali earlier this year. Unfortunately, the forces of the African Union are still unable to maintain order in many areas of the continent.
Shanghai is a beautiful city with a breathtaking skyline. It also has been relatively free of the smog that has plagued the city of Beijing since Shanghai is so close to the ocean. But, reminiscent of the early days of industrialization in London and Los Angeles, it, too, has been effective by industrial pollution. Zero Hedge has some unbelievable photographs of how bad the pollution has become in the city–it is at levels that are undeniably serious health hazards.
Japan has passed a law, the Bill on the Protection of State Secrets, that sits uneasily with its liberal constitution. In this sense, it is quite similar to the USA’s Patriot Act. but also akin to the growth of state power in other liberal societies since 9/11. But Japan’s law goes much further in restricting many freedoms. For example, Article 12 of the bill defines terrorism as “an activity that forces ‘political and other principles or opinions on the state or other people.'” People within liberal societies who cherish freedoms should begin to take note of the global erosion of legal protections for basic freedoms such as the freedom of speech.
One of the greatest leaders in world history has died. Nelson Mandela, who led his people from the dark abyss of apartheid into freedom, has died at the age of 95. Mandela not only survived the brutal system of systemic discrimination. He also triumphed over the hate and anger that such a system breeds by retaining his grace, dignity, and humanity. He was an inspiration to generations of people and his passing is a special loss to us all. He will, however, endure forever in the hearts of all those who look forward to the day when race hatred is finally vanquished.
Frontline has a video of Mandela’s life. Take the time to learn about this extraordinary person.
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