The situation in Egypt continues to deteriorate. Max Fisher has a great background on the turmoil in Egypt that is relatively succinct and accurate (nothing is ever fully accurate if one relies on a single source), and it’s a good place to start if you’re just catching up on the violence there. As the country falls deeper into violence, the US has to take a large measure of responsibility for the crisis. It is important to remember that President Morsi was democratically elected, and the fact that he was not a true “democrat” or that he was messing up the economy is not a reason to support his ouster or to deny that there was a “coup.” [There were many times during the administration of George W. Bush that I had wished that someone else were President, but I would never had supported a military intervention.] The US has great leverage over the Egyptian military, and if President Obama had told it to sit tight until the next scheduled election, I am certain that the military would not have intervened. If a state professes to believe in democracy, then it has to take the good with the bad. Not coincidentally, this year marks the 60th anniversary of the US-supported overthrow of President Mossadegh in Iran, a similar intervention in democratic politics that continues to haunt the US.
In the protests against the Vietnam War in the 1960s and 1970s, the fear of the anti-war movement was that the war would be “brought home,” something which did happen in the shootings of protesters at Kent and Jackson State by the National Guard in May of 1970. We have a similar fear of the “war on terror” launched by the Bush Administration after the violence of 11 September 2001. Domestic police forces are more and more closely resembling armed forces, with SWAT teams being the most obvious manifestation of the militarized approach to domestic crime. The figures about the use of SWAT teams in the US are rather chilling. Here is a video of a former Marine who served in Iraq about his city’s (Concord, NH) decision to buy a heavily armed vehicle for their domestic policing. His views are something to consider seriously as the war on terror is “brought home.”
Somalia is one of the most fragile states in the world, and the violence in that country has been unremitting for years. The clearest evidence for that assessment is the decision by Doctors Without Borders to leave the country. Doctors Without Borders is one of the most heroic non-governmental organizations in the world and it has sent medical personnel into some of the most dangerous places in the world. The decision leaves thousands of innocents without any medical help at all.
The NSA surveillance program has generated a great deal of controversy, but there are other intelligence gathering systems that are available to the state that are perhaps more insidious and have not been subjected to intense scrutiny. One of the more troubling surveillance techniques is crowd-sourcing, something which most regard as relatively benign. But it is widely used and very dangerous, largely because there is no attempt to verify the accuracy of the rumors flying around. We all need to be more careful about what we say on the web–we may think that no one is really listening. The truth is that most states now actively patrol that universe.
The military government in Egypt cracked down on the pro-Morsi supporters who have been protesting the coup. The bloodshed has been extreme, and ongoing. The number of dead in at least in the hundreds, and the Muslim Brotherhood claims that about 2,000 people have been killed. Egypt is now under a curfew in order to limit the violence, but such efforts were not effective in 2011 when Mubarak was toppled. Al Jazeera has a compendium of world reactions to the violence in Egypt. The US is in a very awkward situation since it failed to condemn the coup against Morsi.
After 18 months of negative economic growth, Europe finally registered positive economic activity–a 0.3% increase over the last three months. The rate is hardly something to celebrate, but for many in Europe it signals a turning of the corner. I personally doubt that we’ll see robust economic growth for many more years, but any economic activity is better than none.
One of the characteristics of a “nation” is a shared emotional bond among the citizens of a “state.” One of the more interesting bonds is language, and those nations with a single shared language are generally more unified. But many unified nations have different languages, and the US is one such nation. The Pew Foundation did a study of the languages spoken in the home in the US in 2011 and the results are quite intriguing.
Benjamin GInsberg, a professor at Johns Hopkins University, has written a very provocative essay for the Chronicle of Higher Education, entitled, “Why Violence Works.” It is a very thoughtful and learned essay that is hard to acept but difficult to refute. I recommend it highly.
The trial of Bo Xilai in China is scheduled to begin soon. One of the most powerful (and wealthy) politicians in China, he is on trial for economic crimes and his role in the murder of a business associate. Primarily, however, he is on trial for being a strong contender for power with Xi Jinping, the current ruler of China. Xi won the power struggle and Bo lost, but Bo remains popular with the “leftist” (Maoist) wing of the Chinese Communist Party. The trial will be closely watched for evidence of the rival factions within China right now.
Spain and Britain have been squabbling over Gibraltar, a British possession that has long been claimed by Spain. The immediate issue has to be with fishing rights and transit fees, but the dispute has a history that stretches back to the War of Spanish Succession. Gibraltar remains one of 14 British “Overseas Territories,” the last formal remnants of the British Empire.
Max Fisher of the Washington Post posted an interesting piece today: “40 Maps that Explain the World.” The maps are incredibly useful in distilling information about a variety of subjects in a very succinct way. Some of the maps, such as the missionary’s map of Africa in 1908, reveal a great deal about the mind set of empire.
For those of you who live in cities that emit massive amounts of light pollution, NASA is livestreaming the Perseid meteor shower. The stream will begin at 9 pm EDT.
For a number of days, Egyptian police have been telling pro-Morsi demonstrators to leave their protest camps. The protesters have remained, and Reuters News is reporting that on Monday the police will forcibly evict them from the sites. If the report turns out to be true, then we can expect a high degree of resistance and violence. Egypt may be at a turning point in its move toward democracy, already weakened by the military coup against Morsi.
Israel has announced that it will build about 1,200 new settlement houses in the Occupied Territories. This announcement was the third such announcement in a week. The suspicion is that the Palestinian Authority gave up its demand for an end to the settlements as a precondition for negotiations in return for the phased release of Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli jails. Trading land for prisoners is not an especially beneficial deal since the loss of land tends to be permanent, and the thinking is that US Secretary of State Kerry made PA President Abbas accept the terms. Abbas will definitely lose legitimacy within the Palestinian community if the suspicion is valid.
Buddhists in Sri Lanka have attacked a mosque in the city of Colombo. Buddhists comprise almost three-quarters of Sri Lanka’s population, but hardline elements believe that the Muslim and Christian communities pose a threat to the identity of Sri Lanka. These reports mirror reports from Burma, where evidence suggests that Buddhists have killed more than 100 Muslims and forced the evacuation of more than 100,000 Muslims. Buddhist violence is not unheard of, but it is unusual. The tensions within the Buddhist community reflect growing tensions among many religious communities.
As we noted in an earlier post, the European sovereign debt crisis is currently in stasis as the Union waits for the results of the German election in late September. But the data on the three most troubled economies, Greece, Portugal, and Ireland, looks increasingly grim. The debt levels of all three countries have increased over the summer and all three will likely need additional help from the IMF and the European Central Bank. Whether the conditions on the aid is more or less onerous really depends on the outcome of the German election. All three states should be rooting for an overwhelming victory for Merkel so that she feels less constrained by German domestic politics.
Sectarian violence in Iraq is about as bad as it ever was during the American occupation. The Sunnis are trying desperately to gain some leverage over the Shia-dominated government of Al-Maliki. The Sunnis in Iraq have been emboldened by the Sunni-led rebels in Syria. In many respects, the violence in Syria is being mimicked in Iraq–the violence is clearly regional now.
The economic situation in Europe has not been in the news lately, but the crisis continues to simmer. The tension on the continent is likely to increase in September as activity resumes after the summer lull. It is also going to surface as the German elections near toward the end of the month. The crisis in many respects is over the economic character of the Union, and the extent to which German policies will predominate.
US President Obama gave a press conference today in which he made several concessions on the issue of NSA surveillance. The changes are important, not necessarily because they resolve the civil liberties issues, but because they represent a recognition that the emphasis on security genuinely threatened the fundamental liberties of not simply Americans, but of all those who wish to correspond with Americans. Let’s hope that the pendulum swings back to a proper appreciation for privacy rights.
US-Iranian relations are clearly at a crossroad with the election of President Rouhani. As I have mentioned in earlier blog posts, Rouhani has sent several hopeful messages that have yet to be picked up by the US government. Not much of this oversight has been picked up by the US media, but the foreign press is well aware that an opportunity may be being wasted. Rami Khoury is a highly respected journalist for the Lebanese newspaper, the Daily Star. He has written a very blunt editorial which takes the Obama Administration to task for not following up on the olive branches extended by Rouhani.
There is evidence that North Korea may be expanding its nuclear enrichment facilities. We know very little about the North Korean program, other than it has been successful in developing a nuclear program. We also have good evidence that the North Koreans have cooperative arrangements with a number of other countries, notably Iran. The question of whether we should be concerned about the North Korean activity is a topic of great concern right now and two veteran observers weigh in on the question. Their analysis gives a good insight into how difficult the assessment process actually is.
Japan’s crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant is leaking 300 tons of radioactive water into the Pacific Ocean every day. The situation is clearly troubling, but there is little hard evidence to know how serious a crisis it may be. Some of the radioactive elements being released, like cesium, are relatively short-lived; others, like strontium, are longer-lived and eventually work its way into the bones of living creatures. Efforts to contain the leak have thus far been unsuccessful and there is no plan to stem the release that has a high degree of confidence.
The US security alert, which has closed many US embassies and consulates in the world, has been described by some Congresspeople and Senators as quite serious and specific. Nonetheless, there is really no basic information about the nature or character of the threat. The DebkaFile is a website that has close contacts with the Israeli government, and in the past the website has been quite reliable. I don’t regularly read it, however, because there is a paywall. This entry, however, does not require a fee (a curious fact in and of itself), and it is a particularly chilling entry. It contains speculation, and some concrete evidence, that the radical groups opposed to the US have figured out how to surgically implant plastic explosives into the bodies of suicide bombers. If true, there are very few security measures that could detect the explosives other than intelligence identifying the bombers.
The US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Agency (NOAA) has issued its climate report for 2012. It found that 2012 was among the top ten warmest years on record. The report found that CO2 concentrations breached 400 parts per million, a level that many climatologists regard as a tipping point, and that sea levels reached their highest recorded levels. The full report can be accessed here.
US President Obama has cancelled his scheduled bilateral talks with Russian President Putin. The cancellation is calculated to show US displeasure over the Russian decision to grant asylum to NSA leaker Edward Snowden. Obama still intends to attend the scheduled G20 meeting in St. Petersburg but will not meet one-on-one with Putin. Russia said that it was “disappointed” but the cancellation comes in the context of already frosty relations between the two leaders.
Today is the 68th year anniversary of the dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima. On that day in 1945 few observers realized how that event would transform world politics–indeed, there are some today who do not fully appreciate now nuclear weapons have changed the calculations of states. The Japanese, however, developed a strong peace movement as a consequence of the bombing. The Prefectural Industry Promotion Building, now known as the Hiroshima Peace Memorial, partially survived the blast and is a profound symbol of the tragic event. Planet Pic has a number of photographs of how the Japanese honor the dead of that day.
68 years after the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, Japan launched its largest naval vessel since the end of World War II. It is a flat-top destroyer, named the Izumo, that bears a striking resemblance to an aircraft carrier. Japan is constitutionally barred from developing an offensive military capability, and Japan is careful to identify the new ship as “defensive.” It is highly doubtful that Japan’s neighbors, particularly China, will take that identification seriously. The naval expansion comes at the same time that China said that it was in “no rush” to sign any code of naval conduct in the South China Sea. The launching will undoubtedly escalate the tensions in East Asia.
Pakistan was rocked by separate acts of violence in Balochistan, in Kashmir, and by Taliban separatists. The political situation in Pakistan is fragile, although the recent elections gave some promise of stability. The clashes in Kashmir will definitely unsettle Pakistan’s relations with India.
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