Protests in Hong Kong are continuing and the protesters are adopting cat-and-mouse tactics to evade the riot police. The protests seem to have gone far beyond expressing displeasure at the extradition bill proposed by Beijing that places Hong Kongers within the jurisdiction of the central government in Beijing. Now, protesters are using slogans that refer to the “liberation” of Hong Kong. Global Times, a media outlet that often reflects the opinion of the Beijing government, claims that the protesters do not have the support of ordinary people in Hong Kong:
“More and more Hongkongers urged police to strictly enforce the law and bring all violent rioters to justice after the city suffered another weekend of chaos and public transport disruption.
“Illegal protesters began to use guerrilla-style assemblies and flash mob protests to hit different districts during the weekend, seriously affecting the normal life of Hong Kong residents.”
“Large groups of Hong Kong people visited several police stations in Hong Kong Saturday to express their firm support for and utmost respect to the police force.
“The scene stood in stark contrast to the chaotic and violent besieges of police stations by black-clad protesters on many nights over the past weeks.
“‘The police have been working really hard to safeguard social order. We came here to show our support,’ said a resident surnamed Chan, who visited Kwai Chung Police Station with his wife and son. The boy gave the police a hand-written card as a gift.’
The evidence, however, suggests that the protests have wide support. The protesters are also becoming quite sophisticated, playing games of rock-scissors-paper to determine the location of their protests so that the police cannot anticipate their moves. It seems clear, however, that the Beijing government’s willingness to tolerate the protests is getting short, and there is great danger that violence will be used to suppress the protests, as was done in the protests in Tiananmen Square in 1989.
“The numbers are mind-boggling: $70,000 per minute, $4 million per hour, $100 million per day.
“That’s how quickly the fortune of the Waltons, the clan behind Walmart Inc., has been growing since last year’s Bloomberg ranking of the world’s richest families.
“At that rate, their wealth would’ve expanded about $23,000 since you began reading this. A new Walmart associate in the U.S. would’ve made about 6 cents in that time, on the way to an $11 hourly minimum….
“So it goes around the globe. America’s richest 0.1% today control more wealth than at any time since 1929, but their counterparts in Asia and Europe are gaining too. Worldwide, the 25 richest families now control almost $1.4 trillion in wealth, up 24% from last year.”
The rate at which wealth is being concentrated cannot be sustained, economically or politically. Common Dreams extrapolated the rate and found that there is an end point which is morally inconeivable:
“If wealth inequality in the United States continues to soar at its current rate, the top 10 percent of Americans could own 100 percent of the nation’s net worth by 2052.
That’s according to an analysis by Dallas Morning News finance columnist Scott Burns, who wrote Sunday that the wealthiest Americans ‘will truly ‘have it all’ just 33 years from now.’
“‘However you slice it, the rich have been getting richer. Lots richer,’ wrote Burns, citing Federal Reserve data. ‘Here are the basics. From 2013 to 2016, the top 10 percent of households increased their share of total wealth from an amazing 75.3 percent to a stunning 77.2 percent. That’s a share gain of 1.87 percent in just three years.’
“‘If they continue to gain share at that rate,’ Burns added, ‘they’ll have the remaining 22.8 percent of net worth held by the other 90 percent in just 12 more surveys, give or take an upheaval or two.'”
We should all keep this data in mind as we are flooded with charges of “socialism” as efforts are made to protect the interests of those who are not benefiting from the economic system in place.
We need to keep a close eye on what’s happening in North Korea. In the last few weeks it has conducted five short-range missile tests, but the more recent tests seem to be of a different kind of missile. We do know that the Trump Administration believes that as long as North Korea does not test a nuclear bomb or launch a long-range ballistic missile, it does not violate the understanding reached between leader Kim and President Trump in Singapore last year. But it appears as if leader Kim is threading a very small needle of understanding. North Korea believes that the US is preparing to violate the Singapore Agreement by conducting military exercises with South Korea tomorrow, and these tests are expressions of discontent with the US actions. If the war games occur, then it may be the case that North Korea considers the Singapore Agreement null and void. If that is the case, then we should expect North Korea to reciprocate by either testing a bomb or a long-range missile. How President Trump responds to that move is a matter of conjecture: President Trump will likely downplay its significance, but National Security Adviser Bolton and Secretary of State Pompeo, both of whom have argued for regime change in North Korea. will likely push for a more robust response. While the US and North Korea continue to dance, South Korea seems to be increasingly worried about the reliability of the US as an ally. It recently announced that Lee Soo-hyuck, who has described Mr. Trump as “treacherous”, will be the next South Korean Ambassador to the US.
We have virtually no hard information about what is happening in Kashmir. The Indian government has cut off all internet connections with the territory, controls all flows of information, and has reportedly sent a large number of troops into the region. The Straits Times reports that India has arrested 300 Kashmiri politicians. The New York Times reports:
“On the streets of Srinagar, Kashmir’s biggest city, security officers tied black bandannas over their faces, grabbed their guns and took positions behind checkpoints. People glanced out the windows of their homes, afraid to step outside. Many were cutting back on meals and getting hungry.
“A sense of coiled menace hung over the locked-down city and the wider region on Saturday, a day after a huge protest erupted into clashes between Kashmiris and Indian security forces.
“Shops were shut. A.T.M.s had run dry. Just about all lines to the outside world — internet, mobile phones, even landlines — remained severed, rendering millions of people incommunicado.”
“A swing of about 2.5 million residents would shift Jammu and Kashmir from majority-Muslim to majority-Hindu. In a nation of 1.3 billion, that’s not such a stretch. The BJP forcefully advocates for in-migration of Hindus to the state. Officially, this applies only to those who fled Kashmir in the violence of the 1990s, but there is now no legal barrier to a full-bore program of government-sponsored in-migration. Such a move would solidify the BJP’s Hindu-nationalist agenda of redefining India not as a multireligious secular state, but as a Hindu rastra in which 200 million Muslims are tolerated only so long as they remain on good behavior.”
It is difficult to see how Pakistan can effectively respond to this move. It has recalled its ambassador, but the Indian government of Narendra Modi has unquestionably committed to this course of action. I suspect, however, that there is no stable outcome without a dramatic reversal by India.
The US has imposed additional sanctions on the Maduro regime in Venezuela. The sanctions are designed to pressure Maduro to resign and will undoubtedly aggravate the desperate situation for most Venezuelan citizens. It is not clear why the Trump Administration believes that additional sanctions will work since they have not only been ineffective against Venezuela, but also Russia, Cuba, North Korea, and Iran. Like the Iranian sanctions, the US is applying secondary sanctions against companies that trade with Venezuela–in effect, making US law extra-territorial. The US National Security Adviser, John Bolton, made this comment:
“Critically, it also exposes foreign entities doing business with the Maduro government to so-called secondary sanctions in the U.S. — a fact not lost on Maduro’s government as it tries to rally support at home and abroad.
“’The U.S. has to understand once and for all that they aren’t the owners of the world,’ Vice President Delcy Rodriguez said in a statement from Caracas. ‘Every country that has investments in the U.S. should be very worried because this sets a dangerous precedent against private property.'”
I doubt that these sanctions will induce Maduro to leave office, particularly since he seems to have the backing of both Russia and China.
The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has released another report, this one on climate change and food production. It is a very lengthy report and at this point I have only read the first chapters. It is so depressing, however, that I may not finish it. Rolling Stone summarized some of the findings:
“The report confirmed that the world’s land areas are warming about twice as fast as the oceans, a phenomenon that was long predicted (soil heats up faster than water, which is why we cool off in swimming pools). Warming over land is happening so fast that even since the end of the 10-year average used in report (2006 to 2015), global land temperatures have increased by a further 20 percent. New data show that last month, July 2019, was the hottest month ever measured on the planet…..
“That ongoing transition to a world never-before experienced by humans is greatly worrying, because we’re not sure how modern agriculture will respond. Among other things, the report finds food will become less nutritious at higher levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere as plant’s chemistry fundamentally changes. Masson-Delmotte said that the search is already on for crops that are resilient to extreme heat and drought, as well as urgent efforts to conserve and protect forests that help buffer the natural world from the expansion of agriculture.
“The risks to the world’s farms increases rapidly beyond warming of 1.5 to 2 degrees Celsius, to the point where some of the possible solutions to climate change might quickly become impossible.”
The situation in Kashmir continues to be unsettled. The moves by the Indian government has opened the door to what Kashmiris believe could be a demographic catastrophe. Writing in The Intercept, Murtaza Hussain explains:
“Modi has repeatedly promised to take such a step despite the likely backlash from Kashmiris, most of whom either nurse separatist sentiments or wish to maintain autonomy from the rest of India. A particular clause of that law, known as article 35A, gives the Kashmiri government the ability to determine who is a permanent resident of the state. The revocation of both 370 and 35A opens the door to India’s population of 1.2 billion to begin moving into Kashmir en masse, a development likely to dangerously escalate a conflict that is at its core over territorial control.
“’For Kashmiris, it was the last thing they were holding onto before a complete and utter ethnic cleansing could take place,’ wrote Hafsa Kanjwal, an assistant professor of South Asian history at Lafayette College, in a Facebook post about the revocation of article 35A. ‘But this has changed now. The worst nightmare that Kashmiris could have imagined in their already existing nightmare can take place now. Indians can buy property and land in Kashmir, and drive out the local population.’”
“While India was part of the British Empire, Jammu and Kashmir was one of the many princely states that made up the colonial territory, this one presided over by Maharajah Hari Singh. As India’s independence from Britain—and the ensuing partition—was being planned in 1947, Singh, a Hindu ruler of a Muslim-majority state, initially desired that the Jammu and Kashmir become an independent neutral region between India and the new nation of Pakistan. However, an uprising in the state’s western region, aided by Pakistani raiders and primarily targeting Singh, forced him to cede sovereignty to India in exchange for military aid. This led to India and Pakistan’s first major war—although the two countries had already been locked in bitter conflict since gaining their freedom. While Pakistani forces were successful in taking the western and northern areas of Kashmir, India was able to hold the majority of the princely state, including the areas of the Kashmir Valley, Jammu, and Ladakh. The Pakistani region of Kashmir was then recognized as ‘Pakistan-administered Kashmir,’ while India’s territory retained the name Jammu and Kashmir.”
The Indian decision brings the world back to 1947, except that now both India and Pakistan are nuclear-armed states, which are inching closer to war.
China has allowed its currency, the Yuan, to depreciate below the critical level of 7 Yuan per dollar: “onshore trade of the Chinese yuan changed hands at 7.0304 against the dollar, while the offshore yuan traded at 7.0807 against the greenback. The effect of the depreciation is to make Chinese exports less expensive and Chinese imports more expensive. There was no explicit announcement about the move, but most suspect that it is retaliation by China against US President Trump’s decision to impose an additional 10% tariff on Chinese exports to the US. The US stock market fell sharply because of the news as it suggests that the trade war is far from being resolved. The US does not seem to have a plan for resolving these tensions and the Chinese are simply reacting to US moves. The actual data indicates that Chinese exports to the US are falling, but the US trade deficit with other countries is increasing.
US trade policy seems to be identifying the wrong source of the balance of trade deficits.
India has revoked the special status of Jammu and Kashmir, making the territories legally equal to all other parts of India. Jammu and Kashmir have been contested territories ever since the partition of India into India and Pakistan in 1947. The territory has a primarily Muslim population, but was divided by a “Line of Control” between India and Pakistan, and the two states have fought several times–in 1947, 1965, and 1971–over the right to control the territory. Since the Simla Agreement of 1972, there has been sporadic violence between the two states but the government of Narendra Modi in India has encouraged the growth of Hindu nationalism which has aggravated the tension. The revocation decision has led many in Pakistan to fear that the Indian government wishes to foster Hindu nationalism in these volatile territories. Pakistan has angrily responded to the decision:
” Pakistan’s Foreign Ministry responded to the revocation with a statement saying it ‘strongly condemns’ India’s decision and ‘will exercise all possible options to counter the illegal steps.’
“‘The Indian Occupied Jammu and Kashmir is an internationally recognized disputed territory. No unilateral step by the government of India can change this. Nor will this ever be acceptable to the people of Jammu and Kashmir and Pakistan,’ the ministry said, citing that its status had been upheld by UN Security Council resolutions.
“‘Pakistan reaffirms its abiding commitment to the Kashmir cause and its political, diplomatic and moral support to the people of occupied Jammu and Kashmir for realization of their inalienable right to self-determination.'”
“More broadly, though, India unilaterally pushed to change Kashmir’s status without Pakistan’s buy-in. The worry now is that widespread unrest will spike in the region. Indian forces already heavily patrol Kashmir, but it has sent thousands of extra troops there in anticipation of violence, as well as closed schools, evacuated tourists, cut off internet connectivity, and put some of the area’s political leaders under house arrest. In effect, the area is on lockdown.”
We should all keep an eye on how this situation unfolds.
Protests are continuing in Hong Kong and the central government in Beijing appears to be at a loss to address the situation effectively. The immediate cuase of the protests is a extradition bill proposed by the Legislative Council in Hong Kong which would make Hong Kongers subject to the laws of the central government. That possibility violates the spirit of the agreement worked out with great Britain in 1997: “One Country, Two Systems”. The protesters seem to be taking a harder line:
“Authorities in Hong Kong and Beijing this week signalled a hardening stance, including with the arrests of dozens of protesters, and the Chinese military saying it was ready to quell the “intolerable” unrest if requested.
“But protesters have remained unyielding, vowing to hold multiple occupations and rallies into next week, sending tensions soaring once more.
“On Saturday they embraced their mantra ‘be water’ – a philosophy of unpredictability espoused by local martial arts legend Bruce Lee – in a bid to keep police guessing.
“Throughout the evening they put up makeshift barricades across multiple roads in Tsim Sha Tsui, a popular shopping and tourist district on the harbourfront, where many luxury malls and hotels shut their doors.
“They also blocked one of the three cross-harbour tunnels connecting to the main island, causing widespread traffic chaos, before disappearing after half an hour.
“’We will fight as guerrillas today and be water,’ a masked and helmeted 19-year-old, who gave her surname Lee, told AFP.”
China blames the US for stoking the protests, but the US has yet to issue strong warnings to the government in Beijing to respect the right of protests, even as it seems as if China may be contemplating a military crackdown on the protests.
The European heat wave has moved north and now temperatures in Greenland are leading to significant glacial ice melt. In the month of July, Greenland lost 197 billion tons of ice, including 11 billion tons in one day. At the same time, wildfires are burning out of control in Siberia. Climate change is clearly not a future event.
The US has formally withdrawn from the Intermediate-range Nuclear Force (INF) Treaty. The Treaty was signed by President Reagan of the US and President Gorbachev of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), now Russia in 1987. It was the first treaty to eliminate an entire class of nuclear weapons, those with missiles that could fly between 500 and 5,500 kilometers. The purpose of the treaty was quite explicit: to prevent an outbreak of nuclear war between the US and the USSR on the European continent. Intercontinental ballistics missiles remained, but their number was limited by another treaty, the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START, which expires in 2021. The US withdrew for a number of reasons. First, it claimed that Russia had violated the treaty by developing an intermediate-range missile. The Russians have not tested the missile beyond the proscribed distance limits, but the new missile is mobile, so the issue of testing is moot. Second, the US worries about Chinese development of an intermediate-range missile and wants to rewrite the treaty to include China. The Chinese have not indicated any interest whatsoever in signing such a pact.
US President Trump announced that the US will impose an additional 10% tariff on $300 billion of imported Chinese goods. The tariffs will start on 1 September and Mr. Trump did not foreclose the possibility of imposing another 25% tariff on Chinese goods. The trade talks with China are obviously not going well and it seems to be a safe bet that the Chinese will now just wait out the rest of President Trump’s term, hoping for a more receptive US President after November 2020. The new tariffs will have a dampening effect on the US economy. President Trump promised that the tariffs imposed earlier on China, Mexico, and Canada would bring manufacturing jobs back to the US, but so far that has not happened:
“Under mounting pressure as tariffs threaten to drive up costs, US manufacturers in China are indeed packing up and heading elsewhere. Companies including Nike, Crocs, Roomba and GoPro are now producing most of their goods outside the country, having set up operations in Vietnam, India, Bangladesh and Mexico. Dell, Sony, Nintendo and HP are reportedly considering such moves.
“But very few are moving back to the US.
“’Trump’s tariffs may have sent the message to ask US companies to consider reshoring, [but] very few will actually follow through,’ said Daniel Ikenson, director of the Centre for Trade Policy Studies at the Cato Institute, a non-partisan think tank. ‘Making products in America has become too expensive.’”
President Trump seems to be unconcerned about the impact of the tariffs. He said today: ” “If they don’t want to trade with us anymore, that would be fine with me. We’d save a lot of money.”
For the third time in just over a week, North Korea has launched ballistic missiles toward the Sea of Japan (or, the East Sea as the Koreans call it). There is no question that Leader Kim is demanding an answer to his calls for the US and South Korea to postpone their scheduled military exercises. But President Trump’s public response is strangely unaware of the urgency of Kim’s actions. On the White House lawn, President Trump responded to a reporter’s question:
Q On North Korea, sir. On North Korea, they apparently just launched their third missile in about a week. Is Kim testing you?
THE PRESIDENT: I think it’s very much under control. Very much under control.
This response is profoundly inappropriate. It will force Kim to escalate his actions, giving the US little wiggle room to respond. It also ignores the fact that short range missiles pose a serious threat to US allies, South Korea and Japan. President Trump is not exactly talking like a reliable ally to states under the serious threat of a nuclear attack.
The Israeli newspaper, Haaretz, is reporting that Israel made two attacks on Iranian positions in Iraq on 19 July. Although Israel has made hundreds of similar strikes in Syria, this is the first time (that we know of) that Israel has attacked positions in Iraq since the days of Saddam Hussein. Israel used the US-made F-35 fighter planes in the attacks. The attacks represent a significant change in tactics that suggest that Israel is willing to escalate its activities against Iran. The Iraqis will undoubtedly protest and it will be interesting to see if the US supports Iraq or Israel in this matter. I suspect that the Trump Administration will support Israel, but do so will jeopardize the US troops currently stationed in Iraq.
The Pew Research Center has conducted a poll on the partisan divide in the US over threats to US security. There are some remarkably discrepant views about national security within the US population, suggesting that forging a common foreign policy would be difficult for any government. The biggest discrepancy is perhaps the most worrisome: climate change. Only 27% of Republicans regard climate change as a major threat whereas 84% of Democrats consider it to be a major threat. The most surprising result, however, is about how well respected the US is by other countries in the world.
“A majority of Americans have long held the view that the United States is “less respected by other countries than in the past,” including 57% who currently say this. But the share of Republicans who say this is now lower than it has been in Pew Research Center surveys dating back to 2004.
“At the same time, the share of Democrats who say the U.S. is less respected remains near a record high. As a result, the 53 percentage point partisan gap in the share saying the U.S. is less respected than in the past is wider than at any point in the last 15 years.
“Overall, 57% of adults overall say that, compared with the past, the U.S. is less respected by other countries these days, while 20% say it is more respected and a similar share (21%) say it is about as respected as it has been in the past.”
I would suggest that members of the Republican Party start reading some international newspapers.
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