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.
The insurgent group, Boko Haram (which means “Western education is a sin”), has been waging a guerrilla war in the northern part of Nigeria. The group claims to represent the interests of the primarily Muslim population of the north against the primarily Christian population in the south. The Nigerian army has been trying to wrest control away from the rebels, but the violence has been widespread and extreme. It is very difficult to determine to what extent the group has support of the civilian population.
Max Fisher of the Washington Post looks at a map of where the American embassies and consulates are closed in the Middle East and North Africa. By simply looking at the map, he gleans some interesting questions about how the US defines and interprets the threat. It is less of a broad-brush than has been defined by many. The threat apparently is more specific than the government has intimated. It remains to be seen how real the threat actually is. Many writers in the foreign press believe that the alert is not genuine but a political ploy by the US government to deflect attention from the furor associated with the trial of Bradley Manning and the controversy over the leaks from Edward Snowden.
Max Fisher also has a very nuanced view of the recent speech by President Rouhani of Iran that has raised so much controversy. Some have interpreted his speech as similar to many speeches by former President Ahmadinejad. The actual translation seems to be quite different. There are some, however, who believe that Rouhani’s words only serve to disguise Iran’s true intent, which is to delay further sanctions while Iran continues to build its nuclear capability.
The Israeli-Palestinian negotiations have just begun, but Israel has decided to extend subsidies to settlements in the West Bank even though those very settlements are presumably one of the subjects of the negotiations. Since 1967 about 500,000 Israelis have moved into about 100 settlements in the Occupied Territories. The Fourth Geneva Convention stipulates that:
Article 49 (1) states
“Individual or mass forcible transfers, as well as deportations of protected persons from occupied territory to the territory of the Occupying Power or to that of any other country, occupied or not, are prohibited, regardless of their motive.”
Article 49 (6) states
“The Occupying Power shall not deport or transfer parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies.”
Additionally, the UN Security Council and the International Court of Justice have both ruled that the Geneva Convention applies to the Occupied Territories. It is hard to believe that the Israeli government is serious about the negotiations if it is also willing to simultaneously aggravate an already difficult situation.
President Obama recently gave a speech in which he argued that reducing economic inequality should be a priority. It is not clear, however, what concrete steps he was prepared to take in that direction, assuming that the Congress would even allow him to do so. There are good reasons to doubt the commitment of many of the world’s leaders to such a policy. Inequality will be reduced only when governments are forced to take effective steps. In the US, about 36 percent of young people aged 18-31 are living with their parents–the highest level in four decades.
4 August is the anniversary of Britain’s entry into World War I. In 1914, very few realized how important and devastating that war would be. It is often the case that we are unaware of a looming tragedy, and it is always appropriate to be aware of things going awry.
Robert Mugabe has apparently won his seventh term as President of Zimbabwe. His opponent, Morgan Tsvangirai, claimed that there was significant fraud in the election, but the observers from the African Union asserted that the election was essentially fair. Mugabe is a hero of the liberation of Zimbabwe (once called Rhodesia when it was a British colony), but his leadership in Zimbabwe has been miserably ineffective and corrupt.
As the Israeli-Palestinian negotiations proceed, there are many groups in the US that are well-organized to support different positions on both sides. One of the best organized groups supporting the Israelis are Christian Zionists. About 25% of Christians in the US identify themselves as Christian Zionist–Christians who believe that the establishment of the state of Israel is a precondition for the second coming of Christ. Christian Zionism actually predates Jewish Zionism, and is deeply embedded in American politics.
The Telegraph published some extraordinary pictures of Shanghai: one in 1987 and the other in 2013. The change in China is dramatic and the photographs capture the sweep of the changes brilliantly.
An article in the latest issue of Science identifies a strong link between a rise in temperature and violence. For those of us who have suffered through hot and humid days, it is easy to believe that tempers get more frayed on hot days. But this study looks at violence in a wide number of societies and find that the link is quite strong across cultures. This recent video put out by NASA looks at the change in temperatures for North America under two different levels of CO2 in the year 2100. If these projections true out to be accurate, then we can also expect violence to increase as well.
The US State Department will close US Consulates in 17 countries on Sunday and issued a worldwide travel alert. The alert suggests that terrorist threats emanating from the Arabian peninsula are the source of the concern, but the alert is not specific at all about any details. The alert is in effect until the end of August.
The New York Times has published a very sobering graphic on inequality in the world. The graphic is based on data compiled by the OECD.
World Politics News 