Victor Davis Hanson is a prominent military scholar (although one who provokes controversy often) and he has written a book review for the Times Literary Supplement on how weapons have changed war. He looks at Saltpetre (an early necessary component of gunpowder), Napalm, and what he calls “post-human” weapons (robots, and other horrifying developments on the horizon). Hanson shows the interaction of these weapons and the society that spawns them. It is a highly interesting essay.
As many of you know, I have been trying to find the common links among all the protests we have been witnessing across the globe over the last three years. One common theme is, of course, corruption in government. But there doesn’t seem to be any overarching political thread to these protests–they are all locally based and don’t seem to be working in any self-conscious way together. Chris Hedges is a well-known socialist who writes for the Nation and in an interview with The Real News, a self-avowedly leftist media outlet, gives a possible answer to the question. You need to listen to the interview with a questioning mind, but I also think that you will find many of the issues he raises to be worth thinking about.
Researchers from Abo Academy University in Finland have conducted a study of isolated peoples living in different parts of the world over the last century. In the study, the researchers found that “war”, as an institution, accounts for very few of the deaths in such societies. By analogy, the researchers speculate that, since these peoples live out lives that are roughly comparable to the early days of human societies, that war was not a common feature of human life. The conclusion is an interesting insight into the famous “nature-nurture” debate: that human aggression is a learned and not an innate behavior.
Most states conveniently forget previous foreign policies when the tide of history proves that those policies were, in fact, abhorrent. In my lifetime, the most egregious case (thus far) of historical revisionism in the US is on the issue of US-South African relations. Most people do not know how powerfully the US supported the apartheid regime in South Africa, and one would never guess given the current strong support for the new governments. The posted article gives an insight into parts of that revisionism, but it is a serious mistake to think that it was just Republicans that supported the racist regime. In the formulation of foreign policy, all statespeople should try to determine, as much as is possible, not only what is morally correct, but in what direction the arc of justice points.
US Secretary of State Kerry announced today that the moribund negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians would restart next week. The announcement comes after four months of diplomacy, and all the leaks surrounding those negotiations tended to downplay the prospect of renewed negotiations. The announcement was very cautiously worded, and it is unclear what the terms of the negotiations are. Nonetheless, any negotiations are to be welcomed. We will learn much more next week.
The European Union has announced that it will no longer allow the sale of goods or services produced in Israeli settlements in the Occupied Territories. The settlements violate most interpretations of international laws governing Occupied Territories (most specifically the Geneva Convention which prohibits the Occupying Power from transferring its population to the occupied territories). The ruling affects only a mall part of the international trade between Israel and the EU–the ruling only refers to those things produced within the settlements. But it is a clear message to the Israelis that there are consequences to systematically violating international law. We will have to see if US Secretary of State Kerry raises the issues in his current negotiations with the Israelis and the Palestinians.
This photograph is of the Zaatari refugee camp in northern Jordan. It is home to about 115,000 refugees from Syria. One can only imagine how difficult the circumstance of life must be for the residents.
The world of the 1% is incredibly complex. Trying to capture this complexity visually is very difficult, but an amazing website, OpenCorporates, succeeds in blowing one’s mind. Through interactive maps, it shows how corporate structures are disguised, hidden, and designed to stupefy. It is overwhelming at first glance, but stick with it and things become very obvious.
Greece has agreed to the terms of the troika (the European Central Bank, the European Commission, and the International Monetary Fund) to secure a large loan in order to prevent a sovereign default. The Greek government will receive $9.2 billion in return for firing 25,000 government workers including police and teachers. With unemployment of around 27% it is difficult to see how laying off more workers will improve the economic situation in Greece. I suspect we will be seeing more protests in Greece in the coming days.
India is not immune to the general global economic slowdown. Its economic growth in recent years has been truly impressive, but that growth was in some respects dependent upon a vibrant world economy. Now, like China and Brazil, India is slowing down and not creating nearly enough jobs for its young people. And, like many of the richer countries, its government seems sclerotic and unable to act decisively. Thus far, there have not been nation-wide protests in the country, but there are many signs of discontent.
A North Korean ship has been detained by Panama after it was discovered that it was secretly carrying Cuban weapons. The ship’s captain attempted suicide after the discovery, and the transfer of weapons to North Korean definitely violates the arms embargo against North Korea ordered by the UN Security Council. We have been hoping for some sort of reconciliation between the US and Cuba for many years now; it is unclear whether this incident will set back those efforts.
Italy’s first black minister, Cecile Kyenge, was greeted by nooses hanging from lampposts in the city of Pescara. Posters proclaiming “Immigration, the noose of the people!” were alongside the nooses and the group putting up the posters was a far-right group known as Forza Nuova. We can put that group in the same hateful category as the Golden Dawn in Greece. Earlier, an Italian senator compared Ms Kyenge to an “orangutan.” In virtually every country of the world there is an unsettling explicit merging of the issues of race and immigration–a highly volatile mix in an economic slowdown.
Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has given an interview on Face the Nation in which he claimed that Iran was “weeks away” from developing a nuclear bomb capability. Although the new Iranian President, Rouhani, has made some conciliatory statements to the P5+1 (the five Permanent members of the UN Security Council and Germany), the Prime Minister believes those statements to be dilatory and not significant enough to warrant more time for negotiations. There is no indication that the US has changed its position, but the pressure from Israel toward military action against Iran seems to be increasing. But an Israeli attack on Iran would only stiffen the power of the government of Iran, and likely lead to a far more rigid and dangerous pattern.
The revelation that the US National Security Agency (NSA) has been collecting information on communications of virtually anyone who uses a telephone and the internet was astonishing, not because of the fact of the spying, but because the scale of the spying was incomprehensible. Apparently, the amount of information being collected is even larger than we had initially thought. A British program, Tempora, collects 21 million gigabytes per day and stores the data for a month. This information is also shared with the NSA. The idea of privacy has become a naive relic.
The Chinese reported that their economy grew by 7.5% last quarter–an enviable rate given that the US is likely to grow at less than 1%. Nonetheless, the Chinese economy has slowed in 11 out of the last 13 quarters, and many are beginning to become apprehensive about whether the Chinese economy might be beginning to stall–a consequence that would shake the global economy. The Washington Post ran a short essay on how to interpret the Chinese data. It is not doom and gloom, but it is definitely cautious.
I generally post articles on current events, but I recently read an essay in Salon written by Andrew O’Hehir which offered a great deal of food for thought about the direction of American society. It takes a wide-lens view and uses President Dwight Eisenhower, George Orwell, and Aldous Huxley as foils for thought. It is a highly intelligent and perceptive read, and in the light of the long-term effects of the misbegotten “war on terror” it is a sobering read. If you wish to read Eisenhower’s military-industrial complex speech, you can access it here. For a quick insight into Orwell’s view of politics:
The Israeli strike against Russian-made anti-ship missiles in the Syrian port of Latakia has finally made it to the pages of the New York Times. But the story continues to get limited coverage. RT (formerly the Russian Times) is reporting that the strike was carried out by the Israelis using a Turkish military base. Using the base in Turkey, the Israelis were able to attack the port city without going through Syrian airspace. The Israeli press is reporting that the attack was carried out by Israeli submarines. The idea that the US and Turkey might be coordinating attacks against Syria is highly explosive. But right now, we know virtually nothing about what actually happened.
There have been fresh attacks in the long-festering conflict in the Democratic Republic of Congo, with more than 60,000 refugees fleeing to neighboring Uganda. The roots of the conflict are complex, but there is little question that they are well-established in the colonial histories of Central Africa, as the European powers set up various ethnic groups to rule over, and at the expense, of other ethnic groups. For a good background to the history of the conflict, one can access the site of World Movement for Democracy. The conflict has cost the lives of almost 6 million people and the systematic rape and torture of many women in the region. Despite several attempts to dampen and control the violence, the world has only responded in pathetic and half-hearted ways.
Duplicity is a common feature of world politics, but rarely is it obvious. Diplomats always figure out ways to disguise their true objectives in acceptable language. One Iraqi diplomat, however, has failed this test. Iraqi Foreign Minister, Hoshyar Zebari, claimed recently that Iraq lacked the capability to stop Iran from using Iraqi airspace to send weapons to the Syrian government of President Assad. He invited Western powers to stop the flights themselves. Does the Iraqi Foreign Ministry really want Western powers back on its soil? A close contender might also be the Pakistani Taliban. The Tehrik-e-Pakistan-e-Taliban (TTP) recently announced its support for the rebels fighting against President Assad in Syria. So it is now the case the the US and the Taliban are allies in Syria.
One of the biggest problems facing the global economy right now is the painfully slow growth of jobs. Many are stumped by the absence of job creation because there is plenty of capital available for investment. One partial explanation for the slow jobs recovery is that machines are performing many of the jobs that used to be done by people. There are clear limits to this substitution process, but it undoubtedly has an effect.
The inter-Arab competition for influence in Egypt is very intense. At the center of this competition is the media outlet, Al Jazeera, which is controlled by Qatar. The Qataris supported President Morsi with almost $8 billion in aid. The Saudi Arabians were uncomfortable with Morsi, and since his overthrow have pledged, along with Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates, roughly the same amount of money to Egypt. The money is crucial to the Egyptian economy, and the grants allow Egypt to avoid going to the IMF for aid which would almost certainly come with debilitating conditions. The competition will complicate efforts to forge a government of reconciliation. To make matters even more difficult, the Turkish press is reporting that Israel has attacked Russian-made anti-aircraft weaponry within Syria. Such reports have not surfaced in the US media.
One of the unspoken tragedies of the war in Afghanistan is that, no matter what the political outcome might be after the US leaves the country, the country will never be the same. The impact of a high-technology country like the US on a relatively low-technology country for such an extended period of time (the US invaded Afghanistan in October 2001). The US withdrawal of troops cannot be viewed also as a withdrawal of responsibility for what it done, both intentionally and inadvertently.
The G-20 meeting begins in Moscow this week. The countries that comprise the G-20 account for 90% of the world’s economic output. The breakdown is as follows:
Kamal Hamami, a commander in the Free Syrian Army has been assassinated by a jihadist group. The killing further fragments the opposition to President Assad and makes it more difficult for liberal states to support the rebel forces. The killing also suggests that, even if Assad were to go, fighting in Syria would likely continue as the rebels would simply turn on each other to take control of the country.
Last fall Malala Yousafza, a young Pakistani girl, was nearly killed by an extremist group because she insisted on being educated. Today, Malala addressed the United Nations General Assembly. She represents a new wave of girls who refuse to back down from asserting their rights as human beings. Malala serves as a powerful example of courage and strength.
July 9th marked the ninth anniversary of the advisory opinion of the International Court of Justice that the separation wall being built by Israel in occupied territories was illegal. The opinion of the Court found that: “The Court concludes that the Israeli settlements in the Occupied Palestinian Territory (including East Jerusalem) have been established in breach of international law.” The advisory opinion has had no effect on the conduct of the Israeli government in the occupied territories.
Brazilian protests have moved into a new stage as the unions in Brazil have joined the protests in a “Day of Struggle.” The demands were for better working conditions and significant economic reforms. THe protests involved stopping transportation in many of the major cities in Brazil. President Rousseff, who is up for re-election did not respond directly to the protests yet.
Slowly but surely, the economies of southern Europe are beginning to look as if they are not going to recover before a crisis occurs. The austerity programs for countries like Greece and Italy have only served to slow down the economies to the point where their sovereign debt cannot be repaid. The crisis has been disguised by the extremely low interest rates that prevail in the world, but the slow unwinding has been unremitting. It also appears as if the banks in Europe have been too slow to recapitalize themselves so they are looking increasingly vulnerable to crises of confidence. There doesn’t appear as if anyone in Europe has a plan to avoid the crisis.
World Politics News 