Working to Complete a Dissertation in International Relations
Posted By jimcwaters on June 11, 2015
Stay tuned for new entries on my work to complete my dissertation.
Select Stories for Week Ending July 6
Posted By jimcwaters on July 7, 2013
Inequality in education increases in China: Asia Weekly of June 23 has a piece of how Chinese are more and more protesting the selection of university students. More are going to the streets complaining of corruption in the selection of students and the growing disparity between kids from the city or with parents in the government and others in the countryside. The former are 17 times represented in the nation’s colleges and universities. Those with the means are “voting with their applications” forgoing the national test in favor of the SAT, some traveling to Hong Kong to take it. In Shanghai, centers for studying for the SAT continue to grow but the number taking the national Chinese test dropped from 108,000 in 2008 to 53,000 this year.
Is the ICC a “white man’s Justice?”: Le Monde asks this question this week and tries to answer in four separate articles. Even with the replacement of the Court’s prosecutor from the activist Argentinian Luis Moreno Ocampo to an African, nothing has changed. Since 2002, the court has nine primary cases, and Le Monde has a nice graph where each one, all against Africans only, is. It has only finished two cases, one acquittal and one currently under appeal. The greatest failure has been its indictment of Omar Al-Bashir, the president of Sudan. The African Union and several states, members included, have opposed the indictment and have hosted him. One former colleague of mine in Sudan who worked for de Campo claimed that he turned to this hunt as a personal mission when in fact many of his staff thought Bashir was mostly trying to hold on to power and balance a whole host of those who led the killing in Darfur against others. In response to this situation, the African Union has taken on its first case in a court in Senegal against the former Chadian leader, Hissene Habre who was accused of having a hand in the deaths of 40,000 people during his rule 1982-1990 by a national commission.
Exuberance in Espana explained: The Times Literary Supplement reviews Antonio Munoz Molina’s new book (not translated into English, yet), Todo Lo que Era Solido (Everything that was solid). This Spanish author, who himself had decamped to New York, describes a litany of stories of crazy Spaniards who got lost in a dream of continued growth and profit. In 2006, one invites 20,000 New Yorkers to paella in Central Park, importing most of the ingredients from Valencia, including 4,143 liters of water. Next year he’s nearly broke and moves to Brazil. He takes the causes to Franco and the lack of real institutions following. Much of this resonates to me when I studied the treatment of juvenile delinquents during the seminal year of 1982, which under Franco was completely given to catholic clergy. Like everything, the Spaniards were opening up to modern methods and it seemed the real final nails to Franco’s coffin were only in after the Socialists took power that year. Four terms of control, the Socialists did give the foundations to this modernization, but seemed to have left out the need to build a disinterested bureaucracy that could have questioned the back and forth between the reformed conservatives (People’s Party) and the Socialists.
All Awaiting in Algeria: In a multi-article special, Jeune Afrique describes the current state of suspense in Algeria after the longest serving leader of 14 years, Bouteflika, had a stroke and before next April’s presidential election. No one has yet to declare their interest in running for president next year. Dependent on gas and oil, this country still faces a great challenge to provide education and employment opportunities for its oversized youth population, not an uncommon state for many Arab countries.
The mal of Monsanto: The French press continues its attack on GMO products. France24 has an extensive expose on cotton in India where it reports 90% of production is now GMOed. One farmer family is interviewed where the household head killed himself after he could not pay back for the GMO seed, a cost four times traditional cotton. The cotton crop has not given the yields Monsanto had promised and some pests had adapted some years later. It reports there are 10,000 such cases. Le Monde¸ for its part, reports that the banning of GMO corn (MON810) by the government of May 2012 was excessive based on little evidence and so, with a picture of lots of protesters showing all sorts of images of “Frankenfood.” The government still has the union of beekeepers on its side since they maintain this corn is problematic for pollination.
Neat news of last week ending June 29, 2013
Posted By jimcwaters on June 30, 2013
Turkey in Africa: The best local weekly in Ouaga (Le Economiste du Faso) gives a real life example, printing a story of four Burkinabe that have arrived to study in the eastern city of Gaziantep Turkey. They began studying in a college that the Turks built in Ouaga. Although Turkey’s engagement in Africa started in 1998, this took off since the AK Party came to power, showing this opening as a result of both Turkey’s domestic transformation and change in the global political economy. Just from 2004 to 2009, Turkish exports tripled to Africa. In Sudan, Turks were everywhere from building roads to cutting hair, including mine in Khartoum.
Going to Varanasi to live? If you’ve ever been to this most thought provoking place, you’ll know that not a small number of residents are new and have come to die there. Widows make up a large number of these, living in small and austere quarters along the Ganges, hoping that they will make it to a better afterlife. But what happens if one becomes a widow early in life? Radio Australia found a promising future with a NGO that has taken up helping widows find a new life. One 37 year-old widow tells her story I was married at 21 and widowed five years later, she says. As soon as my husband was cremated and the death rituals performed, my in-laws threw me out. I had nowhere to go. My life was over.” She then lived hand-to-mouth for 15 years. After getting help from the NGO Sulabh International, she now receives a small monthly stipend, and the widow’s refuge for the first time boasts clean water and a steady electricity supply. She wants now to study to be a teacher.
Cashing in on immigrants, Russian style. The Russian weekly magazine New Times has a biting expose on how others are cashing in on the numerous central Asian migrants who work in Moscow. Anyone who has spent time there will know that the hard manual labor for public services, like street cleaning, is done by migrants in their characteristic orange jackets. The “others” here are government officials who get payoffs from private companies that hire these migrants under their government contracts. Some of these government officials get on payroll for the contractors that should be fined if they are using illegal immigrants.
Anything else other than Armstrong: Le Monde printed an exclusive interview with Lance Armstrong, tiled “Le Tour de France? It’s impossible to win without doping.” Even with the excitement of the 100th run of the Tour, it can’t escape anyone’s mind that this is its first post-devastated-by-doping tour. In the interview, Armstrong in one instance says he’s sorry, but the tone in nearly the entire interview is one of blaming other people and the sport itself: that doping has been and will always be part of the sport.
Coming next week: Can ASEAN catch a COC? In lead up to the ASEAN summit in Brunei starting next week, member countries are hoping to cement a binding code of conduct in the South China Sea with China. Foreign Ministers from Russia, China, and the US will be at part of the meeting.
Four themes for the week of June 23, 2013
Posted By jimcwaters on June 23, 2013
China –Russia: The radio Station Ekho Moskvi had a great interview (Cvoimi glazami—in our eyes) on the on-the-ground state of trade and relations in two towns along the China Russia border, chock full of all the common Russian views of the Chinese. While in the western press there have been a long-running theme of the political relations between these two countries, and previously, which one had taken the proper route for reform from communism, there have not been that many stories about the situation along their long border in the Far Eastern region of Russia. Any aerial picture will show just how unequal the two places are: Russia looking nearly untouched small villages and forests while China is developing factories surrounded by well plotted out farms. The Amur (Russian) or Heilongjiang (Chinese) river forms the border for most of the way. Control of some of the islands in the river has been a dispute; nearly ten years ago there was a large benzene spill from a Chinese factory that polluted the river and the river still suffers from pollutants in China. The radio piece focuses on the two towns across the river of Heihe and Blagoveshchensk. Some of the tidbits of views: The Chinese work much harder; it’s cheaper to live in China but much better to earn money in Russia; the Chinese all like the strong man Putin; people in this Russian city are some of the best dressed with Chinese fashions, though the clothes only last a year or two; northern Chinese are of a more strong stock than the southern Chinese and they can put down the alcohol, though they prefer beer to vodka….
Bantering about the Nile basin: Both Le Monde (Geo & Politique) and the BBC had stories about disputes along the water use of the Nile. For the first time the new nation of South Sudan was participating in the forum of nations (actually hosting the meeting in Juba). This comes a few months after the Entebbe Accord where a number of upstream countries agreed to no longer agree to respect the colonial accords of 1929 and 1959 that gave Sudan and Egypt 22% and 66% respectively of the water from the river. Of particular note is Ethiopia which is building a new mega dam just before the Blue Nile enters Sudan. The Ethiopians think this is at the heart of their development strategy. Egypt views this as an aggression against their country.
Southeast Asian integration?: Radio Australia in its Asia Pacific show gave the latest dispute among the group: What sports to include in their upcoming games in Myanmar. It’s emblematic of the way this and ASEAN (the political and increasing economic grouping) have been run: friendly consensus and non interference in each others internal affairs. So, there is no set list of sports for each time the games are held; the host country has been allowed to make the list. This time the Philippines are up in arms about the nixing Olympic sports as gymnastics in preference to previously unheard of Chinlone, a Burmese dance sport and vo vinam, a Vietnamese style of martial art. The Philippines is thus sending a small delegation in protest and appealing for a set list of sports to be established before the next games in Singapore in 2015.
French depression/recession: Le Monde had a piece titled: Liberte, egalite, morosite. More than even the Afghans and Iraqis, the French are more pessimistic about the future. Though this may be nothing too new, there is no improvement in the way they feel. Some argue that it all starts at school, weeding out kids along the way, making the notorious “bac” the road to success or ruin depending on your result. My host last year in Nice fit the mold well too, complaining about all the neighbors, the Armenians, and the Russians who take advantage of what France has to give. The immigrants come, stay illegally, get into crime, work for low wages and leave the French with high unemployment. The BBC got at one contradiction that France is caught in here: “how are you ever going to be competitive if you insist on a 3,000 page labor law that protects workers and punishes investors.” The BBC story centers in on a comparison between two tire plants in Amiens: Goodyear plant that is closing and a former Dunlop factory that is making it through. Granted the American executive of the former wrote just about the silliest letter about his French workers; still, it’s true that the French consumer does not care much about where his tires come from, as long as they’re quality and affordable.
International press impressions of week ending June 15, 2013
Posted By jimcwaters on June 16, 2013
Items I found interesting, outside of the continual feeds on Turkey, Syria, and surveillance and leaks in the US:
African airlines, it’s pride is in shame–despite the fact that Kenyan, one of the best inter-African and reliable airlines just reported a $100 million loss, the only direction here is growth, with African airlines only accounting for 3% of global travel. With open skies and plans for some budget carriers, the future looks promising (BBC).
Cambodian style of democracy Le Monde chose to make this the lead on its geo & politique, with news of the ruling People’s Party (read Hun Sen’s club) expelling all opposition parliamentary members on the pretext they broke internal rules of the parliament. Elections are scheduled for July 28–the same date that another tenuous election is planned in Mali.
Still looking for a non-moribund morality in China–The most popular article on-line for the Southern Weekly (南方周末) follows a long-term discussion in China about morality. With a leading party (really an exclusive club) that has a theoretical basis that itself discredits in action and the story in 2010 of the young Yue Yue whom numerous people ignored on the street as she was in trouble, Chinese have. turned to a variety of religions. The piece is lengthy and analyzes both Chinese and European history in changes in moral practices, ending up arguing that things are better now without slavery, improvement in the state of women and widespread agreements on human rights. Three weeks ago too, the 60-minute style program (焦点访谈) told of Chinese tourists defacing ancient sites in Egypt, reminding citizens that they should be more cultured when traveling.
The Taiwan/Philippines fight improves Chinese-Taiwanese relations: The Chinese Asia Weekly devotes nearly half its issue on the incident where the Philippine coast guard killed fisherman Hong Shicheng. The Southern Weekly posts prominently the visit of the Kuomindang’s honorary chairman Wu Boxiong.
Cultural protection under a free trade: one of my favorite trade economists told me that “free trade” agreements need only one statement: “no barriers.” Apparently the French negotiators don’t think so and are adamant on protecting their culture from the US in any agreement. The weekend version of the Financial Times interviews the philosopher/dandy Bernard-Henri Lévy who says “French culture is better protected by the energy and audacity of the writers and the moviemakers than by laws and formal protections.”
Russian state control of and dependence on oil–Just as Thane Gustafson’s new book on the Russian oil industry and the state’s rec0ntrol after the divestment in the 1990s (Wheel of Fortune), reviewed in the London Review of Books, Kommersant tells of its confidence that the Russian government will be able to reform how its state monopolies will fall under public oversight. Right that the state control of oil and gas could follow the model of Norway and states on the Arabian peninsula (the US is really the only country where private reigns), Russia remains challenged to find way to avoid the longer term problems of its resource curse. Igor Gaidar argued that the fall in oil prices led the fall of the Soviet Union; one pre-eminent American diplomat of Soviet space asked me once what on earth is attractive to foreigners from Russia other than what comes from Russian earth–maybe Ak-47s?
Posted By jimcwaters on June 15, 2013
Welcome to this page that has been dormant for years and only now in construction–slowly.