Welcome to an all day open thread hosted by “Foreign Policy and International Events Group”. Drop by to share links and stories or for commentary. (or just play peekaboo and say look what I found). Who are we and what we are trying do → Launching A Dailykos Discussions and Republishing Group For International or Foreign Policy Stuff
We use sources and links that might not familiar to most kossacks, what with this being a Foreign Policy and International stuffs group. So press right mouse button on links and open in new incognito/private tab/window to reduce your tensions somewhat.
There are likely to be plenty of 1st May Labour/Workers Day related activities, and stuff later on and in media. For now though I have opted to kick off down the usual route and you can post links to 1st May related stuff in comments instead.
So For this saturday, a curation to keep your idle time occupied, let us it off with Korea,
📚✒📙📒🌏 North Korea: Over at Modern Diplomacy (29 Apr 2021) Giancarlo Elia Valori ponders upon the nature of indepence and how North Korea managed to survive when almost all other socialist nations have undegone drastic changes, The traditional independence and balance of North Korea
Years ago, while talking with Kim Il-Sung about Mediterranean issues, he told me about an episode concerning a country geographically very close to Italy, namely Albania.
During the 22nd Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (October 17-31, 1961) – which marked the split between Russia and Albania – the delegation led personally by my friend did not accept Russia’s call to stigmatise the Albanian Communists at all, and not a word of condemnation was addressed to Albania.
Five years later, a delegation from the Korean Labour Party attended – with full honours – the work of the 5th Congress of the Labour Party of Albania (the third in order of importance after the Communist Party of China (CPC) and the Vietnamese Workers’ Party).
The remaining Socialist countries that survived (and did not survive) the three-year period 1989-1991 suffered from major political crises (Madagascar); dissent and economic depression (Cuba, the former USSR); nationalism and irredentism (the countries of former Yugoslavia, the former Soviet Republics, etc.); compromises with the armed opposition (Angola, Mozambique); radical reforms (the former USSR, Mongolia) or structural reforms (Vietnam, Laos), without forgetting the Cambodian civil war (1975-79); and wars between Socialist countries (Ethiopia and Somalia in 1977, Vietnam and China in 1979).
📙✒📒🌏💫 Palestine: At MeMO (30 April 2021) Mohammad Hussein referencing Noam Chomsky asks why while west is ignoring genocide that it can actually fix, in The West's genocide deniers are dragging down the Palestinian cause
Influential American academic Noam Chomsky asked what he called a "simple question" in a recent interview with the journalist Ezra Klein for the New York Times: "Is the situation of the Uyghurs, a million people who've been through education camps, is that worse than the situation of, say, two million and twice that many people in Gaza? I mean, are the Uyghur[s] having their power plants destroyed, their sewage plants destroyed, subjected to regular bombing? Is it not happening to them? Not to my knowledge."
In that particular segment, he summarised the political worldview of many progressives and other figures in what has been known as the "New Left".
Chomsky acknowledges that "there's enough evidence to show that there's very severe repression" of the Uyghurs by the Chinese government, and that, "We should protest it." He steps into entirely different territory, however, when he reasoned about what is happening in Xinxiang: "It has one crucial difference from Gaza. Namely, in the Uyghur case, there's not a lot that we can do about it, unfortunately. In the Gaza case, we can do everything about it since we were responsible for it, we can stop it tomorrow." Great propaganda for the Palestinians and their cause; not so great for the Uyghurs suffering at the hands of the Chinese government.
📱❓China Meanwhile in China Daily (27 Apr 2021) a curious case of a vocational training college and its flagship journal attracts attention of the regional authorities, news reported in this superb Journal lands in frying pan for claiming cooked eggs can hatch chicks
Northeastern Jilin province has dispatched a work team to investigate a local geography journal which recently published a controversial paper about cooked egg hatching chicks.
The Jilin provincial press and publication bureau said on Tuesday it will announce the results in a timely manner and will seriously deal with any irregularities found during the probe.
Zhengzhou city has also set up a team to probe the school whose principal published the paper.
The paper concerned is titled "Turning cooked eggs into raw eggs -- an experimental report on hatching chicks". It was recently published on Pictorial Geography and its authors include Guo Ping and Guo Tai'an from a vocational training school located in Zhengzhou, Henan province.
The paper describes that teachers and students at the school have been able to turn cooked eggs into raw eggs through parapsychological consciousness methods and have successfully converted 40 eggs which hatched into chicks.
Particularly delightfully punny headline of same event at SCMP (26 Apr 2021) Mind power turns boiled eggs into chicks in China? You must be yolking
Subsequently fast investigation has led to termination of the journal as well as the school itself. I will be keeping an eye out on how much legal trouble the principal is in. SCMP (30 Apr 2021) Heads roll as ‘mind power’ egg scandal rocks China
📚✒📙📒🌏 USA - Policy Hopping over to Foreign Policy (30 Apr 2021) Elise Labbot looks at the Biden’s Goldilocks Foreign Policy although the destructive side of Goldilocks has been a staple of US foreign Policy,
A president’s first days in office are hardly a prediction of the long-term strength or achievements of an administration, but they do set a tone and a direction. In his speech to Congress Wednesday marking his first 100 days, U.S. President Joe Biden, who said he had inherited a nation “that was in crisis,” asserted that America was again “on the move.” In contrast to former President Donald Trump, whose inaugural address spoke of “American carnage,” Biden offered an optimistic assessment of the United States and its role in the world.
“We’ve stared into the abyss of insurrection and autocracy, pandemic and pain,” Biden said. “And ‘we the people’ did not flinch.”
International issues took a back seat in the speech to Biden’s ambitious $4 trillion domestic agenda, a sweeping social contract between Americans and their government that the president argued could reset the country and which has already drawn parallels to Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal. That’s partly because the Biden Doctrine views foreign policy as a facet of domestic policy and judges the success of U.S. engagement by a simple metric: Does it make life safer and more prosperous for American families?
📚✒📙📒🌏 Japan - Quad The Diplomat (30 Apr 2021) Maiko Ichihara and Atsushi Yamada explore role of Japan in Japan as an Agenda Setter for the Quad’s Vaccine Diplomacy
On March 12, the leaders of the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue, or the Quad – the newly reinvigorated forum among Australia, India, Japan, and the United States – announced their new initiative to jointly supply vaccines to the Indo-Pacific region. This is an issue area that is urgently important for the partners but so far has been totally dominated by their competitor. While China has donated and/or sold billions of doses to middle- and low-income countries across the globe, the United States has only “loaned” a few millions to Canada and Mexico, and Japan has no record of exporting COVID-19 vaccines. No significant Australian support was available prior to the Quad’s announcement either. India was the lone exception, having supplied over 66 million doses to countries around the world – before a deadly second wave forced New Delhi to focus its efforts at home.
The partnership is especially vital for Japan, which has been no match for China in vaccine diplomacy so far. Japan possesses no domestically developed vaccines. Only just over 1 percent of its population has been fully inoculated with Pfizer, the only authorized vaccine in Japan. The government is occupied with importing as many doses as fast as possible for its elderly citizens, while looking enviously at its giant neighbor massively exporting indigenous vaccines to the world. With the Quad’s scheme, late-comer Japan joins a team of vaccine powerhouses to gear up its diplomatic efforts.
📚✒📙📒🌏 USA - Climate Change Policy: A view from China at the CCP’s People’s Daily (30 Apr 2021) surprisingly rubust and valid analysis (just take off the automatic bad-China filter and imagine your response if this was vwritten in a Canadian Paper, when you read it) Commentary: America has four climate deficits, including a time bomb
As the biggest carbon polluter in human history and the largest economy and sole superpower in today's world, the United States indeed bears a special responsibility in the global climate battle.
BEIJING, April 29 (Xinhua) -- After being a foot-dragger and outright deserter for years, the United States is returning to the global climate battle with much fanfare, and making no secret of its intention to be the commander-in-chief.
The world welcomes the renewed climate commitment of the largest cumulative emitter of greenhouse gases in history, and looks forward to it playing a constructive role. But the United States has at least four deficits to plug before it can convince others of its seriousness.
The first one is a consistency deficit.
Throughout recent history, flip-flopping has been the hallmark of the U.S. federal climate policy. President Bill Clinton signed the Kyoto Protocol; his successor, George W. Bush, backtracked from it. President Barack Obama brought America to the Paris Agreement; his successor, Donald Trump, withdrew from it.
📙⌨📒📱🚰🐾🌏Madagascar: Referencing press release by WFP (30 Apr 2021) WFP Geneva Palais Briefing Note: World Food Programme warns of looming famine in southern Madagascar at Al Jazeera (30 Apr 2021) reports Starving Malagasy forced to eat leaves, locusts for survival
People in southern Madagascar have been reduced to eating wild leaves and locusts to stave off starvation after consecutive drought and sandstorms ruined harvests, leaving hundreds of thousands on the brink of famine, according to the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP).
Amer Daoudi, senior director of global WFP operations, warned on Friday the lives of Malagasy children are in danger, especially those under five years old whose malnutrition rates have reached “alarming levels”.
Speaking by videolink from Madagascar’s capital, Antananarivo, Daoudi told a UN briefing in Geneva he had visited villages where “people have had to resort to desperate survival measures, such as eating locusts, raw red cactus fruits or wild leaves”.
📙✒📒🌏 Hong Kong Over at SCMP (1 May 2021) Alex Lo has some things to say about recent news that some civil servants were unhappy at having to pledge loyalty to Hong Kong Civil servants’ loyalty pledge justified after 2019 unrest
The new loyalty pledge required of civil servants has led to much grumbling within the 180,000-strong public workforce. It’s hard to see what’s wrong with asking public workers to declare their allegiance to the Hong Kong government and the Basic Law, our mini-constitution.
As our opposition politicians love to say, we must follow international practices and standards. Well, there is no more common government standard than such loyalty declarations. Note: local civil servants are not being asked to pledge allegiance to China or the ruling Communist Party.
In-house researchers at the Legislative Council have released a new study of such practices in six democratic countries: the United States, Britain, Canada, Japan, Australia and Germany.
All six require civil servants to indicate they will serve the constitution, and the government of the day, regardless of their own political stance. Except for Britain and Australia, a formal or legal oath is required.
📙✒📒🌏💫 Bangladesh: Strolling to Dhaka Tribune (29 Apr 2021) on the ocasion of Ramadan Mohammad Mushfiqul Haque Mukit reflects upon the joys and tribulations OP-ED: Ramadan and the surprising lessons learnt from Covid-19
There is enthusiasm because, despite the physical difficulties, it is a happy month
Fasting during the month of Ramadan is both challenging and rewarding. Muslims experience both joy and anxiety during the holy month. Fear of the physical difficulty of not eating or drinking during daylight hours, which can range from 12 hours near or on the equator to 18 hours in London, and even longer, 21 hours, for people living further north.
There is enthusiasm because, despite the physical difficulties, it is a happy month focused on congregation, togetherness, and spiritual reflection.
We were all in a state of shock when Ramadan started last year. It was an unusual moment. The Covid-19 pandemic was rapidly spreading. Lockdowns were just getting started all over the world. Not everyone was aware of the virus's magnitude or how to cope with being confined to one's home.
Suddenly, the anxiety ramped up – how would we buy supplies for Iftar, what would we do with the sick people, how would we cope with being cooped up together with nowhere to go, having to work and home-school?
📒📱❓🌏💫 Asia Times (30 Apr 2021) has some budgeting advice for you if you are looking to acquire a spy, Exactly how much does a highly placed spy cost?
In the movies, double agents receive briefcases filled with unmarked bills.
When James Bond chases a target, the pursuit involves high-end cars, five-star hotels, and glamorous locations.
In other words, lots and lots of money changing hands.
Right … well, guess what. In actual fact, and according to an exclusive report in Insider.com, real spies come fairly cheap.
One particular spy had been a member of a scientific committee in NATO’s Undersea Research Centre, based in Italy, when counterintelligence agents began surveillance.
The committee did research for NATO’s warships and submarines. Yet somehow, China had managed to install a double-agent — in the form of prominent Estonian marine scientist Tarmo Kõuts — as vice president of the committee, Insider reported.
📙📒📱🌏 Palestine: Fresh news at Al Jazeera (30 Apr 2021) Abbas delays Palestinian parliamentary polls, blaming Israel
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has postponed planned parliamentary elections next month amid a dispute over voting in Israeli-annexed East Jerusalem and splits in his Fatah party.
Abbas, 85, blamed Israel for uncertainty about whether it would allow the legislative election to proceed in Jerusalem as well as in the occupied West Bank and Gaza on Friday.
The decision came three months after he announced the first national elections in 15 years in what was widely seen as a response to criticism of the democratic legitimacy of Palestinian institutions, including his own presidency.
The outcome of an election could see gains for Hamas, which controls Gaza.
Abbas’s chief domestic rival, Hamas had fought a well-organised campaign to defeat a similarly divided Fatah in 2006.
📚✒📙📒❓🦋🐝 ☮️🌷🐾🌏💫📌 To round off an evergreen presentation from Daily Kos Archives that is well worth visiting again. Kossack Garrett takes you on a journey through Afghanistan that will also have you asking What Graveyard of Empires?
The Minaret of Jam is thought to be all that remains of the ancient city of Firozkoh, capital of the Ghurid empire. The Ghurids, a Persianate culture, at the height of their empire, controlled territory extending from Nishapur in eastern Iran, to the mouth of the Ganges.
The minaret perhaps commemorates a military victory of the Ghurids over the Ghaznevids, at Lahore. Or perhaps, twenty years later, a victory over the Chauhan dynasty in India further east.
After the Mongols invaded, Ogedei son of Genghis razed the Ghurid capital, to put down a rebellion. This was eight hundred years ago. The location has been the capital of nowhere ever since.
The victory minaret, all that remains of a city, is in present-day Ghor province, Afghanistan, supposed Graveyard of Empires. Afghanistan, where empires supposedly go to die.
I do not intend to romanticize the violence of what an empire is, in this piece. Except to the purpose of saying, what graveyard of empires? Why is it claimed that Afghanistan has an exceptionalism about empire? How is Afghanistan more resistant or more deadly to empire than anyplace else?
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