As the Palestinian minority takes to the streets, Israel is having its own Black Lives Matter moment
by ilene - May 16th, 2021 4:35 pm
As the Palestinian minority takes to the streets, Israel is having its own Black Lives Matter moment
Israeli-arabs gesture and wave Palestinian flags at Israelis in a Jewish community building, during renewed riots in the city of Lod on May 11. Oren Ziv/picture alliance via Getty Images
Courtesy of James L. Gelvin, University of California, Los Angeles
The images and reports coming from Israel, Jerusalem and Gaza in recent days are shocking. They are also surprising to those who thought the 2020 Abraham Accords and subsequent agreements to normalize relations between Israel and the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Morocco, and Sudan would place the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians permanently on the backburner.
As someone who has been writing and teaching about the Middle East for more than 30 years, I had no such illusions. The reason for this is that at its heart, the so-called “Arab-Israeli conflict” has always been about Israelis and Palestinians. And no matter how many treaties Israel signs with Arab states, it will remain so.
In a phone call on May 12, President Joe Biden assured Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of his “unwavering support for Israel’s security and for Israel’s legitimate right to defend itself and its people.” Biden was referencing the rocket attacks on Israel launched by Hamas, the Islamist group that governs Gaza. By targeting civilians, Hamas is committing a war crime. In all probability, so is Israel, by bombing and shelling Gaza.
Rockets light up the night sky as they are fired towards Israel from Beit Lahia in the northern Gaza Strip on May 14, 2021. Mohammed Abed/AFP/Getty Images
Despite the carnage the Hamas rocket attacks and Israeli retaliation inflicts on Israelis and Gazans, the Biden administration is focusing on a sideshow, not the main event.
That main event is an unprecedented conflict taking place on the streets of Jerusalem, Haifa, Lod and elsewhere. It’s what scholars call an “intercommunal conflict,” pitting elements of Israel’s Jewish population against elements of Israel’s Palestinian population who have had enough and have…
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If China’s middle class continues to thrive and grow, what will it mean for the rest of the world?
by ilene - May 1st, 2021 12:02 am
If China's middle class continues to thrive and grow, what will it mean for the rest of the world?
Over the past few decades, hundreds of millions of Chinese citizens have become part of the middle class. AP Photo/Ng Han Guan
Courtesy of Amitrajeet A. Batabyal, Rochester Institute of Technology
China’s large and impressive accomplishments over the past four decades have spurred scholars and politicians to debate whether the decline of the West – including the United States – as the world’s dominant political and economic force is inevitable amid the seemingly inexorable rise of the East.
The COVID-19 virus hit China first and hard, stalling its rapid economic growth for the first time since the Great Recession. But China’s economy grew by a blistering 18.3% in the first quarter of 2021 compared to 2020, keeping it solidly in place as the world’s second-largest economy. Many now believe that China, rather than the U.S., may drive the global recovery from the pandemic.
It’s not yet clear that this current rebound means China has regained its former growth rate. But if it does, I believe it will set off a global contest over which form of government will have a dominant influence over global affairs in coming decades: Western-style democracy or China’s brand of authoritarianism.
My research and that of others examines two questions:
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Will China solve the biggest challenges to maintaining its four-decade growth rate of 7%-8% annually, which has propelled its rising global power?
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If China does succeed in sustaining this pace, will this be a benefit to the rest of the world?
The ‘middle-income trap’
In 1978, Deng Xiaoping initiated transformative reforms that opened China up to the international community and foreign investment. In 2001, China joined the World Trade Organization and became an enthusiastic participant in global markets and value chains. As a result of these and other economic policies, China has succeeded in rapidly progressing from a low-income to a middle-income nation.
Put another way, globalization has certainly benefited China…
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Why this trial was different: Experts react to guilty verdict for Derek Chauvin
by ilene - April 21st, 2021 1:40 am
Why this trial was different: Experts react to guilty verdict for Derek Chauvin
A woman reacts to the news that Derek Chauvin was found guilty on all three counts in the murder of George Floyd. Scott Olson/Getty Images
Courtesy of Alexis Karteron, Rutgers University – Newark ; Jeannine Bell, Indiana University; Rashad Shabazz, Arizona State University, and Ric Simmons, The Ohio State University
Scholars analyze the guilty verdicts handed down to former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin in the 2020 murder of George Floyd. Outside the courthouse, crowds cheered and church bells sounded – a collective release in a city scarred by police killings. Minnesota’s attorney general, whose office led the prosecution, said he would not call the verdict “justice, however” because “justice implies restoration” – but he would call it “accountability.”
Race was not an issue in trial
Alexis Karteron, Rutgers University – Newark
Derek Chauvin’s criminal trial is over, but the work to ensure that no one endures a tragic death like George Floyd’s is just getting started.
It is fair to say that race was on the minds of millions of protesters who took to the streets last year to express their outrage and pain in response to the killing. Many felt it was impossible for someone who wasn’t Black to imagine Chauvin’s brutal treatment of George Floyd.
But race went practically unmentioned during the Chauvin trial.
This should not be surprising, because the criminal legal system writes race out at virtually every turn. When I led a lawsuit as a civil rights attorney challenging the New York Police Department’s stop-and-frisk program as racist, the department’s primary defense was that it complied with Fourth Amendment standards, under which police officers need only “reasonable suspicion” of criminal activity to stop someone. Presence in what police say is a “high-crime area” is relevant to developing reasonable suspicion, as is a would-be subject taking flight when being approached by a police officer. But the correlation with race, for a host of reasons, is obvious to any keen observer.
American policing’s most pressing problems are racial ones. For some, …
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Colombia gives nearly 1 million Venezuelan migrants legal status and right to work
by ilene - April 15th, 2021 12:08 pm
Colombia gives nearly 1 million Venezuelan migrants legal status and right to work
Venezuelans wait at the Colombian border to be processed and housed in tents in 2020. All Venezuelans now in Colombia will receive a 10-year residency permit. Schneyder Mendoza/AFP via Getty Images
Courtesy of Erika Frydenlund, Old Dominion University; Jose J. Padilla, Old Dominion University, and Katherine Palacio, Universidad del Norte
Colombia will grant legal status to all Venezuelan migrants who fled there since 2016 to escape their country’s economic collapse and political crisis.
The bold new policy – which will give nearly 1 million undocumented migrants rights to legal employment, health care, education and Colombian banking services for 10 years – is driven by both empathy and pragmatism, says Colombian president Ivan Duque.
“They’ll likely stay for more than a decade,” Duque told NPR on March 3, 2021. “So it’s better to…open them the opportunity to contribute also to the Colombian economy.”
Venezuelan arrivals to Colombia are not confined to refugee camps, so they live scattered across the country. Documenting and absorbing so many migrants – who often arrive on foot, with only a handful of personal belongings and no valid ID – has been a challenge. Even rich countries like the U.S. struggle to handle mass migration.
But in some ways Colombia – itself no stranger to political strife and displacement – is uniquely prepared for this migration crisis.
History of conflict
Colombia has received the brunt of the exodus from neighboring Venezuela since 2015.
When many other South American countries closed their borders with Venezuela, Colombia offered a series of two-year permits giving about 700,000 Venezuelans the right to work and access to health care between 2017 and 2020.
Venezuelan migrants receive food and medicine from the Red Cross near the Colombia-Venezuela border, February 2021. Schneyder Mendoza/AFP via Getty Images
Together with the new legalization plan covering 1 million additional migrants, nearly all the roughly 1.7 million Venezuelans who have come to Colombia…
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For autocrats like Vladimir Putin, ruthless repression is often a winning way to stay in power
by ilene - April 8th, 2021 1:04 am
For autocrats like Vladimir Putin, ruthless repression is often a winning way to stay in power
Russian police officers beat people protesting the jailing of opposition leader Alexei Navalny, Jan. 23, 2021 in Moscow. Mikhail Svetlov/Getty Images)
Courtesy of Shelley Inglis, University of Dayton
Russian dissident Alexei Navalny, sick with a cough and fever, has been moved to the hospital ward of the remote penal colony where he is imprisoned.
Navalny landed in prison after legal troubles that began in 2019, when he was arrested for “leading an unauthorized protest.” In 2020, while on parole for that crime, Navalny was poisoned in an apparent assassination attempt linked to Russian leader Vladimir Putin.
In critical condition, Navalny was flown to Germany for emergency medical treatment. In February 2021, a Russian court said the Germany trip was a parole violation and sentenced Navalny to three years in prison.
The ruling infuriated Russians and spurred thousands to protest. The nationwide demonstrations united disparate opposition groups into one movement that is challenging President Vladimir Putin’s 20-year rule. Now Navalny’s current ill health is again galvanizing protesters.
If persecuting Navalny energizes the opposition against Putin, is it a misstep by Russia’s leader?
As an international legal scholar and professor of human rights, I’ve found that sometimes, strong-arm tactics by autocratic leaders do trigger a reaction that ultimately topples their regime. Often, though, repressive tactics like detention, torture and prosecution help autocrats stay in power.
Political prisoners
Many historic pro-democracy leaders, including India’s Mahatma Gandhi, Myanmar’s Aung San Suu Kyi and the United States’ Martin Luther King Jr., were arrested or imprisoned. In these cases, political repression mobilized – rather than destroyed – their movements.
Political prisoners, in particular, can turn into international celebrities that rally people around their cause.
South Africa is an iconic example.
Imprisoned for 27 years, Nelson Mandela became the face of an anti-apartheid movement that evolved from its South African resistance roots into the largest international campaign for regime change in history. Anti-apartheid groups around the globe coalesced to harness…
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The situation at the US-Mexico border is a crisis – but is it new?
by ilene - April 4th, 2021 5:16 pm
The situation at the US-Mexico border is a crisis – but is it new?
U.S. Border Patrol detains tens of thousands of the families and children who try to cross U.S. borders every year. AP Photo/Julio Cortez
Courtesy of Randi Mandelbaum, Rutgers University
The media create the impression that there is an unprecedented crisis at the U.S.-Mexico border, with droves of children arriving alone, as well as families flooding to the border.
There is a crisis.
But as a law professor who studies child migration, I can tell you that it’s nothing new.
Children and families have been fleeing to the U.S. for years, particularly from Mexico and the so-called Northern Triangle countries of El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras.
Yet aspects of the current situation are different from the past. And whether more individuals are attempting to cross the U.S.-Mexico border “than have been in the last 20 years,” as Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas predicted, remains to be seen.
The situation is best explained by looking at the number of migrants who have arrived at the border, as reported by U.S. Customs and Border Protection, a law enforcement agency that is part of the Department of Homeland Security.
Customs and Border Protection puts arriving noncitizens in three categories: unaccompanied children, families and single adults. Children are designated as unaccompanied if they are under the age of 18 and arrive at a U.S. border without lawful status and without a parent or legal guardian.
The numbers of children like these and families have been steadily increasing in recent years. Examining those numbers puts the current circumstances at the U.S.-Mexico border into context.
A steady stream
Except for fiscal year 2020, which started on Oct. 1, 2019, the number of children and families migrating to the U.S. has been escalating since 2013, with highs in 2014 and 2019, and a slight dip in 2015. Overall, the number of arriving unaccompanied children has been above 40,000 every year since 2014. In most yearsit was above 50,000. For arriving families, the numbers have hovered around 70,000 each year, with surges in 2018 and especially…
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Why repressive Saudi Arabia remains a US ally
by ilene - March 3rd, 2021 11:21 pm
Why repressive Saudi Arabia remains a US ally
A demonstrator dressed as Saudi Arabian Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman with blood on his hands protests outside the Saudi Embassy in Washington, D.C., on Oct. 8, 2018. Jim Watson/AFP via Getty Images
Courtesy of Jeffrey Fields, USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences
Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman “approved an operation … to capture or kill Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi,” according to a scathing new report from the Biden administration. Yet President Joe Biden says the U.S. will not sanction the Saudi government, calculating that any direct punishment could risk Saudi Arabia’s cooperation in confronting Iran and in counterterrorism efforts.
Like his predecessors, Biden is grappling with the reality that Saudi Arabia is needed to achieve certain U.S. objectives in the Middle East.
This is a change from Biden’s criticism of Saudi Arabia on the campaign trail. He said his administration would turn this repressive kingdom – a longtime U.S. ally – into a global “pariah.”
The Khashoggi affair highlights a persistent oddity in American foreign policy, one I observed in many years working at the State Department and Department of Defense: selective morality in dealing with repressive regimes.
A panoply of dictators
The Trump administration was reluctant to confront Saudi Arabia over the killing of Khashoggi, a Washington Post columnist who lived in Virginia. Beyond revoking the visas of some Saudi officials implicated in Khashoggi’s death, Trump did nothing to punish the kingdom for Khashoggi’s torture, assassination and dismemberment.
Trump and other White House officials reminded critics that Saudi Arabia buys billions of dollars in weapons from the U.S. and is a crucial partner in the American pressure campaign on Iran. Biden has taken a slightly tougher line, approving the release of the intelligence report that blames bin Salman for Khashoggi’s murder and sanctioning 76 lower-level Saudi officials.
Saudi Arabia isn’t the only nation to get a free pass from the U.S. for its terrible misdeeds. The U.S. has for decades maintained close ties with some of the world’s worst human rights abusers. Ever since…
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What is fascism?
by ilene - February 25th, 2021 3:28 pm
What is fascism?
A Donald Trump supporter wears a gas mask and holds a bust of him after he and hundreds of others stormed the Capitol building on Jan. 6, 2021. Roberto Schmidt/AFP via Getty Images
Courtesy of John Broich, Case Western Reserve University
Since before Donald Trump took office, historians have debated whether he is a fascist.
As a teacher of World War II history who has written about fascism, I’ve found that historians have a consensus definition of the term, broadly speaking.
Given the term’s current – and sometimes erroneous – use, I think it’s important to distinguish what fascism is and is not.
Race-first thinking
Fascism, now a century old, got its start with Benito Mussolini and his Italian allies. They named their movement after an ancient Roman emblem, the fasces, an ax whose handle has been tightly reinforced with many rods, symbolizing the power of unity around one leader.
Fascism means more than dictatorship, however.
It’s distinct from simple authoritarianism – an anti-democratic government by a strongman or small elite – and “Stalinism” – authoritarianism with a dominant bureaucracy and economic control, named after the former Soviet leader. The same goes for “anarchism,” the belief in a society organized without an overarching state.
Above all, fascists view nearly everything through the lens of race. They’re committed not just to race supremacy, but maintaining what they called “racial hygiene,” meaning the purity of their race and the separation of what they view as lower ones.
That means they must define who is a member of their nation’s legitimate race. They must invent a “true” race.
Many are familiar with Adolf Hitler and the Nazi regime’s so-called Aryan race, which had no biological or historical reality. The Nazis had to forge a mythic past and legendary people. Including some in the “true race” means excluding others.
Capitalism is good
For fascists, capitalism is good. It appeals to their admiration of “the survival of the fittest,” a phrase coined by social Darwinist Herbert Spencer, so long as…
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Why the British abandoned impeachment – and what the US Congress might do next
by ilene - February 13th, 2021 3:38 am
Why the British abandoned impeachment – and what the US Congress might do next
The impeachment trial of Warren Hastings in 1788. Library of Congress
Courtesy of Eliga Gould, University of New Hampshire
Impeachment was developed in medieval England as a way to discipline the king’s ministers and other high officials. The framers of the U.S. Constitution took that idea and applied it to presidents, judges and other federal leaders.
Now that tool is in use, and in question, during the second impeachment trial of Donald Trump. Republicans have raised questions about both the constitutionality and the overall purpose of impeachment proceedings against a person who no longer holds office.
Democrats have responded that the framers expected impeachment to be available as a way to deliver consequences to a former official, and that refusing to convict Trump could open the door to future presidential abuses of power.
An impeachment case that was active in Britain while the framers were writing the Constitution in Philadelphia helped inform the new American government structure. But the outcome of that case – and that of another impeachment trial a decade later – signaled the end of impeachment’s usefulness in Britain, though the British system of government offered another way to hold officials accountable.
Impeachment in Britain
During the 17th century, the English Parliament used impeachment repeatedly against the royal favorites of King Charles I. One, Thomas Wentworth, Earl of Strafford, went to the gallows in 1641 after being convicted by the House of Lords for subverting the laws and attempting to raise an Irish army to subdue the king’s opponents in England. Although kings couldn’t be impeached, Parliament eventually tried King Charles I for treason too, sentencing him to death by public beheading on Jan. 30, 1649.
A century later, impeachment no longer carried a risk of execution, but in 1786 the House of Commons launched what would become the most famous – and longest – impeachment trial in British history.
The lower house of Parliament, the House of Commons, impeached Warren Hastings, who had retired as governor-general of British India and was back in…
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THE REPUBLICAN CIVIL WAR
by ilene - February 9th, 2021 1:40 pm
THE REPUBLICAN CIVIL WAR
Courtesy of Teri Kanefield
Interesting question:
Time to get philosophical. The place to start, I think is how political psychologists define conservatism.
True conservatives, according to NYU Professor Jonathan Haidt, conservatives form a kind of yin-yang balance with liberals:
Liberals embrace forward-looking change. Conservatives value order. The conservative insight is that order is precious, hard to achieve, and easy to lose. (From prof. Haidt)
Reactionaries, on the other hand seek rapid change—backwards to a bygone era.
Political psychologists Capelos and Katsanidou define reactionism as “a forceful desire to return to the past.” Underlying reactionism is “anger, fear, nostalgic hope, betrayal, and perceived injustice.” The word “again” in “Make America Great Again” signals reactionist politics.
If reactionaries want to go back to the past, and conservatives want to maintain the status quo, it seems to me that the nation’s history and politics change the nature of conservatism and reactionism.
Reactionary politics as embraced in the United States is extremely destructive because to get back to a bygone era when white men could do as they pleased, you have to dismantle almost the entire federal government, which will cause widespread suffering.
Look what happened with Covid under the leadership of a party that doesn’t want a functioning federal government. When people say “conservatives” they often mean reactionaries because the current GOP is not conservative. It’s reactionary.
So it’s certainly destructive. Whether it is self-destructive remains to be seen. The most interesting thing happening in politics right now is that the GOP appears to be on a collision course with time.
By collision course with time, I mean that in a two party system, it will become impossible for a white-nationalist reactionary party to win national elections. The demographics willing to embrace such a party are…
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Philip R. Davis is a founder Phil's Stock World, a stock and options trading site that teaches the art of options trading to newcomers and devises advanced strategies for expert traders...
Ilene is editor and affiliate program
coordinator for PSW.