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Dec. 29th, 2014
At Al Jazeera, Miroslav Zafirov makes the reasonable point that ISIS exists substantially because of support lent to Sunni Islamic radicals under Saddam Hussein's regime. (Substantially, not entirely, not mostly.)
In 1986, at a meeting with representatives of the pan-Arab national command - the supreme ideological body of the Baath Party - Saddam Hussein offered a ceasefire, or even an alliance, between the party and the Muslim Brotherhood movement in Egypt and Sudan. In practice, for the first time in its history the militant and secular Baath party declared its readiness to cooperate with representatives of the so-called political Islam.
In the same year, the Iraqi president also defined the difference between the "democratic, national, pan-Arab state" and the "religious state" proclaimed by the Muslim Brotherhood. Following in the footsteps of the founding father of Arab nationalism and of the pan-Arab Baath party Michel Aflaq, Saddam clearly declared that he was not an atheist, but warned against any attempt to establish a religious party with an either Sunni or Shia bias. Saddam's warning at the time was probably addressed at the Islamic Dawa party, which had a dominant role among the Shia community and was regarded as the main competitor of the Baath party.
[. . .]
It was only after 1990s that Saddam decided to focus on relations with Islamic movements and publications dedicated to the topic began to appear in the media. The conditions could not have been more favourable because the war with Iran had ended and the propaganda machine was busy painting a picture of Saddam as the indisputable victor, despite the enormous war-related losses.
In 1991, Iraq launched a new campaign, which Saddam described as "the mother of all battles" against the United States and its allies. The president was yet again depicted as a hero in the confrontation between Muslims and western forces; the inscription "God is Great" was added to the Iraqi flag, and the president promised that he would free Jerusalem. An attempt was made to play down the failure of the campaign in Kuwait and the sanctions imposed by stepping up an openly pro-Islamic propaganda.
[. . .]
The goal was to gain control over religious sentiment among the Iraqi population, which was barely coping with the consequences of the two wars and the stringent sanctions. Last but not least, an attempt was made to reinvent and soften the image of the Baghdad regime as one that is pro-Islamic and, therefore, in conflict with the "forces of Islam's enemies".
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The Toronto Star's Oakland Ross traced much of the rationale for Cuba's renewal of relations with the United States, and presumed weakening of ties with Venezuela, to the last country's collapsing oil-based economy.
Just one day after announcing the restoration of diplomatic ties between his country and Cuba – following five decades of enmity – U.S. President Barack Obama turned sharply to the right last week and slapped a series of economic sanctions on Venezuela, long Cuba’s closest ally in the region and a socialist fellow traveller to boot.
Suddenly, the oil-rich but financially troubled South American country seemed to be very much alone, and at the worst time possible.
“Two days ago, Maduro was ordering everyone to burn their visas to the United States,” tweeted opposition firebrand Maria Corina Machado, referring to Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, a fierce critic of the U.S. government. “Meanwhile, Raul Castro was applying for his.”
In all likelihood, Cuba’s leader will have to wait a while before filling out a U.S. visa application of his own, but that’s a detail. The big story is that he has staked his country’s political and economic future on improved relations with his longtime adversaries in Washington, the opposite route being taken by his erstwhile geopolitical soulmates in Caracas.
Instead, Venezuela’s Maduro finds himself newly isolated, with his country in pitiable financial shape, beset by spiralling inflation, widespread import shortages, and a shrinking economy, not to mention toxic political unrest – and all of this was before international oil prices began to plummet from a four-year high this past summer.
Yahoo News shares Yuras Karmanaud's Associated Press article noting how a Belarus distancing itself from a sanctions-hit Russia is getting in a better position geopolitically.
As relations between Russia and the West have sunk to their lowest point since the Cold War, there's one country that's reaping rewards — Belarus, whose authoritarian leader was once dubbed "Europe's last dictator" by the United States and the European Union.
President Alexander Lukashenko is relishing his new role as broker of the Ukraine peace talks, and his country of 10 million people is profiting handsomely by reprocessing or simply repackaging European food banned by Moscow in retaliation to Western sanctions. In the most stunning example, exports of sea fish from the landlocked nation have doubled during the last three months — a sure sign that something curious is afoot.
Food exports to Russia have been a major hard currency-earner for cash-strapped Belarus, worth $5.7 billion in 2013. This year's figures aren't available yet, but a sharp rise in imports of food from Europe signaled that the country, which is sandwiched between Russia and EU members Poland and Lithuania, quickly took advantage of Moscow's ban.
"Lukashenko hopes to turn Belarus into a bridge between the East and the West, for which both sides will have to pay," said Alexander Klaskovsky, an independent Minsk-based analyst. "Lukashenko loves a proverb: A friendly calf sucks two mothers."
[. . .]
With Russian President Vladimir Putin now in the West's bad books, Lukashenko is no longer a prime target of criticism despite his continuing crackdown on dissent and independent media. "Belarus is undergoing a transformation from a pariah to a respectable player," Klaskovsky said.
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The inimitable Scott Feschuk of MacLean's points out that Canadian national icon Tim Horton's is actually not a very worthy national icon.
I noticed you’ve been in a downward spiral since Burger King announced its plan to buy Tim Hortons for $12 billion—or roughly $1 for every Tims on Yonge Street in Toronto.
You’re worried about what the takeover will mean for your morning coffee—and for the corporation that is traditionally depicted in our media as adored, iconic and able to cure hepatitis with its doughnut glaze. (I’m paraphrasing.)
I’m here to help. This is a safe place, Canada. I want to see you get through this. Which is why I need you to listen to me closely. These words will be painful, but it’s important you hear them:
Tim Hortons is not a defining national institution. Rather, it is a chain of thousands of doughnut shops, several of which have working toilets.
Tim Hortons is not an indispensable part of the Canadian experience. Rather, it is a place that sells a breakfast sandwich that tastes like a dishcloth soaked in egg yolk and left out overnight on top of a radiator.
The National Post hosted Didi Tang's photo essay describing the importance of Christianity in Wenzhou, a city in China's Zhejiang province, mainly in the context of a crackdown on visible signs of Christianity. Many photos are included.
Two days before Christmas, members of a rural Christian congregation in the eastern city of Wenzhou welded some pieces of metal into a cross and hoisted it onto the top of their worship hall to replace one that was forcibly removed in October.
Within an hour, township officials and uniformed men barged onto the church ground and tore down the cross.
“They keep a very close watch on us, and there is nothing we can do,” said a church official, who spoke to The Associated Press on Tuesday on condition of anonymity because of fear of government retaliation. “The situation is not good, as any attempt to re-erect the cross will be stopped.”
That means that the worshippers in Wenzhou, like many Christians in the eastern Chinese province of Zhejiang, will worship this Christmas under a cross-less roof. Provincial authorities have toppled crosses from more than 400 churches, and even razed some worship halls in a province-wide crackdown on building code violations.
[. . .]
Estimates for the number of Christians in China range from the conservative official figure of 23 million to as many as 100 million by independent scholars, raising the possibility that Christians may rival in size the 85 million members of the ruling Communist Party.
At the beginning of December, Open Democracy posted a couple of essays on regionalism in France. Despite the near-death of local languages, a recent set of reforms seems to have triggered a whole series of protests in certain regions.
The first, on the 5th, was Hugo Tran's "Fighting for Brittany: autonomy in a centralised state".
The second was Lucas Goetz' "Alsace fights back: a French David vs. Goliath story".
The first, on the 5th, was Hugo Tran's "Fighting for Brittany: autonomy in a centralised state".
[F]or Brittany, the law confirms the amputation of its territory, rebuffing the return of the fifth historical department of Loire-Atlantique and the historical Breton capital of Nantes to the region of Brittany.
For Brittany, which began life as kingdom in the ninth century, evolved into a duchy, and since the French Revolution has been a region, this was chance to regain its historical integrity. During the Second World War, the fascist Vichy government took the richest of Brittany’s five departments, Loire-Atlantique, and used it to create a new, artificial region called Pays de la Loire, which still exists today.
After several demonstrations and public debates, 85% of the Bretons in the administrative region of Brittany and 70% of the Bretons in the Loire-Atlantique department claimed to be clearly in favor of the reunification. Still the government and the National Assembly said no.
The official reason given by the government is that it wants to optimize the existing regions, making them more powerful and able to compete at a “European level”. But a reunified Brittany would have respected all the objectives wanted by the government, as Breton MPs have argued.
The “No” to a Breton reunification, and the choice to dilute Alsace, are explainable by a non-official reason. After having watched with fear and apprehension what happened in Scotland and Catalonia, the French centralized state used every legal trick to prevent any risk of such situations in France in the future. The aim was, is, and will be, to weaken any regional or cultural identities that are not explicitly “French”.
The second was Lucas Goetz' "Alsace fights back: a French David vs. Goliath story".
An ocean of red and white flags filled the streets of the Alsatian town Colmar last Satuday. A crowd of mostly young people was walking behind a banner that read “Alsatians we are, and Alsatians we will remain”. Slogans affirming the identity of this border-region were chanted both in French and in German. The crowd had responded to the call of the autonomist party Unser Land to demonstrate against the plans of the French state to merge the Alsace region in a “mega-region” with Lorraine and Champagne-Ardenne. This would effectively deny Alsace any political existence.
Throughout its history Alsace has often changed hands between France and Germany. This has affected its culture and identity. However, since it returned to France in 1918, the state enforced a policy of total assimilation, forcefully imposing the French language and suppressing the autonomy acquired when it was part of the German Empire.
Seventy years onwards, only three percent of the children can speak the Alsatian dialect. Very few know its history. Nevertheless there have remained pockets of resistance: in the recent years parents have undertaken initiatives to open bilingual schools for their children. Historians published books challenging the French version of the history of Alsace. But very few had anticipated what followed when the French government announced its intention to merge Alsace in a mega-region, almost twice the size of Belgium. Have the Alsatians finally woken up from their long slumber?
Bernard Wittmann is an Alsatian historian. He is well known within the region for his books which seek to present history from an Alsatian point of view. For him this ‘mega-region’ is the final stage of a coherent plan, made in Paris, to deconstruct Alsace.
“There is a consistent plan in Paris that seeks to “normalize” Alsace. That is, to eliminate its linguistic, legislative and cultural particularities” he argues. “Since 1918 there is a desire in Paris to make sure that these particularities can no longer express themselves.”
Science Daily earlier reported on a Russian study suggesting crows are quite intelligent. To call them "feathered apes" might do them an injustice.
"What the crows have done is a phenomenal feat," says Ed Wasserman, a psychology professor at the University of Iowa and corresponding author of the study. "That's the marvel of the results. It's been done before with apes and monkeys, but now we're dealing with a bird; but not just any bird, a bird with a brain as special to birds as the brain of an apes is special to mammals."
"Crows Spontaneously Exhibit Analogical Reasoning," which was published December 18 in Current Biology, was written by Wasserman and Anna Smirnova, Zoya Zorina and Tanya Obozova, researchers with the Department of Biology at Lomonosov Moscow State University in Moscow, Russia, where the study was conducted.
[. . .]
The study involved two hooded crows that were at least 2 years old. First, the birds were trained and tested to identify items by color, shape and number of single samples.
Here is how it worked: the birds were placed into a wire mesh cage into which a plastic tray containing three small cups was occasionally inserted. The sample cup in the middle was covered with a small card on which was pictured a color, shape or number of items. The other two cups were also covered with cards -- one that matched the sample and one that did not. During this initial training period, the cup with the matching card contained two mealworms; the crows were rewarded with these food items when they chose the matching card, but they received no food when they chose the other card.
Once the crows has been trained on identity matching-to-sample, the researchers moved to the second phase of the experiment. This time, the birds were assessed with relational matching pairs of items.
These relational matching trials were arranged in such a way that neither test pairs precisely matched the sample pair, thereby eliminating control by physical identity. For example, the crows might have to choose two same-sized circles rather than two different-sized circles when the sample card displayed two same-sized squares.
What surprised the researchers was not only that the crows could correctly perform the relational matches, but that they did so spontaneously--without explicit training.
"That is the crux of the discovery," Wasserman says. "Honestly, if it was only by brute force that the crows showed this learning, then it would have been an impressive result. But this feat was spontaneous."
I've a post up inviting readers of Demography Matters to suggest what issues and wt regions of the world have been neglected in the past year. What big stories are we missing?