Soriek
9mo ago
There are obviously some state functions that are genuinely essential, or at least things that pretty much everyone wants, so I could see those having a meaningful impact.
One of the reforms Milei is trying to press through would actually make it harder for essential workers to strike at all, afaik currently there are no restrictions.
On the other hand, the idea of public health officials and other officious bureaucrats refusing to show up for work and expecting that this will move public opinion to their side is fairly hilarious from my generally economically libertarian perspective.
The standard move for these strikes used to be using all those non-working folks to block traffic and otherwise cause a ruckus, but Milei promised to arrest anyone who did that. Surprisingly, this seemingly hasn't led to any bad confrontations between the police and protestors.
Soriek
9mo ago
There's nothing particularly unusual for Russian FoPo folks to react from the F-16 deal, they know Turkey is part of NATO and there's a long history of us selling them fighter jets and tens of billions worth of arms - the recent pause is more of an aberration.
Soriek
9mo ago
Argentina
There was a huge general strike on Wednesday against Milei’s reforms featuring tens of thousands of workers, some sources claiming as many as a hundred thousand, and it lasted for 12 hours:
The stoppage began at midday, and banks, gas stations, public administration, public health officials and trash collection were operating on a limited basis. Airports remained open, although state-owned airline Aerolineas Argentinas canceled 267 flights and rescheduled others, disrupting travel plans for more than 17,000 passengers.
Public transportation workers went on strike at 7 p.m. in Buenos Aires and surrounding areas, but had operated normally during the daytime to facilitate protesters’ access to and from the plaza in front of Congress.
By Wednesday afternoon, tens of thousands of protesters had flooded in. Héctor Daer, CGT’s secretary general, told the crowd from atop a stage that Milei’s decree “destroys individual rights of workers, collective rights and seeks to eliminate the possibility of union action at a time in which we have great inequality in society.”
As best as I can tell it seems to have gone okay, no economic calamity of police brutality that jumps out in the papers, but you can definitely expect more if any of his reforms make it through Congress. Speaking of which, Milei’s omnibus bill made it out of their equivalent of a congressional committee, which was its first hurdle, so it can now be voted on. But many members of JxC have reservations over different sections. Milei has moderated on a few details, including postponing the privatization of the state oil company YPF (this was a a campaign pledged of his but on polls privatization of the State Owned Enterprises in general is very unpopular, so many a reasonable point to moderate on). His dueling executive decree is tied up with like a bazillion lawsuits rn so that’s not moving any quicker than the legislative process.
Soriek
9mo ago
Mexico
Mexico has filed a $10 billion lawsuit against gun manufacturers in the United States for aiding and abetting the cartels. Noa a circuit court has actually upheld their suit.
Mexico, in an attempt to challenge the reach of that law, sued six manufacturers in 2021, including Smith & Wesson, Glock and Ruger. It contended that the companies should be held liable for the trafficking of a half-million guns across the border a year, some of which were used in murders.
In September 2022, a Federal District Court judge threw out the suit, ruling that the law prohibits legal action brought by foreign governments.
But Judge William J. Kayatta Jr., an Obama appointee who serves on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit, writing for a unanimous majority, revived the lawsuit. The ruling said that plaintiffs had made a “plausible” argument that their case was “statutorily exempt” from the immunity shield…
About 70 to 90 percent of guns trafficked in Mexico originated in the United States, according to Everytown Law, the legal arm of the gun control group founded by the former mayor of New York Michael R. Bloomberg.
Previous suits to hold manufacturers responsible for gun violence have all fallen flat, so it’s a pretty major milestone that this is being heard at all, though it does seem unfair to Mexico if their own laws are being completely circumvented. The ruling will certainly be appealed now.
Soriek
9mo ago
Ecuador
The war between the cartels and the government rages on. The Noboa Administration has now declared that they have arrested El Gringo, Carlos Arturo Landázuri Cortés, the leader of Oliver Sinisterra, a breakoff group of the Colombian FARC which is itself also involved in cocaine trafficking. He will be extradited to Colombia where it’ll be interesting to see how things go, given that President Petro is currently attempting to negotiate a peace deal with another FARC offshoot, FARC-EMC, and actually just extended their current ceasefire until July.
Noboa has also requested debt refinancing from the US and the EU and his Economy Minister will be having talks with American / European economic officials soon about the same. The US is likely willing and is currently sending officials to discuss more security cooperation. Noboa is also talking about extending a controversial gas drilling operation with was decisively rejected in a referendum, I think I actually covered it in the first ever TT post, before we had a name for it.
Soriek
9mo ago
Malaysia
Malaysia has been going through a cycle of corruption cases against high level politicians. You’ve probably heard of the 1MBD scandal, an embezzlement operation of staggering proportions, with billions of dollars going up in smoke. The Prime minister at the time, who had pocketed several billion himself, was sentenced and sent to jail, but the environment afterwards created a kind of mini-hysteria against corruption, where real allegations were intermixed with candidates accusing their political rivals of corruption, and precious little to show for results:
In one of his first initiatives as Prime Minister, Anwar [bin Ibrahim] ordered a review of government projects approved by past administrations, describing the earlier decision processes as improper.
But the yearslong anti-corruption drive promised by different leaders has thus far resulted in many charges and few convictions.
This week [September 8, 2023], the Malaysian High Court agreed to drop 47 graft charges against Deputy Prime Minister Ahmad Zahid Hamid, who’s also the president of the United Malays National Organization (UMNO)—the same party that Najib had led until 2018. Zahid had been accused of criminal breach of trust, bribery, and money laundering related to a charity foundation he founded, and was given a discharge not amounting to an acquittal on Monday upon an unexpected request from prosecutors…
Zahid is just the latest in a string of politicians who have recently received favorable court decisions on corruption charges. Former Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin, who led the country from 2020 to 2021 and is now the chairman of the opposition coalition Perikatan Nasional, was charged with corruption in March, only to be similarly acquitted in August. And Najib himself was acquitted of tampering with a 1MDB audit report in March, though he is still serving a 12-year prison sentence for earlier graft convictions.
Despite dropping charges where it suits them, a few weeks ago they also charged a political rival, the finance minister of the previous party and ally of Mahatir Mohamed, Malaysia’s long time former Prime Minister, whose son is actually also under corruption charges. Yesterday Mahatir formally accused Anwar’s government of pursuing corruption charges solely for politically motivated reasons (perhaps a little ironically, because Mahatir previously charged Anwar with politically motivated sodomy charges).
Despite the lack of convictions, political analysts report that all the corruption charges are seriously deterring investors and choking off FDI, which is kind of the worst of both worlds. Anwar’s popularity has been flagging as he fails to address his central campaign promise of anti-corruption, while the Malay supremacist party grows in popularity in the polls. He’s overseen a cabinet reshuffle in hopes of glowing up his administration’s image.
Speaking at a televised press conference on Tuesday, Anwar appointed Amir Hamzah Azizan, formerly chief executive of Malaysia’s biggest pension fund, as second finance minister.
He also said he was moving Mohamad Hasan, the deputy president of the United Malays National Organisation (UMNO), from the defence ministry to the foreign ministry. The former foreign minister takes on higher education instead.
Anwar also moved Fadillah Yusof, one of two deputy prime ministers, from commodities to the newly created post of energy transition and public utilities minister.
Veteran UMNO politician Johari Abdul Ghani was returned to cabinet to take on the commodities portfolio, while Dr Dzulkefly Ahmad, popularly known as Dr Dzul, was named as health minister…
A survey published last month by the Merdeka Center, a local polling firm, found 60 percent of Malaysians felt the country was going in the wrong direction, with nearly four out of five identifying the economy as the nation’s biggest problem.
While there won’t be another general election until 2028, Anwar runs a coalition government that could certainly collapse if his popularity doesn’t pick up.
Soriek
9mo ago
NATO Updates
Turkish parliament has finally signed off on Swedish ascension to NATO. I had worried if the recent flareup of attacks by the Kurdish Workers Party would derail things but the measure seems to have sailed through.
The legislators ratified Sweden’s accession protocol by 287 votes to 55, with four abstentions. It will come into effect after its publication in the Official Gazette, which is expected to be swift.
Which leaves only one holdout:
Hungary then becomes the only NATO ally not to have ratified Sweden’s accession…
Hungary has also stalled Sweden’s bid, alleging that Swedish politicians have told “blatant lies” about the condition of Hungary’s democracy. Hungary has said it would not be the last to approve accession, although it was not clear when the Hungarian parliament intends to hold a vote.
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán announced Tuesday that he sent a letter to his Swedish counterpart, Ulf Kristersson, inviting him to Budapest to discuss Sweden’s entry into NATO.
Meanwhile, NATO has finally finalized a contract to continue supplying Ukraine with ammunition:
NATO signed on Tuesday a $1.2-billion contract to make tens of thousands of artillery rounds to replenish the dwindling stocks of its member countries as they supply ammunition to Ukraine to help it defeat Russia’s invasion.
The contract will allow for the purchase of 220,000 rounds of 155-millimeter ammunition, the most widely sought after artillery shell, according to NATO’s support and procurement agency. It will allow allies to backfill their arsenals and to provide Ukraine with more ammunition….
Ukraine was firing around 4,000 to 7,000 artillery shells each day last summer, while Russia was launching more than 20,000 shells daily in its neighbor’s territory, according to European Union estimates…
But the shells will not arrive quickly — delivery on orders takes anywhere from 24 to 36 months, the NATO agency said.
The European Union plans to produce 1 million artillery rounds for Ukraine have fallen short, with only about a third of the target met. Senior EU officials have said that they now expect the European defense industry to be producing around one million shells annually by the end of this year.
Soriek
9mo ago
Ethiopia and Somalia
“Could Ethiopia and Somalia go to war?” Al Jazeera asks with perhaps a little too much bluntness. Good question. Hopefully not, but Somalia has rejected arbitration, has turned back an Ethiopian plane attempting to land in Somaliland (which raises the question of how real any of this is sine Hargeisa doesn’t fully control their own airspace) and has certainly been rattling its saber as much as possible:
The Somali President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud later stepped up the rhetoric saying: "We will defend our country, we will defend it by all means necessary and seek the support of any ally willing to help us."
He also called on youths "to prepare for the defence of our country".
The president has described Ethiopia as his country's "enemy".
"We have resisted their [Ethiopia's] invasion before. We defeated them before and we will again," he said on 12 January, according to state-owned broadcaster SNTV.
But Ethiopia dosn’t want to back down either; they’ve claimed for some time that access to the sea is an “existential” issue for them (the same claim they make about the GERD dam, though to be fair that kind of makes sense). Somalia has openly said “we are ready for war,” but it’s not clear they actually are - they’re stretched thin with Al Shabaab (ironically Ethiopian troops are one of the largest groups in the African Union peacekeeping force assisting them) and while Ethiopia is also dealing with various conflicts, its military is much larger and better practiced.
Keep in mind this is not the first time the two countries have gone to war, and a conflict is furthermore complicated by ethnic Somalis being one of the largest demographics in Ethiopia. They don’t all necessarily want to be part of Ethiopia but claims of discrimination from other Ethiopians are very common.
Egypt, overjoyed to find other countries that hate Ethiopia too, has been loudly crowing that they will back Egypt to the hilt. Turkey has offered their support too and Somalia claims Eritrea is on their side as well (though Afwerki has yet to publicly comment), while other neighboring countries have been mostly quiet thus far.
Soriek
9mo ago
Rwanda
Rwanda is a well managed oasis in an unstable neighborhood, but has been rather poorly managing its relations with its neighbors. Tensions with the DRC are abysmal from the Rwandan support for the M23 rebels. Now Burundi, the country with which Rwanda shares its strongest cultural and political ties and once fought alongside in the Congo Wars, has accused Rwanda of supporting RED-Tabara, a violent terrorist group which may or may not have also been involved in a coup attempt. Burundi has closed its border with Rwanda and started expelling Rwandan citizens. I have no idea really how to evaluate whether these claims are true as Burundi has grown closer to DRC and may be pressured to oppose Rwanda, but RED-Tabara normally operates out of the same region in the DRC where M-23 does, and Rwanda definitely supports the latter, so it’s not that crazy to imagine.
Separately, the British-Rwandan plan to deport their extra immigrants has been delayed in the House of Lords until it can be demonstrated that Rwanda is safe. Their ruling isn’t binding but would place a court case against the law on stronger grounds.
Soriek
9mo ago
India
The controversial issue of the day is the erection of a gigantic $200 million Hindu temple (in the context of a $3 billion glowup for the surrounding town) on what was previously a mosque built by Babur, founder of the Mughal Empire. The temple was razed by a Hindu nationalists mob in part of a larger riot that killed some 2000 people. Rebuilding a Hindu temple in its place has been a longtime Modi commitment and has been touted as a symbolic counter to European and Muslim colonization alike.
More than three decades after a mob of militant Hindu radicals razed a mosque to the ground in the Indian town of Ayodhya, the country’s prime minister, Narendra Modi, has inaugurated the new Hindu temple that will stand in its place.
For some, the inauguration marks a hugely significant religious moment. Many Hindus believe Ayodhya to be the birthplace of the popular deity Lord Ram and the building of the temple, after over a century of disputes, has been heralded as Ram returning to his rightful place, and India freeing itself from the chains of past religious occupation.
Various people have said this is either a huge deal since it breaks with India’s secular founding and is openly anti-muslim, or not really a big deal at all since it’s been a BJP promise for a long time and secularism is always relative. So I figured I’d post it here and phone @self_made_human to make me sound more knowledgeable on the issue.
Soriek
9mo ago
Yeah there's nothing stopping anyone from doing a bad job running a government, but I'm skeptical that austerity is going to significantly hamper the corrupt actors anyway.
I mean it'll stop the specific problem they had with corruption, which was taking on debt and spending it all on politically connected patrons rather than investing it into more productive uses. If you assume they will spend funds on more productive uses there's a stronger argument for stimulus than if you can count on corruption being so bad that it'll get squandered.
I don't think you can chalk it up to aesthetic preferences - for Greece specifically we have the comparison of the modern day vs the post war era up till the oil crisis, during which they kept the budget controlled and growth was steady and reliable.
To take a more extreme example of the political circumstances mattering more than pen and paper economics, austerity in the US might mean one thing we're familiar with, but austerity in Argentina means they stop printing money, which is probably necessary to tame inflation regardless of whether or not austerity is actually a good idea in abstract.
But once you land on the size of government desired, the taxes and especially the debt & deficit are just dynamically emergent results based on the private sector's savings desire and the level of exporting.
This might be beyond me. What do you mean?
Soriek
9mo ago
Plus one for Robert Fogel, a criminally underrated fun economist. I'm a fan of his work trying to figure out how different productivity would be in we just built tons of canals instead of railways, mostly because I think that would look sick.
Soriek
9mo ago
To be fair, I think when you're talking about crisis situations in places like Greece you're dealing as much with a question of solving politics as solving economics. In a normal country fiscal stimulus is probably better, but in a country with endemic political clientelism, implementing austerity can be a brake on the kind of corruption that's been dragging the economy down in the first place.
Soriek
9mo ago
Agreed. 43 states have some extent of line item veto and you don't often hear about really flagrant abuse of it, so I assume it works well enough in practice.
Soriek
9mo ago
I've often thought Trump could have ended the primary months ago and cornered the Zoomer vote by decisively calling DeSantis "No Rizz Ron".
In all serious DeSadness would've been way better than DeSanctimonious, that was one of his weakest yet.
Soriek
9mo ago
In contrast, we would gain nothing from helping Armenia, so we don't do it.
Armenia is just lower on our list of priorities, not totally irrelevant. Ethnic Armenians are a relevant interest group in the US and blocking Turkish expansion and coaxing away Russian allies are their own end goal, which is part of why American troops were training Armenian soldiers. It's likely we would have done something if Azerbaijan actually invaded Armenia rather than just a piece of territory we formally recognize as Azeri, even despite our multiple commitments. When Azerbaijan blockaded Armenia after the first NK war we aggressively sanctioned them even though American multinationals were drilling oil in country, so there's certainly precedent for us being willing to retaliate against them at personal cost.
Soriek
9mo ago
They're awkwardly trying to maintain good relations with both countries these days, but they have recognized Artsakh as Azeri clay for several years now.
Soriek
9mo ago
Having other countries side with you, use your symbols and laws, and aspire to your culture by choice is certainly a more impressive measure of your global stature than only being able to make them do that by force.
Go to a political rally in Seoul and I assure you that you will indeed see countless American flags; go to Mexico City, or any City in Mexico, and you can see their numerous statues of Abraham Lincoln. American flags fly in Taiwan, in Argentina, in Brazil, in countries no one would even think of, and there are statues of Reagan, Clinton, Lincoln, George Washington, Woodrow Wilson, even irrelevant Presidents like Rutherford Hayes, in countries across the world, in France, Germany, the United Kingdom, Poland, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Kosovo, even in the lands of our mortal enemies like China and Russia.
Countries we've fought brutal wars with like Vietnam and the Philippines still have incredibly favorable impressions of us and line up for American trade and security guarantees out of choice rather than at the point of a gun; there are West Africans who will frown when they think you're British and break out into a grin when they see you're American, Liberians who will proudly tell you they are in fact American as well, 750 military bases across nearly half the countries in the world where American soldiers walk armed and freely by request of the host nation, countless constitutions and legal systems inspired by the American foundational blueprint, police forces the world over taught by Americans, a world learning English and watching American media and crossing oceans and deserts to come be part of the United States.
Don't pine for empire, we already have it - the footprint of America covers every corner of the world.
Soriek
10mo ago
Rick Scott isn't popular, he's won each of his elections by a hair and is hated within the GOP Senate caucus.
Soriek
10mo ago
Section 5 has a bunch of parallels in other amendments—it would be weird if that meant that slavery was effectively legal unless Congress passed legislation, under the 13th amendment. I don't find that terribly convincing.
In fairness functionally other sections of the 14th amendment were not enforced until the Civil Rights Act a century later, whether or not that was legally reasonable or what the lawmakers intended.
Soriek
10mo ago
I lived in North Korea in 2015 and 2016 in order to teach computer science at the Pyongyang University of Science and Technology. I have a pretty detailed journal of my trip posted online. From that I think you should get a decent sense of what life as a university student in North Korea is like.
Thanks a ton for the insider account.
Haiti and Kenya
It feels like forever ago that I covered this saga, but despite Kenyan President Ruto agreeing over the summer to send a deployment of 1000 Kenyan troops to help with the Haitian emergency, there has been no forward progress since then, partially because he forgot to ask Congress and needed their approval. A Kenyan court has now blocked the intervention. This leaves Haiti with still no help in year 3 of their slow rolling anarchy. The absolute direness of their situation is best summed up by the Wapo headline on Monday “Collective rapes surge as weapon in Haiti’s gang war”.
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