Affluence - from the Kalahari desert to Wall St; Laurie Taylor explores contrasting conceptions of material plenty and the 'good life'. He's joined by James Suzman, an anthropologist who has spent 30 years studying and spending time with the bushmen of Namibia and Rachel Sherman, Associate Professor of Sociology at The New School whose study of wealthy New Yorkers found an uneasiness, as well as an enjoyment in affluence.
16 November 2017
Haaretz: For Many Sunni Muslim Countries, Iran Is Not Necessarily a Threat
If Iran is such a great threat that it justifies Saudi Arabia’s crude intervention in other Mideast countries’ internal affairs – see, for example Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri’s recent resignation – then why hasn’t Riyadh imposed sanctions on Pakistan? There are two answers to that. First, Saudi Arabia needs Pakistan in its “Sunni” coalition. But no less important, for the time being, it can’t do without Pakistani workers. Lebanon, in contrast, is just a pawn.
One could pose a similar question to Riyadh about its close ties with Turkey, another economic and strategic ally of Tehran. Two years ago, Turkey joined Saudi Arabia’s Sunni alliance (after initially being ostracized by it) without being required to sever its ties with Iran – something Riyadh has demanded of Qatar, though not of the United Arab Emirates, whose trade with Iran is even more extensive. Evidently, the Saudis recognize the limits of their war against Iran. [...]
Egypt, for instance, is Israel’s ally in the war against Sunni terrorist organizations in Sinai and the Gaza Strip, and it defines Hezbollah as a terrorist organization. Yet it also opposes Saudi Arabia’s aggressive stance against Iran and Hezbollah. Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shukri is visiting several Mideast countries this week in an effort to persuade Riyadh and its allies to use diplomacy rather than military threats. Egypt also “rebelled” against Saudi dictates last year when it supported a Russian United Nation resolution on Syria, to which Iran was a party, and suffered Saudi economic sanctions as a result. [...]
Thus the “Sunni axis” is really a “Saudi axis.” This isn’t a group of Sunni countries driven by religious hatred of a Shi’ite country; rather, the common denominator that unites its members is their dependence on Riyadh or their desire to be its economic ally. Moreover, the claim that there’s a risk of Shi’ite Islam spreading in Sunni states portrays Sunni countries as being weak and on the defensive – as if the sweeping Sunni majority, comprising some 90 percent of all Muslims, were actually afraid of the power of the Shi’ites, who comprise only about 10 percent of the world’s 1.6 billion Muslims.
Politico: Macron ♥ Vestager
There is a stumbling bloc: She’s a member of the Liberals, languishing in fourth place behind two center-right and the main center-left political families in terms of size and support. The backing of a French president — even one whose approval ratings have gone through the floor — could provide a major boost to the Liberals, however. [...]
The current Commission president, Jean-Claude Juncker, announced last year that he would not seek a second mandate when his term ends in 2019. And Vestager, who has been dubbed the “most powerful woman in the EU,” would be in a good position to replace him, and is believed to be interested in the job. However, she would likely face competition from fellow Commissioners Jyrki Katainen and Pierre Moscovici as well as Michel Barnier, the EU’s lead Brexit negotiator. [...]
The liberal ALDE group to which Vestager belongs is the fourth force in the European Parliament and the party has eight EU leaders in its ranks, including Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte, Xavier Bettel from Luxembourg and now Andrej Babiš in the Czech Republic. If Macron joins the Liberals, they would leapfrog the Socialists to become the second largest group in the Council. [...]
According to EU lore, an aspiring president of the European Commission is said to need three qualities. First they must have been a member of the European Council — a head of state or government. Second, they must come from a country that is a member of the eurozone. Third, they must not have been around long enough to have made enemies in national capitals.
Vox: Why the rise of the robots won’t mean the end of work
Recent advancements in artificial intelligence and robotics have
commentators worrying about the coming obsolescence of the human worker.
Some in Silicon Valley are even calling for a basic minimum income
provided by the government for everyone, under the assumption that work
will become scarce. But many economists are skeptical of these claims,
because the notion that the the economy offers a fixed amount of work
has been debunked time and time again over the centuries and current
economic data show no signs of a productivity boom. Fortunately, we
don't need to divine the future of the labor market in order to prepare
for it.
Al Jazeera: Pictures of Sudan's forgotten Nubian pyramids
The Nubian Meroe pyramids, much smaller but just as impressive as the more famous Egyptian ones, are found on the east bank of the Nile river, near a group of villages called Bagrawiyah. The pyramids get their name from the ancient city of Meroe, the capital of the Kingdom of Kush, an ancient African kingdom situated in what is now the Republic of Sudan.
Around 1000 BCE, after the fall of the 24th Egyptian dynasty, the Nubian Kingdom of Kush arose as the leading power in the middle Nile region. The Kushite kings took over and ruled much of Egypt from 712 to 657 BCE. In 300 BCE, when the capital and royal burial ground of the kingdom moved to the Meroe region, the pharaonic tradition of building pyramids to encapsulate the tombs of rulers continued here.
The Intercept: We Knew Julian Assange Hated Clinton. We Didn’t Know He Was Secretly Advising Trump
Brown explained that he had defended WikiLeaks for releasing emails hacked from the Democratic National Committee, “because it was an appropriate thing for a transparency org to do.” But, he added, “working with an authoritarian would-be leader to deceive the public is indefensible and disgusting.”
He was particularly outraged by an Oct. 26, 2016 message, in which Assange had appealed to Trump Jr. to let WikiLeaks publish one or more of his father’s tax returns in order to make his group’s attacks on Hillary Clinton seem less biased. “If we publish them it will dramatically improve the perception of our impartiality,” the Assange-controlled @Wikileaks account suggested. “That means that the vast amount of stuff that we are publishing on Clinton will have much higher impact, because it won’t be perceived as coming from a ‘pro-Trump’ ‘pro-Russia’ source, which the Clinton campaign is constantly slandering us with.” [...]
Before his private messages to Trump Jr. were leaked, Assange himself had categorically denied that he or WikiLeaks had been attacking Hillary Clinton to help elect Donald Trump. “This is not due to a personal desire to influence the outcome of the election,” he wrote in a statement released on November 8 as Americans went to the polls. [...]
During the final week of the Brexit campaign last year, Assange tried to undermine the credibility of a witness to the savage murder of a pro-European member of parliament, Jo Cox. In the immediate aftermath of the assassination, Brexit supporters like Assange were concerned that a wave of sympathy for the murdered MP could sway the vote. So they set out to contest evidence that the killing had been politically motivated.
Politico: Spanish regions to Catalonia: Up yours
Regional leaders are key to finding a negotiated solution on Catalonia, be it to change the constitution to amend Spain’s territorial architecture — the subject of a Congress commission to be launched Wednesday — or to reach multilateral agreements on financing, which has long been a Catalan grievance.
Puigdemont and other Catalan leaders have repeatedly signaled their readiness to negotiate with Madrid on a new status within Spain; indeed, Puigdemont’s party — PDeCAT — only embraced secession after the central government rejected Catalan demands for a new financial settlement in 2012. [...]
Two senior officials in the two leading Catalan pro-independence parties said that if the secessionist camp fails to win more than 50 percent combined, they’ll need to rethink their strategy. They disagreed on whether they should seek a compromise with Madrid or focus on the long-term goal of independence if they fall short of a majority, which some polls currently forecast. [...]
Moreover, the only national party to endorse the right to self-determination and side with the Catalan demands for a referendum on secession, the far-left Podemos, has suffered a big drop in support in opinion polls in the past two months, coinciding with the Catalan conflict becoming the Spanish public’s second biggest concern after unemployment. [...]
On top of that, there’s the question of what extra powers should be given to the regions. According to the Regional Authority Index, an international database measuring the degree of decentralization for a number of countries, Spain is the second most decentralized country in the world, below Germany but above Belgium, the United States, Switzerland and Canada.
Haaretz: Saudi Arabia: Israel's Dream State
Israel has no better ally than Saudi Arabia. It fights Hezbollah and overthrew the Lebanese prime minister who had lived in peace with that organization for a year. There is no other country in the world, including the United States, that acts with such resolve against Iran. Saudi Arabia even went to war in Yemen, not for the Yemenis, who as far as Riyadh is concerned could die of starvation, but to block Iran’s influence. [...]
It wouldn’t be unreasonable to try to form an Arab coalition made up of Egypt, Jordan, the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia for this purpose. After all, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu never fails to boast of the quality of the relations that he (of course, he) has managed to develop with Arab countries, even those that have no peace treaty with Israel. The alliance with Egypt is working well along the southern border and there is quiet and excellent cooperation with Jordan, while the UAE has recently become a silent partner. On the face of it, there could be no better combination of forces for the State of Israel.
The problem is that even an alliance of interests with Saudi Arabia has a fatal flaw. It requires that Israel pay too heavy a political price. Israel believes it is permitted to cooperate with Arab states against common enemies, but not in return for a chance at real peace. The enormous security and economic benefits that would derive from a diplomatic process that has the participation of anti-Iranian Arab states is apparently worthless in Israeli eyes. It prefers to pay the economic and security costs of taking care of half a million settlers, not to mention the collapse of Israeli democracy. An alliance with Saudi Arabia or other Arab states? Only if it’s free.
Bloomberg: Modi Remained Popular Even After His Cash Ban, Poll Says
The Pew Research Center poll conducted between Feb. 21 and Mar. 10, 2017 shows Narendra Modi remains the top choice among the current national leaders. His popularity has risen in the past year, including in southern and eastern parts of India where his party has not traditionally held power. Public confidence in the economy and the overall direction of the country also improved.
Modi has come under some stinging criticism recently for his handling of the economy and the botched roll-out of the goods and services tax, including by a former finance minister of his own Bharatiya Janata Party. The survey of 2,464 Indians was conducted prior to data that showed growth slowing to levels last seen in 2014, a development economists have blamed largely on the disruptive demonetization policy. [...]
"The common man doesn’t understand all these issues, if the economy picks up or not, they just see if prices go up or come down," Kumar said. "People might be unhappy with the government’s policies on demonetization or GST, but they will vote for the BJP on other factors."
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