RECENT HIGHLIGHTS
AUTUMN 2011 QUARTERLY FEATURED ESSAYS ARE AVAILABLE ON THE QUARTERLY ESSAYS PAGE
PROTESTS ESCALATE AGAINST ALABAMA'S HB56 by Allison Hight
OCCUPY WALL STREET MAY FADE JUST AS QUICKLY AS IT ROSE a Guest Article by Peter Leeds
THE MIDDLE KINGDOM'S CAPITALISM: TUG AND WAR by Baron Laudermilk
TSUNAMI DEBRIS: OBSTACLE OR OPPORTUNITY? by Allison Hight
A ROAD TO PEACE AND AFFLUENCE: A REVIEW OF JESSE RICHARD'S THE SECRET PEACE by Matthew Bishop
SOCIAL MEDIA UNDERMINES PRINCIPLES OF THE PARTY by Baron Laudermilk
THE CHILEAN WINTER: A PEOPLE'S DRIVE FOR FAIR AND EQUAL PUBLIC UNIVERSITIES by Sarah Volpenheim
JAPAN'S NUCLEAR ENERGY FUTURE by Allison Hight
CHINA'S ECONOMY BOOMS: PEOPLE SEE FEW BENEFITS by Baron Laudermilk
GUATEMALAN PRESIDENTIAL ELECTIONS 2011 by Isaac Placke
Protests Escalate Against Alabama's HB56
ALLISON HIGHT - 16 November 2011
- Called, “the toughest immigration law on the books in any American state” by the New York Daily News, Alabama’s House Bill
- 56 has managed to keep a relatively low profile since its passage on June 2nd, 2011, despite the fact that its effects throughout the state have been widespread. Though lengthy and complex, the most hotly debated section of the legislation is its call to make a valid birth certificate part of the enrollment process for K-12 education and to further collect proof of citizenship from already enrolled students. This move has left as many vacancies in public schools as it has in Alabama’s fields, as workers and families flee the state for fear of deportation, or simply in response to the resultant increased racial profiling.
- Though the media attention to HB56 has been sporadic, the attention of one grassroots organization has not wavered in the last five months since the bill’s passage: DreamActivist.org, an alliance composed of six core individuals committed to the cause of immigration reform with a specific concentration on the Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors (DREAM) Act, has for the last month been steadily planning a rally against the components of Alabama’s new bill. This Tuesday, those plans culminated in Montgomery in a full-scale protest.
During the protest, thirteen were arrested, two for declining to leave a state office building, and eleven for forming a picket line across a capitol street. Dreamactivist.org, which anticipated such a response based on the results of their past rallies, is already in the process of raising money for their bail. For the first time, the DREAMers arrested were composed not only of youth, but of parents as well, such as fifty-five year old Martin Unzueta and thirty-nine year old Belen Rebelledo. The fight, then, is no longer limited to college-age youth and DREAM Act qualifiers, but has spread to encompass people of all ages, and is showing no sign of backing down.So tense is the current situation in Alabama, that this small-scale protest inspired even President Barack Obama to take a stand on HB56. For the first time, he publicly opposed the legislation, bluntly stating that “[i]t’s a bad law. The idea that we have children afraid to go to school, because they feel afraid that their immigration status will lead to being detained…It’s wrong…. This makes the law, not just anti-immigrant, but I believe it doesn’t match our essential values as a country.” Because he made the comment to a Spanish newspaper, some have criticized his words, claiming that he should have made a stronger demonstration of his support by professing it in English; others are touched by the fact that he specifically reached out first to the Latino community, the obvious targets and victims of HB56.
Regardless of context, his words have been translated and quoted enough to make his position on the issue well-known. Further, he has promised to make the DREAM Act and immigration reform a key part of his campaign platform over the next year. Whether Obama’s actions will be enough to cancel out people’s deeply-running hurt from the record number of deportations over his presidency thus far, many of them of youth with no criminal record, remains to be seen.
Members of Congress, too, are actively demonstrating further support for the DREAMers and their opposition to Alabama’s bill by scheduling their own campaign to deal with its effects. Eleven Democratic congress members, including Silvestre Reyes of Texas and Raul Grijalva of Arizona, plan to stand in solidarity in November 21st in front of Birmingham’s 16th Street Baptist Church. This church, appropriately, is the same one at which the 1963 racial bombing occurred that resulted in the deaths of four young girls. The congress members’ decision to meet at this significant site, then, marks not only their unity against racial hatred, but serves to designate DreamActivist.org, DREAMers, President Obama, and the congress members themselves as integral parts of the civil rights’ movement of the twenty-first century: the fight for immigrants’ rights, legal or illegal.
To the relief of many, official legal complaints have been filed against HB56 to the Civil Rights Division, from which a decision is still pending. The U.S. Justice Department has also taken action to challenge the law. In the meantime, though, officials are still stopping Latinos on the basis of appearance alone, and children continue to be absent from school.
It is the illegality of denying education to schoolchildren, whether in the country legally or illegally, around which many arguments center, a stance cemented by the 1982 Supreme Court case Plyler v Doe. Though technically HB56 does not directly deny Alabama’s children access to the school system, instead claiming that the data being collected is for purely analytical purposes, for most, the line between collection and deportation is far too fine. Since the bill’s passage, thousands have poured out of the state for fear of harassment, racial profiling, and deportation. The subsequent devastating effects that this mass emigration has had on the state’s economy and commerce has caused even more people to protest the bill than under ordinary circumstances.
For one especially, Alabama has gone too far. Mohammad Abdollahi, undocumented since he and his mother moved to the United States from Iran when he was a child, now co-founder of DreamActivist.org, professes that “[Alabama] is ground zero for hatred and discrimination” and that “now more than ever” is the time to join the fight to end the injustice that is plaguing the state. Abdollahi, a DREAMer who has had his ambition and his future plans put on hold multiple times from the end of high school onward, has dedicated his time to leading the undocumented youth faction in the charge for immigration reform in the hopes that future generations will not have to endure the hardship and frustration of he and his family.
Encouraging people to be “undocumented and unafraid,” his efforts result in rallies like the one held in Montgomery this Tuesday. With the movement behind him growing constantly, there is little doubt that his courageous future actions, and the actions of DreamActivist.org, President Obama, and his fellow DREAMers, will snowball into a movement that will leave both immigrants and the immigration system of the United States completely transformed.
Members of Congress, too, are actively demonstrating further support for the DREAMers and their opposition to Alabama’s bill by scheduling their own campaign to deal with its effects. Eleven Democratic congress members, including Silvestre Reyes of Texas and Raul Grijalva of Arizona, plan to stand in solidarity in November 21st in front of Birmingham’s 16th Street Baptist Church. This church, appropriately, is the same one at which the 1963 racial bombing occurred that resulted in the deaths of four young girls. The congress members’ decision to meet at this significant site, then, marks not only their unity against racial hatred, but serves to designate DreamActivist.org, DREAMers, President Obama, and the congress members themselves as integral parts of the civil rights’ movement of the twenty-first century: the fight for immigrants’ rights, legal or illegal.
To the relief of many, official legal complaints have been filed against HB56 to the Civil Rights Division, from which a decision is still pending. The U.S. Justice Department has also taken action to challenge the law. In the meantime, though, officials are still stopping Latinos on the basis of appearance alone, and children continue to be absent from school.
It is the illegality of denying education to schoolchildren, whether in the country legally or illegally, around which many arguments center, a stance cemented by the 1982 Supreme Court case Plyler v Doe. Though technically HB56 does not directly deny Alabama’s children access to the school system, instead claiming that the data being collected is for purely analytical purposes, for most, the line between collection and deportation is far too fine. Since the bill’s passage, thousands have poured out of the state for fear of harassment, racial profiling, and deportation. The subsequent devastating effects that this mass emigration has had on the state’s economy and commerce has caused even more people to protest the bill than under ordinary circumstances.
For one especially, Alabama has gone too far. Mohammad Abdollahi, undocumented since he and his mother moved to the United States from Iran when he was a child, now co-founder of DreamActivist.org, professes that “[Alabama] is ground zero for hatred and discrimination” and that “now more than ever” is the time to join the fight to end the injustice that is plaguing the state. Abdollahi, a DREAMer who has had his ambition and his future plans put on hold multiple times from the end of high school onward, has dedicated his time to leading the undocumented youth faction in the charge for immigration reform in the hopes that future generations will not have to endure the hardship and frustration of he and his family.
Encouraging people to be “undocumented and unafraid,” his efforts result in rallies like the one held in Montgomery this Tuesday. With the movement behind him growing constantly, there is little doubt that his courageous future actions, and the actions of DreamActivist.org, President Obama, and his fellow DREAMers, will snowball into a movement that will leave both immigrants and the immigration system of the United States completely transformed.
Occupy Wall Street May Fade Just As Quickly As It Rose
A Guest Article by Peter Leeds - 10 November 2011
The faster anything rises, generally the faster it falls. Occupy Wall Street may be another example of this, as media coverage, social media activity, and activist numbers have all started dropping off. This is only expected to continue, especially with the onset of winter.
According to Google Trends, searches for Occupy Wall Street have fallen by 60% from their October 15th peak to October 30th. This is reinforced further by the Factiva news database, which cites media mentions of "Occupy Wall Street" declining by 19% in a week, ending on October 23rd.
With several other major events arising, such as the death of Libya's Moammar Gadhafi, the end of the NATO mission there, and European debt struggles, Occupy Wall Street may be facing an increasingly crowded media coverage environment. According to the Pew Research Center's weekly news index, Occupy Wall Street enjoyed 10% of the total coverage across their dozens of outlets at their October 1st peak. That same index now has Occupy Wall Street sitting at 4%.
Trendistic, which tracks total Twitter activity, showed tweets peaking at 0.3% on October 1st. Since then, the same metric has fallen to one third of that peak, to levels of 0.1% on October 31st.
Even a casual observer passing the protest sites would note that the presence of media crews has fallen off significantly, while the number of protesters also seems to be waning. Now, the toughest test of their will is about to arrive. That test is the winter, and it chase away all but the most resolute.
This is not to imply that the protesters have lost any of their resolve, or the issues have gotten any less serious. Rather, Occupy Wall Street could use these obstacles as an opportunity to demonstrate their commitment, and separate the die hards from the "tourists."
Keep in mind that any large-scale movement will have a lot of marginal players among its masses, people who are boosting the numbers by being involved, but who aren't adamant enough to remain for the long haul. This type of supporter will be the first to fade away, able to say they were part of the movement, but eventually being pulled back into their former life.
Remember that all peaceful uprisings end in one of two ways - either they disperse and are forgotten (even by their activists in some cases), or they stop once they achieved their goal(s).
The problem with this, however, is that Occupy Wall Street's goals may not ever be accomplished. The targets of much of the activism are not being hurt or in any significant way affected by the protests. Until that happens, Manhattan and global bankers are more than happy to watch the crowds from a safe distance, with a mildly curious eye, while they close their latest ultra-risky $20 million credit default swap deal with the European Union (taking home another massive commission in the process).
I think that just about everyone would agree - a CEO being fired, but walking away with $10 million (as did Hewlett-Packard's Leo Apotheker) is nearly preposterous. This is especially true considering that during his time at the helm, the company's share price fell over 40%. Perhaps that's why he got fired.
The scope and activities of the Occupy Wall Street movement, in their current form, will almost certainly not be enough to change the way Hewlett-Packard competes for top CEO talent. They won't impact what contractual decisions the corporation must make to get the contract signed by the leader they want.
Perhaps they should protest for change on the steps of Washington? It's also difficult for the government to regulate how a company decides to spend its money in the course of doing business, and how it pays out salaries, bonuses, and severances.
This would be a different situation if there were two dozen protesters in each corporate board room as deals were closed, but to the members of the board of the major corporations, the activists are a world away. Even if they are just a few floors down, on the other side of the glass.
The lack of clear goals has plagued Occupy Wall Street from an early point. One protester whom I spoke with, Brian (his real name withheld by request), admitted that the movement needed to clarify some realistic and actionable goals. This process took place slowly, and by group decision, but has done little to clarify anything to most observers.
A clear mission with a rock-solid result could do a lot for the change that Occupy Wall Street is trying to bring about. This is evidenced by all the great movements that came before, and enjoyed tremendous success: No War, Pro-Life, Pro-Choice, Racial Equality.
Without a clear end result that can be understood by even a disinterested party, Occupy Wall Street is coming across to some observers as being about "complaining" rather than offering solutions. I certainly do not agree that the activists are complaining, and I do think they are offering solutions, but as it stands you may get six different answers from six different activists about what specific outcomes they are working towards.
Being a leaderless organization has served them well up to this point. However, they may really benefit in the future by having a spokesperson at least, if not a central leadership group. A leader could clarify goals, generate endless media coverage, and stand as a representation of the movement. He or she could also rally and organize the supporters, and help maintain morale for what's about to come. Specifically, a further drop off in media coverage, third-party interest, and activist numbers. And, of course, winter.
While the world is currently being "Occupied," it remains to be seen how much longer this will play out. The trends are going against the movement. However, if Occupy Wall Street does endure throughout the toughest months to come, perhaps with a strong leader, or refined goals, it will be very hard to ignore their plight.
The faster anything rises, generally the faster it falls. Occupy Wall Street may be another example of this, as media coverage, social media activity, and activist numbers have all started dropping off. This is only expected to continue, especially with the onset of winter.
According to Google Trends, searches for Occupy Wall Street have fallen by 60% from their October 15th peak to October 30th. This is reinforced further by the Factiva news database, which cites media mentions of "Occupy Wall Street" declining by 19% in a week, ending on October 23rd.
With several other major events arising, such as the death of Libya's Moammar Gadhafi, the end of the NATO mission there, and European debt struggles, Occupy Wall Street may be facing an increasingly crowded media coverage environment. According to the Pew Research Center's weekly news index, Occupy Wall Street enjoyed 10% of the total coverage across their dozens of outlets at their October 1st peak. That same index now has Occupy Wall Street sitting at 4%.
Trendistic, which tracks total Twitter activity, showed tweets peaking at 0.3% on October 1st. Since then, the same metric has fallen to one third of that peak, to levels of 0.1% on October 31st.
Even a casual observer passing the protest sites would note that the presence of media crews has fallen off significantly, while the number of protesters also seems to be waning. Now, the toughest test of their will is about to arrive. That test is the winter, and it chase away all but the most resolute.
This is not to imply that the protesters have lost any of their resolve, or the issues have gotten any less serious. Rather, Occupy Wall Street could use these obstacles as an opportunity to demonstrate their commitment, and separate the die hards from the "tourists."
Keep in mind that any large-scale movement will have a lot of marginal players among its masses, people who are boosting the numbers by being involved, but who aren't adamant enough to remain for the long haul. This type of supporter will be the first to fade away, able to say they were part of the movement, but eventually being pulled back into their former life.
Remember that all peaceful uprisings end in one of two ways - either they disperse and are forgotten (even by their activists in some cases), or they stop once they achieved their goal(s).
The problem with this, however, is that Occupy Wall Street's goals may not ever be accomplished. The targets of much of the activism are not being hurt or in any significant way affected by the protests. Until that happens, Manhattan and global bankers are more than happy to watch the crowds from a safe distance, with a mildly curious eye, while they close their latest ultra-risky $20 million credit default swap deal with the European Union (taking home another massive commission in the process).
I think that just about everyone would agree - a CEO being fired, but walking away with $10 million (as did Hewlett-Packard's Leo Apotheker) is nearly preposterous. This is especially true considering that during his time at the helm, the company's share price fell over 40%. Perhaps that's why he got fired.
The scope and activities of the Occupy Wall Street movement, in their current form, will almost certainly not be enough to change the way Hewlett-Packard competes for top CEO talent. They won't impact what contractual decisions the corporation must make to get the contract signed by the leader they want.
Perhaps they should protest for change on the steps of Washington? It's also difficult for the government to regulate how a company decides to spend its money in the course of doing business, and how it pays out salaries, bonuses, and severances.
This would be a different situation if there were two dozen protesters in each corporate board room as deals were closed, but to the members of the board of the major corporations, the activists are a world away. Even if they are just a few floors down, on the other side of the glass.
The lack of clear goals has plagued Occupy Wall Street from an early point. One protester whom I spoke with, Brian (his real name withheld by request), admitted that the movement needed to clarify some realistic and actionable goals. This process took place slowly, and by group decision, but has done little to clarify anything to most observers.
A clear mission with a rock-solid result could do a lot for the change that Occupy Wall Street is trying to bring about. This is evidenced by all the great movements that came before, and enjoyed tremendous success: No War, Pro-Life, Pro-Choice, Racial Equality.
Without a clear end result that can be understood by even a disinterested party, Occupy Wall Street is coming across to some observers as being about "complaining" rather than offering solutions. I certainly do not agree that the activists are complaining, and I do think they are offering solutions, but as it stands you may get six different answers from six different activists about what specific outcomes they are working towards.
Being a leaderless organization has served them well up to this point. However, they may really benefit in the future by having a spokesperson at least, if not a central leadership group. A leader could clarify goals, generate endless media coverage, and stand as a representation of the movement. He or she could also rally and organize the supporters, and help maintain morale for what's about to come. Specifically, a further drop off in media coverage, third-party interest, and activist numbers. And, of course, winter.
While the world is currently being "Occupied," it remains to be seen how much longer this will play out. The trends are going against the movement. However, if Occupy Wall Street does endure throughout the toughest months to come, perhaps with a strong leader, or refined goals, it will be very hard to ignore their plight.
Investment analyst Peter Leeds is the owner and founder of Peter Leeds Penny Stocks, one of the most popular financial newsletters in North America and the author of the new book Invest in Penny Stocks: A Guide to Profitable Trading available for purchase at www.wiley.com or www.amazon.com
The Middle Kingdom's Capitalism: Tug and War
BARON LAUDERMILK - 08 NOVEMBER 2011
Ten years ago, when people thought of free market capitalism, they imagined the United States’ robust and seemingly unstoppable economy. For the most part, they were right. The U.S. had an efficient and productive private sector, establishing billion dollar companies all over the world in a laissez-faire political environment, with little industrial, political or financial regulations.
People around the world believed that the American economy was an example for the world. It strategically survived the Great Depression and came out with a victory in World War II. It saw an economic boom under both Ronald Reagan and the fall of the Communist block and the Soviet Union in the late 1980s and early 1990s, which was thought to bring about “the end of history,” Francis Fukuyama, one of the world’s most respected political scientists, argued. The United States’ specific style of democracy and capitalism did seem to be the best example for countries to look up to.
But the world’s economic downturn in 2008 demonstrated that the U.S. system had major economic and political cleavages. While the United States was juggling high unemployment and soaring deficits and the European Union was struggling to keep the euro alive, China proved to the world that its state-run capitalism was an effective and highly productive system. China went virtually untouched during the 2008 economic crisis and came out of it as the world’s second largest economy. Western nations are still shocked as to how a country that did not have a functioning economy just fifty years ago was able to become one of the richest states in the world.
China’s method of achieving unprecedented economic progress in the last few decades is no secret. The Chinese government has carefully, deliberately, and strategically guided and manipulated its private sector to become loyal participants of the Communist Party’s game. The Middle Kingdom’s capitalism is a constant game of tug and war between the Communist Party and China’s private sector. This game has resulted in a stalemate, in which both sides are not able to pull the other side into the middle. The Communist Party wants to ensure its power over the state, but the private sector is constantly pulling for its own interests.
While the government’s bureaucrats have been getting their hands on many resources, and while the bosses in the private sector have made their fortunes, the inequality amongst the people is rising. The Gini Coefficient, a standard measure of income inequality in a society, is over 0.5, which is similar to many unstable, heavily corrupt nations in sub-Saharan Africa. The nation’s nearly 10 percent annual growth in GDP has pulled a half billion people out of dire poverty, but compared to the wealthy class in China, which consist of bureaucrats and executives, the average households is on a tight budget. The government has kept interest rates on savings accounts so low that they cannot keep up with China’s rising inflation. This system, which is in place to benefit state-run banks and their rent-seekers, has moved the wealth from the average Chinese person to state-operated banks, which are directly connected to affluent corporations and government-supported organizations. The stalemate in this game of tug of war between the Communist Party and the private sectors’ executives have made them strong and rich, but the people have not seen these benefits yet. There are only two players in this game of tug of war. The people are barred from this match.
The constant fight of power between the Communist Party and the private sector has resulted in a unique form of capitalism that I call “The Middle Kingdom’s capitalism”. This new Chinese style of capitalism has three classes. The most powerful class is the Communist Party. This class consists of any government worker who has been brought into its club. This brings protections, benefits, and networking opportunities to their close family members. The children of the Communist Party members, infamously known as “princelings,” are born with a silver spoon and they die with a silver spoon. They are guaranteed a cushioned life and access to high-paying jobs. The princelings are almost able to get away with murder, and their connections with the government allow them to bypass the weak, paid-off legal system.
After the Communist Party officials, the government executives and their families come in a close second. They are close to Communist officials, especially if they are working in industries that the government is interested in, such as commodities, information, and technology. The third class is everybody else; the students, farmers, city dwellers, etc. If an ambitious Chinese student wants to be successful, he or she must find a way to get into the first two groups.
The Middle Kingdom’s style of capitalism has compelled executives across the globe to pack up their businesses and move straight to the heart of China. U.S. companies have a particular interest in China. China is not just attracting U.S. companies because of China’s cheap labor and low taxes, but because the Chinese government is more receptive to capitalism than the U.S. David Rubenstein, the co-founder and managing director of the Carlyle Group, a massive equity firm, told Thomas Reuters that he thinks China’s new style of capitalism is more open to business ideas than Washington’s. In his words, “I would say that today when I go to China, I find more people in government who are interested in learning about the things that private equity can do to help an economy and help companies than you often do in Washington… Washington, for a number of reasons, is not as focused on the joys of private equity… So very often, you have to defend yourself when you’re talking to a member of Congress.”
The Middle Kingdom’s style of capitalism consists of the state owning all the major firms, but it allows smaller firms to work without much regulation and interference. The Chinese government may want to maintain its power over its massive state-owned companies, but it should realize that the smaller, private companies are more profitable and effective.According to a paper by Liu and Alan Siu, unlisted private companies have an average return of around 10 percent a year. State-owned companies are earning a mere 4 percent a year. These private firms are rapidly growing. Between 2000 and 2009, registered private companies grew by 30 percent. Non-governmental industries are producing two-thirds of the country’s industrial output. Yet there is still fear that these businesses could be shut down on a whim.
Yes, the Middle Kingdom’s style of capitalism has produced a robust and booming economy. There does appear to be a healthy mixture of state-owned companies and private enterprises in China. There is no doubt that it would be foolish for an international company to not get involved in the Chinese market. Yet the fear that the Communist Party can just can suddenly shut down a company and choose favorites, and the fact that the legal system is fragile, strikes fear in all private and corporate businesses, foreign and domestic. Richard McGregor, the former Beijing bureau chief for the Financial Times, clearly said in his excellent book The Party that the Communist Party can fire, replace, and move executives of its state-owned international company spontaneously, with little to no notice. What kind of international company, or even a privately owned Chinese company, would put all their eggs in China’s basket?
This new form of capitalism will see its economy stagnate if the government does not allow freedom of speech and the press. All journalists, novelists, essayists, lawyers, and good politicians must be careful of what they write and say. The Communist Party has frequently demonstrated that it has no problem with incarcerating famous critics, as we have seen with Ai Weiwei and Lu Xiaobo. There are a variety of industries that are not able to grow because people are not able to think for themselves. The regulations on freedom of speech and press must be eradicated in order to allow the spread of ideas and business.
China’s new style of capitalism will slow down in the next decade because of the attempt of the government to transition the economy from one based on exports to one based on consumption. As Hugo Dixon argues in The China Files, Part 1: How fast can China grow?, “These trends can’t continue at the same pace. The country’s exports are now so big that it can’t keep expanding its share of world trade so fast. What’s more, its indebted customers in the West have a limited ability to keep buying.” The Chinese government rightly laid out in its last five-year plan (2011-2015) that it will boost domestic consumption and rely more on its services. But in order to do this, China must alter its education system, which is based around memorizing text and obeying authority instead of thinking for oneself, and back off of the economy and the nation’s politics.
The Middle Kingdom’s form of capitalism has pulled a half billion people out of poverty, made millions of people across the world rich, and will probably keep loaning to the United States and Europe. But at the same time, people should be skeptical of this mutation of capitalism. It is still an unpredictable system. This elite group will do what it takes to stay in power, as we have seen in both Mongolia and Tibet, a move which is bad for business. We must give the Chinese government credit, for they have proved that state-owned capitalism is possible, but now let’s see them peacefully make the transition to a more free and open society.
Ten years ago, when people thought of free market capitalism, they imagined the United States’ robust and seemingly unstoppable economy. For the most part, they were right. The U.S. had an efficient and productive private sector, establishing billion dollar companies all over the world in a laissez-faire political environment, with little industrial, political or financial regulations.
People around the world believed that the American economy was an example for the world. It strategically survived the Great Depression and came out with a victory in World War II. It saw an economic boom under both Ronald Reagan and the fall of the Communist block and the Soviet Union in the late 1980s and early 1990s, which was thought to bring about “the end of history,” Francis Fukuyama, one of the world’s most respected political scientists, argued. The United States’ specific style of democracy and capitalism did seem to be the best example for countries to look up to.
But the world’s economic downturn in 2008 demonstrated that the U.S. system had major economic and political cleavages. While the United States was juggling high unemployment and soaring deficits and the European Union was struggling to keep the euro alive, China proved to the world that its state-run capitalism was an effective and highly productive system. China went virtually untouched during the 2008 economic crisis and came out of it as the world’s second largest economy. Western nations are still shocked as to how a country that did not have a functioning economy just fifty years ago was able to become one of the richest states in the world.
China’s method of achieving unprecedented economic progress in the last few decades is no secret. The Chinese government has carefully, deliberately, and strategically guided and manipulated its private sector to become loyal participants of the Communist Party’s game. The Middle Kingdom’s capitalism is a constant game of tug and war between the Communist Party and China’s private sector. This game has resulted in a stalemate, in which both sides are not able to pull the other side into the middle. The Communist Party wants to ensure its power over the state, but the private sector is constantly pulling for its own interests.
While the government’s bureaucrats have been getting their hands on many resources, and while the bosses in the private sector have made their fortunes, the inequality amongst the people is rising. The Gini Coefficient, a standard measure of income inequality in a society, is over 0.5, which is similar to many unstable, heavily corrupt nations in sub-Saharan Africa. The nation’s nearly 10 percent annual growth in GDP has pulled a half billion people out of dire poverty, but compared to the wealthy class in China, which consist of bureaucrats and executives, the average households is on a tight budget. The government has kept interest rates on savings accounts so low that they cannot keep up with China’s rising inflation. This system, which is in place to benefit state-run banks and their rent-seekers, has moved the wealth from the average Chinese person to state-operated banks, which are directly connected to affluent corporations and government-supported organizations. The stalemate in this game of tug of war between the Communist Party and the private sectors’ executives have made them strong and rich, but the people have not seen these benefits yet. There are only two players in this game of tug of war. The people are barred from this match.
The constant fight of power between the Communist Party and the private sector has resulted in a unique form of capitalism that I call “The Middle Kingdom’s capitalism”. This new Chinese style of capitalism has three classes. The most powerful class is the Communist Party. This class consists of any government worker who has been brought into its club. This brings protections, benefits, and networking opportunities to their close family members. The children of the Communist Party members, infamously known as “princelings,” are born with a silver spoon and they die with a silver spoon. They are guaranteed a cushioned life and access to high-paying jobs. The princelings are almost able to get away with murder, and their connections with the government allow them to bypass the weak, paid-off legal system.
After the Communist Party officials, the government executives and their families come in a close second. They are close to Communist officials, especially if they are working in industries that the government is interested in, such as commodities, information, and technology. The third class is everybody else; the students, farmers, city dwellers, etc. If an ambitious Chinese student wants to be successful, he or she must find a way to get into the first two groups.
The Middle Kingdom’s style of capitalism has compelled executives across the globe to pack up their businesses and move straight to the heart of China. U.S. companies have a particular interest in China. China is not just attracting U.S. companies because of China’s cheap labor and low taxes, but because the Chinese government is more receptive to capitalism than the U.S. David Rubenstein, the co-founder and managing director of the Carlyle Group, a massive equity firm, told Thomas Reuters that he thinks China’s new style of capitalism is more open to business ideas than Washington’s. In his words, “I would say that today when I go to China, I find more people in government who are interested in learning about the things that private equity can do to help an economy and help companies than you often do in Washington… Washington, for a number of reasons, is not as focused on the joys of private equity… So very often, you have to defend yourself when you’re talking to a member of Congress.”
The Middle Kingdom’s style of capitalism consists of the state owning all the major firms, but it allows smaller firms to work without much regulation and interference. The Chinese government may want to maintain its power over its massive state-owned companies, but it should realize that the smaller, private companies are more profitable and effective.According to a paper by Liu and Alan Siu, unlisted private companies have an average return of around 10 percent a year. State-owned companies are earning a mere 4 percent a year. These private firms are rapidly growing. Between 2000 and 2009, registered private companies grew by 30 percent. Non-governmental industries are producing two-thirds of the country’s industrial output. Yet there is still fear that these businesses could be shut down on a whim.
Yes, the Middle Kingdom’s style of capitalism has produced a robust and booming economy. There does appear to be a healthy mixture of state-owned companies and private enterprises in China. There is no doubt that it would be foolish for an international company to not get involved in the Chinese market. Yet the fear that the Communist Party can just can suddenly shut down a company and choose favorites, and the fact that the legal system is fragile, strikes fear in all private and corporate businesses, foreign and domestic. Richard McGregor, the former Beijing bureau chief for the Financial Times, clearly said in his excellent book The Party that the Communist Party can fire, replace, and move executives of its state-owned international company spontaneously, with little to no notice. What kind of international company, or even a privately owned Chinese company, would put all their eggs in China’s basket?
This new form of capitalism will see its economy stagnate if the government does not allow freedom of speech and the press. All journalists, novelists, essayists, lawyers, and good politicians must be careful of what they write and say. The Communist Party has frequently demonstrated that it has no problem with incarcerating famous critics, as we have seen with Ai Weiwei and Lu Xiaobo. There are a variety of industries that are not able to grow because people are not able to think for themselves. The regulations on freedom of speech and press must be eradicated in order to allow the spread of ideas and business.
China’s new style of capitalism will slow down in the next decade because of the attempt of the government to transition the economy from one based on exports to one based on consumption. As Hugo Dixon argues in The China Files, Part 1: How fast can China grow?, “These trends can’t continue at the same pace. The country’s exports are now so big that it can’t keep expanding its share of world trade so fast. What’s more, its indebted customers in the West have a limited ability to keep buying.” The Chinese government rightly laid out in its last five-year plan (2011-2015) that it will boost domestic consumption and rely more on its services. But in order to do this, China must alter its education system, which is based around memorizing text and obeying authority instead of thinking for oneself, and back off of the economy and the nation’s politics.
The Middle Kingdom’s form of capitalism has pulled a half billion people out of poverty, made millions of people across the world rich, and will probably keep loaning to the United States and Europe. But at the same time, people should be skeptical of this mutation of capitalism. It is still an unpredictable system. This elite group will do what it takes to stay in power, as we have seen in both Mongolia and Tibet, a move which is bad for business. We must give the Chinese government credit, for they have proved that state-owned capitalism is possible, but now let’s see them peacefully make the transition to a more free and open society.
Tsunami Debris: Obstacle or Opportunity? Hawaii Converts Debris into Energy
ALLISON HIGHT - 28 Oct. 2011
Despite the nearly eight thousand miles that separate the two countries, the reverberations of Japan’s triple catastrophe on March 11th have not gone unfelt in the United States. Recently, a fact lost in the aftermath of the disaster has gained new precedence: that millions of tons of debris washed away from Japan’s east coast, estimated to be between five and twenty million tons, is in the process of crossing the Pacific Ocean and is destined to arrive at the U.S. as early as 2013. This material includes houses, furniture, and most horrifyingly, possible bodies swept away by the power of the waves. Immediately following the catastrophe, researchers Nikolai Maximenko and Jan Hafner at the University of Hawaii at Manoa began to track the path of the debris using then-untested computer software that predicted the movements of the material based on knowledge of ocean currents. For the first month, their results were confirmed by satellite images from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). But then, the rubble pile spread too thinly to be seen, and its whereabouts became unknown.
A little over a month ago, though, a Russian ship once again spotted the debris. After confirming the origin of the material by pulling a fishing boat out of the ocean that had “Fukushima” painted on the side in Japanese characters, they shared their find after reaching port on October 8th. Only in the last few days has the information gone public.
Maximenko and Hafner confirmed that the material was in approximately the spot that their computer program predicted it would be, except that it had moved more quickly and spread more widely than they had anticipated. A month after the tsunami, it was spread over five hundred miles; today, estimates put its length between one and two thousand.
Caught in an ocean current called “the North Pacific Gyre,” the rubble moves between five and ten miles per day. Experts have separated the material into three main categories: the lightest floating objects, such as Styrofoam and wood; items of medium floatability, like fishing nets and gear; and the heaviest items, including shoes, and even entire furniture sets. Each wave of items is expected to reach subsequent coastlines approximately a year apart, beginning with Hawaii before arriving at the west coast of the United States and Canada.
This news has been met with mixed emotions. Researchers at the NOAA, for one, are pleased to have finally acquired concrete information regarding the material’s location. That it has spread out to twice its original length in the last six months also means that no shoreline will receive the brunt of the rubble’s arrival all at once, but rather over long spaces of time and distance, thereby lessening the burden the material will inevitably bring.
However, the majority of the voices speaking up over this issue have been raised in consternation, and with good reason. Even though the true effects of this floating mass are still several years off, once it begins, predictions estimate that increased amounts of rubble could arrive on our shorelines for as many as six years. In the past, tsunamis and other natural disasters have for the most part limited their damage to a concentrated area. Even the 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami, triggered by one of the largest recorded earthquakes, only swept the land’s ravaged material out a short ways before returning it to the same shoreline. This mass migration of rubble across half of the globe, then, is unprecedented.
Fortunately, a different concern, that the debris contains radioactive material from the Fukushima nuclear power plant, is unfounded. As the tsunami hit and receded before the power plant went into meltdown, the chance that the rubble is radioactive is next to zero.
Despite this small comfort, one of the foremost questions in people’s minds is upon whom the burden of clean-up will fall and what methods will be used to remove the debris once it arrives. As of yet, the U.S. government seems relatively unconcerned with the matter, but a coalition has been formed between the NOAA, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the Coast Guard, and several other organizations to devise a long-term plan to deal with the problem. Loosely, they have divided up the main, predicted effects of the debris so that the Coast Guard will handle shipping and navigation issues; the EPA, the biochemical and hazardous waste material; and the NOAA, the charting of its course and the protection of coral reefs. The suggestion of drawing on Japanese resources to aid clean-up efforts, an idea presented by many individuals on online forums, does not seem to be an option of the governmental drawing board.
Though preparations are underway, a remaining concern is how the debris will affect coastal, oceanic environments. Hawaii is particularly worried over its coral reefs and monk seals, whose environment is already in fragile condition.
Fortunately, especially as they are to receive the first wave of the material, Hawaii has recently implemented several new programs to deal with oceanic waste, and not just that arriving from Japan. One, entitled the “Hawaii Marine Debris Action Plan” (HI-MDAP) and implemented in 2010, is the first of its kind in the country. Concentrating on the four areas of solid waste at sea, land-based debris, abandoned vessels, and backlog of marine debris, the plan generally aims to reduce the large amounts of ocean waste that find their way to the state every year. One of the ways this is being done is through their “Nets-to-Energy” program. Instead of transporting the dozens of tons of nets that end up on their coastlines every year to landfills, the nets are cut into small pieces and burned. The steam produced from the process is then used to power a turbine that creates usable energy. According to the program description, this method has produced enough energy annually since 2002 to power nearly three hundred and fifty homes year-round.
For at least one state, then, the mass amounts of debris on a set course from Japan could potentially be not an obstacle, but an opportunity. If Hawaii implements methods to similarly convert even some other types of waste material into usable energy, if not all, not only will they keep their landfills from becoming more over-crowded, but they could lead the way in reversing the amount of all oceanic waste, a problem which researchers and oceanographers admit has been growing more dire in recent years.
It appears, then, that despite the growing volume of news stations reporting on the thousand-mile wide sea of debris, U.S. citizens should follow the government’s lead in not unduly worrying about its arrival. Despite its inconvenience, there is little true danger that will result from the rubble. In the next two to three years, then, instead of using the time agonizing over what will happen when it appears, people should continue to work steadily down the path upon which Hawaii has set us to turn this apparent impediment into an asset.
Despite the nearly eight thousand miles that separate the two countries, the reverberations of Japan’s triple catastrophe on March 11th have not gone unfelt in the United States. Recently, a fact lost in the aftermath of the disaster has gained new precedence: that millions of tons of debris washed away from Japan’s east coast, estimated to be between five and twenty million tons, is in the process of crossing the Pacific Ocean and is destined to arrive at the U.S. as early as 2013. This material includes houses, furniture, and most horrifyingly, possible bodies swept away by the power of the waves. Immediately following the catastrophe, researchers Nikolai Maximenko and Jan Hafner at the University of Hawaii at Manoa began to track the path of the debris using then-untested computer software that predicted the movements of the material based on knowledge of ocean currents. For the first month, their results were confirmed by satellite images from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). But then, the rubble pile spread too thinly to be seen, and its whereabouts became unknown.
A little over a month ago, though, a Russian ship once again spotted the debris. After confirming the origin of the material by pulling a fishing boat out of the ocean that had “Fukushima” painted on the side in Japanese characters, they shared their find after reaching port on October 8th. Only in the last few days has the information gone public.
Maximenko and Hafner confirmed that the material was in approximately the spot that their computer program predicted it would be, except that it had moved more quickly and spread more widely than they had anticipated. A month after the tsunami, it was spread over five hundred miles; today, estimates put its length between one and two thousand.
Caught in an ocean current called “the North Pacific Gyre,” the rubble moves between five and ten miles per day. Experts have separated the material into three main categories: the lightest floating objects, such as Styrofoam and wood; items of medium floatability, like fishing nets and gear; and the heaviest items, including shoes, and even entire furniture sets. Each wave of items is expected to reach subsequent coastlines approximately a year apart, beginning with Hawaii before arriving at the west coast of the United States and Canada.
This news has been met with mixed emotions. Researchers at the NOAA, for one, are pleased to have finally acquired concrete information regarding the material’s location. That it has spread out to twice its original length in the last six months also means that no shoreline will receive the brunt of the rubble’s arrival all at once, but rather over long spaces of time and distance, thereby lessening the burden the material will inevitably bring.
However, the majority of the voices speaking up over this issue have been raised in consternation, and with good reason. Even though the true effects of this floating mass are still several years off, once it begins, predictions estimate that increased amounts of rubble could arrive on our shorelines for as many as six years. In the past, tsunamis and other natural disasters have for the most part limited their damage to a concentrated area. Even the 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami, triggered by one of the largest recorded earthquakes, only swept the land’s ravaged material out a short ways before returning it to the same shoreline. This mass migration of rubble across half of the globe, then, is unprecedented.
Fortunately, a different concern, that the debris contains radioactive material from the Fukushima nuclear power plant, is unfounded. As the tsunami hit and receded before the power plant went into meltdown, the chance that the rubble is radioactive is next to zero.
Despite this small comfort, one of the foremost questions in people’s minds is upon whom the burden of clean-up will fall and what methods will be used to remove the debris once it arrives. As of yet, the U.S. government seems relatively unconcerned with the matter, but a coalition has been formed between the NOAA, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the Coast Guard, and several other organizations to devise a long-term plan to deal with the problem. Loosely, they have divided up the main, predicted effects of the debris so that the Coast Guard will handle shipping and navigation issues; the EPA, the biochemical and hazardous waste material; and the NOAA, the charting of its course and the protection of coral reefs. The suggestion of drawing on Japanese resources to aid clean-up efforts, an idea presented by many individuals on online forums, does not seem to be an option of the governmental drawing board.
Though preparations are underway, a remaining concern is how the debris will affect coastal, oceanic environments. Hawaii is particularly worried over its coral reefs and monk seals, whose environment is already in fragile condition.
Fortunately, especially as they are to receive the first wave of the material, Hawaii has recently implemented several new programs to deal with oceanic waste, and not just that arriving from Japan. One, entitled the “Hawaii Marine Debris Action Plan” (HI-MDAP) and implemented in 2010, is the first of its kind in the country. Concentrating on the four areas of solid waste at sea, land-based debris, abandoned vessels, and backlog of marine debris, the plan generally aims to reduce the large amounts of ocean waste that find their way to the state every year. One of the ways this is being done is through their “Nets-to-Energy” program. Instead of transporting the dozens of tons of nets that end up on their coastlines every year to landfills, the nets are cut into small pieces and burned. The steam produced from the process is then used to power a turbine that creates usable energy. According to the program description, this method has produced enough energy annually since 2002 to power nearly three hundred and fifty homes year-round.
For at least one state, then, the mass amounts of debris on a set course from Japan could potentially be not an obstacle, but an opportunity. If Hawaii implements methods to similarly convert even some other types of waste material into usable energy, if not all, not only will they keep their landfills from becoming more over-crowded, but they could lead the way in reversing the amount of all oceanic waste, a problem which researchers and oceanographers admit has been growing more dire in recent years.
It appears, then, that despite the growing volume of news stations reporting on the thousand-mile wide sea of debris, U.S. citizens should follow the government’s lead in not unduly worrying about its arrival. Despite its inconvenience, there is little true danger that will result from the rubble. In the next two to three years, then, instead of using the time agonizing over what will happen when it appears, people should continue to work steadily down the path upon which Hawaii has set us to turn this apparent impediment into an asset.
The Road to Peace and Affluence: A Review of Jesse Richard's The Secret Peace
28 OCTOBER 2011 – MATTHEW BISHOP
REVIEW: THE SECRET PEACE by JESSE RICHARDS
In his recent book The Secret Peace: Exposing the Positive Trend of World Events (New York: Book and Ladder Press, 2010), Jesse Richards raises many good points, a work which seeks to repaint the telling of world events as something positive and promising rather than negative and foreboding. Mr. Richards brings to light the evidence usually mired in darkness, evidence that suggests we, as a world, are more peaceful and affluent than we ever have been before and, furthermore, that this state of being will sustain itself and compound upon itself so that we are increasingly peaceful and affluent as time goes on. His work reveals an optimism often lost in the hearts of those who work in international politics, and it should give us pause to consider: If, as Richards argues, the world is set on a path toward peace, then how can we make sure we stay on that path?
The Secret Peace asserts that “human imagination, ingenuity, and nobility know no bounds”. It is a correct assertion that is too often forgotten. Let us take a single facet of world peace: nuclear disarmament. People proclaim that nuclear weapons cannot be done away with entirely—that they are as necessary to strategy and politics as food to a starving man. I would counter that three hundred years ago, slaves, in a huge part of the world, were even more necessary to the economic well-being of a slave-using nation than nuclear arms are for strategy today. Nations would say “I will not be the first to jeopardize my economy by taking a moral stance against slavery”, just as nations today might say “I will not be the first to jeopardize my position among the world’s powers by dismantling my nuclear arsenal”. But countries did renounce slavery—all over the world people became the first, and then the second, and then the third—and now slavery consists of illegal human trafficking and labor rings in the peripheral areas of the world. If nuclear weapons can undergo the same process, as many wish it to do, then can the making of war itself undergo a similar process? Can nations begin to accept nonviolent action as the better solution? Mr. Richards assures us that the answer is yes, because there is a change occurring within us as individuals and in our respective societies—it is a change which will ultimately revolutionize the way nations behave with one another and the way humankind interacts with itself.
Media outlets—like individual beings—are more attracted to the dramatic and the emotional than they are to the everyday. They are drawn to traumatic events and so do not expose positive events. Positive events occur every day. Just this weekend I returned from a conference in DC full of people committed to ending genocide around the world, and there have been few moments in my life when I have been so inspired, and no time in my life when I have been so fully surrounded by so many hopeful and determined people. Reporting significant positive events should be just as high a priority as reporting significant negative events, and Jesse Richards reaches this conclusion very early in his book—it is a conclusion we would do well to consider.
For thousands of years people have lived in poverty and in hunger—for the majority of mankind’s existence, in fact, the majority of human beings have survived on the edge of survival. In this particular moment we are faced with some interesting circumstances, as Jesse Richards points out: There are less people in extreme poverty today as a proportion of the world’s population than ever before. Proportionally, there are less deaths by war and less deaths by genocide than during the preceding ages. We hear about atrocities—what we do not hear about is that force which is pushing atrocity off of the stage, the force of world peace that Richards envisions.
It is also true that nonviolence is on the rise. In 1789 even the “loving” Camille Desmoulins could not envision a French Revolution without blood. In that revolution, more than two million French citizens were killed (of a population of only 25-29 million)—and that is not inclusive of the wars with Prussia, Germany, England, and the Napoleonic wars that followed the course of revolution. The American Revolution required a years-long war with the mightiest nation on earth. The Egyptian Revolution of 2011 required only a public that demanded change but was committed to nonviolence. Less than one thousand died in that revolution. The Tunisian Revolution was much the same. The current demonstrations in Chile are much the same. The protests in New York City are much the same. It is not that people in the past advocated violence over nonviolence—they did not recognize nonviolence as a viable practice in public and private policy. This has changed very much in the past two hundred years and there is reason to hope that in the following two hundred years the pattern will continue.
The one part of Jesse Richard’s work which should be well-received by anyone intent on changing the world can be found in his Conclusion on pages 342-344. His ten-point plan for mutually promoting peace, development, and justice will resonate with anyone who has worked with humanitarian campaigns in the past. All of his suggestions in this ten-point plan are valid and I urge anyone interested in international policymaking to take them into great consideration. Specifically, his call to reduce arms selling and trafficking on the international stage should be received and implemented immediately—as Mr. Richards says, wars do not begin with people slapping one another on the face. The United States must acknowledge that it is a major player in the world’s wars simply by providing such a huge percentage of the world’s weapons.
These things considered, the skeptic eye will also catch a few questionable things in The Secret Peace and bring them to attention.
It is very dangerous to presume that recent history can anticipate the fate of the long-term future. It is also dangerous to ignore what Mr. Richards does not mention in his book. Jesse Richards suggests that the media is attracted to the traumatic—but this is, in fact, not the simple truth. They are attracted to emotion, but they are businesses and as such they seek profits. They are also heavily engaged with other business and government groups. Many of the world’s worst atrocities are invisible, and many of the world’s most threatening facts remain untold. People do not act on affairs of which they have not even heard, involving places and events they do not know exist. Consider these truths:
+Less than half of Americans know that the deadliest war since World War II (DRC, c. 1998-present) even happened. Many Americans have not even heard of the DRC.
+Many Americans do not consider genocide as something relevant in the modern world—they are unaware of any genocides except for the Holocaust, and a great many are unaware of the Holocaust.
+Whereas Mr. Richards makes the point that nearly 100,000,000 people died of war and genocide in the 20th century, between 2000-2010 just under 10,000,000 have died of war and genocide—which, although a significant and meaningful change in the percentage of deaths due to such causes, is not, in real numbers, any different per year. We should also do well to remember that the 1914-1946 period was one of very unusual levels of violence and atrocity and is historically unique among only a few other such periods in world history.
+ Whereas Mr. Richards makes the point that the percentage of people living in extreme poverty has decreased, and that in recent years even the real number of those in extreme poverty has decreased, the gap between the extreme poor and the extreme wealthy, and the gap between rich/powerful and poor/weak nations, has expanded exponentially. Since 1700 the gap in power and wealth between the richest and the poorest nation on earth has increased by almost 300x (that’s a sum total of 29,900%).
+ Purchasing power parity among the extreme poor is still dismally low. More than half of the humans that have ever been alive are, in fact, alive today—and India, China, and Brazil all have positive demographic momentum to indicate that by 2050 the world’s population may reach levels of around twelve billion (with the highest estimate of the world’s population by 2100 hovering around 20 billion). Struggles over resources have been increasing and are expected to increase in the future. The worlds most well-versed geopolitical and development theorists have all predicted a world returning to power politics and multi-power resource struggles with water being the most valuable and fought-over resource.
+ Whereas Mr. Richards argues that international laws and conventions are a very certain and definitive step toward world peace, international laws and conventions are in fact effectively useless in the face of international aggression. The UN’s dictates and resolutions are continually ignored around the world at no expense or consequence to the belligerents. The opinions of international courts are seldom heard. The most important warrants issued by the ICC have led to no arrests, or, in the case that they do lead to arrest, have taken many long years and the decline in power of the perpetrator. Meanwhile the most powerful players in the world, many of whom are guilty of war crimes and crimes against humanity, remain altogether untouchable, and those courts that do issue warrants for their arrest quickly find themselves the victims of international scrutiny.
+ Whereas Mr. Richards proclaims that war as a viable political solution to international problems is decreasing in popularity, there have been many times in history when war has fallen from popularity and then risen again, and many times in history where the world’s powers have proclaimed eras of peace only to find that they are followed by war. War is not a permanent situation—and neither is peace. To presume that the world can attain world peace in the coming decades is delusional and dangerous and will only lead policymakers to ignore real potential crises around the globe. The world, as it is, can work toward world peace, but it cannot expect to attain that peace in any certain number of decades—if the struggle is to be won, it must first be accepted as a perpetual struggle.
It is heartening to read a work so set on the path of world peace. To believe that world peace is an attainable goal is to make world peace possible—it is something none of us should reject and all of us should embrace. But to presume that world peace is imminent and natural, something coming in this next century as the obvious product of development, is dangerous. If world peace is to ever be a reality then those familiar with world events must be an always-active part of bringing about that peace. Exposing the trend of positive events, as Jesse Richards does in this great undertaking of a work, is a critical step toward the development of world peace. It should be suggested reading for anyone intensely interested in a well-rounded view on such affairs. But as we must increase our vigilance in regards to positive events, we must also increase our vigilance in regards to negative events—and we must realize that they exist together, that in the modern, globalized world, wealth builds itself upon the ruins of poverty, and peace in one place comes at the expense of war in another place. This is the unfortunate but very real situation in which we live.
While we hold The Secret Peace in one hand, we must hold in the other the list of those who have died from war and genocide, the list of those who remain without healthy drinking water, the list of those who remain isolated and disenfranchised because of their politics, ethnicity, gender, or religion, and the list of those whose nations are entirely destroyed without making the headlines of a single major news company in the most powerful nation on earth. We must be prepared for a world in which water is the new oil, as today’s experts predict- a world in which twelve, even twenty billion compete for increasingly scare and always-necessary resources. As we enter the next 90 years of the 21st century we need to hold these all together and recognize that while Mr. Richards is correct in arguing that world peace is attainable, and that it in fact might be nearer to us now as a world than it ever has been before, it is still a fragile and far-off thing—and making the mistake of thinking that peace will just come to us will destroy it at once.
REVIEW: THE SECRET PEACE by JESSE RICHARDS
In his recent book The Secret Peace: Exposing the Positive Trend of World Events (New York: Book and Ladder Press, 2010), Jesse Richards raises many good points, a work which seeks to repaint the telling of world events as something positive and promising rather than negative and foreboding. Mr. Richards brings to light the evidence usually mired in darkness, evidence that suggests we, as a world, are more peaceful and affluent than we ever have been before and, furthermore, that this state of being will sustain itself and compound upon itself so that we are increasingly peaceful and affluent as time goes on. His work reveals an optimism often lost in the hearts of those who work in international politics, and it should give us pause to consider: If, as Richards argues, the world is set on a path toward peace, then how can we make sure we stay on that path?
The Secret Peace asserts that “human imagination, ingenuity, and nobility know no bounds”. It is a correct assertion that is too often forgotten. Let us take a single facet of world peace: nuclear disarmament. People proclaim that nuclear weapons cannot be done away with entirely—that they are as necessary to strategy and politics as food to a starving man. I would counter that three hundred years ago, slaves, in a huge part of the world, were even more necessary to the economic well-being of a slave-using nation than nuclear arms are for strategy today. Nations would say “I will not be the first to jeopardize my economy by taking a moral stance against slavery”, just as nations today might say “I will not be the first to jeopardize my position among the world’s powers by dismantling my nuclear arsenal”. But countries did renounce slavery—all over the world people became the first, and then the second, and then the third—and now slavery consists of illegal human trafficking and labor rings in the peripheral areas of the world. If nuclear weapons can undergo the same process, as many wish it to do, then can the making of war itself undergo a similar process? Can nations begin to accept nonviolent action as the better solution? Mr. Richards assures us that the answer is yes, because there is a change occurring within us as individuals and in our respective societies—it is a change which will ultimately revolutionize the way nations behave with one another and the way humankind interacts with itself.
Media outlets—like individual beings—are more attracted to the dramatic and the emotional than they are to the everyday. They are drawn to traumatic events and so do not expose positive events. Positive events occur every day. Just this weekend I returned from a conference in DC full of people committed to ending genocide around the world, and there have been few moments in my life when I have been so inspired, and no time in my life when I have been so fully surrounded by so many hopeful and determined people. Reporting significant positive events should be just as high a priority as reporting significant negative events, and Jesse Richards reaches this conclusion very early in his book—it is a conclusion we would do well to consider.
For thousands of years people have lived in poverty and in hunger—for the majority of mankind’s existence, in fact, the majority of human beings have survived on the edge of survival. In this particular moment we are faced with some interesting circumstances, as Jesse Richards points out: There are less people in extreme poverty today as a proportion of the world’s population than ever before. Proportionally, there are less deaths by war and less deaths by genocide than during the preceding ages. We hear about atrocities—what we do not hear about is that force which is pushing atrocity off of the stage, the force of world peace that Richards envisions.
It is also true that nonviolence is on the rise. In 1789 even the “loving” Camille Desmoulins could not envision a French Revolution without blood. In that revolution, more than two million French citizens were killed (of a population of only 25-29 million)—and that is not inclusive of the wars with Prussia, Germany, England, and the Napoleonic wars that followed the course of revolution. The American Revolution required a years-long war with the mightiest nation on earth. The Egyptian Revolution of 2011 required only a public that demanded change but was committed to nonviolence. Less than one thousand died in that revolution. The Tunisian Revolution was much the same. The current demonstrations in Chile are much the same. The protests in New York City are much the same. It is not that people in the past advocated violence over nonviolence—they did not recognize nonviolence as a viable practice in public and private policy. This has changed very much in the past two hundred years and there is reason to hope that in the following two hundred years the pattern will continue.
The one part of Jesse Richard’s work which should be well-received by anyone intent on changing the world can be found in his Conclusion on pages 342-344. His ten-point plan for mutually promoting peace, development, and justice will resonate with anyone who has worked with humanitarian campaigns in the past. All of his suggestions in this ten-point plan are valid and I urge anyone interested in international policymaking to take them into great consideration. Specifically, his call to reduce arms selling and trafficking on the international stage should be received and implemented immediately—as Mr. Richards says, wars do not begin with people slapping one another on the face. The United States must acknowledge that it is a major player in the world’s wars simply by providing such a huge percentage of the world’s weapons.
These things considered, the skeptic eye will also catch a few questionable things in The Secret Peace and bring them to attention.
It is very dangerous to presume that recent history can anticipate the fate of the long-term future. It is also dangerous to ignore what Mr. Richards does not mention in his book. Jesse Richards suggests that the media is attracted to the traumatic—but this is, in fact, not the simple truth. They are attracted to emotion, but they are businesses and as such they seek profits. They are also heavily engaged with other business and government groups. Many of the world’s worst atrocities are invisible, and many of the world’s most threatening facts remain untold. People do not act on affairs of which they have not even heard, involving places and events they do not know exist. Consider these truths:
+Less than half of Americans know that the deadliest war since World War II (DRC, c. 1998-present) even happened. Many Americans have not even heard of the DRC.
+Many Americans do not consider genocide as something relevant in the modern world—they are unaware of any genocides except for the Holocaust, and a great many are unaware of the Holocaust.
+Whereas Mr. Richards makes the point that nearly 100,000,000 people died of war and genocide in the 20th century, between 2000-2010 just under 10,000,000 have died of war and genocide—which, although a significant and meaningful change in the percentage of deaths due to such causes, is not, in real numbers, any different per year. We should also do well to remember that the 1914-1946 period was one of very unusual levels of violence and atrocity and is historically unique among only a few other such periods in world history.
+ Whereas Mr. Richards makes the point that the percentage of people living in extreme poverty has decreased, and that in recent years even the real number of those in extreme poverty has decreased, the gap between the extreme poor and the extreme wealthy, and the gap between rich/powerful and poor/weak nations, has expanded exponentially. Since 1700 the gap in power and wealth between the richest and the poorest nation on earth has increased by almost 300x (that’s a sum total of 29,900%).
+ Purchasing power parity among the extreme poor is still dismally low. More than half of the humans that have ever been alive are, in fact, alive today—and India, China, and Brazil all have positive demographic momentum to indicate that by 2050 the world’s population may reach levels of around twelve billion (with the highest estimate of the world’s population by 2100 hovering around 20 billion). Struggles over resources have been increasing and are expected to increase in the future. The worlds most well-versed geopolitical and development theorists have all predicted a world returning to power politics and multi-power resource struggles with water being the most valuable and fought-over resource.
+ Whereas Mr. Richards argues that international laws and conventions are a very certain and definitive step toward world peace, international laws and conventions are in fact effectively useless in the face of international aggression. The UN’s dictates and resolutions are continually ignored around the world at no expense or consequence to the belligerents. The opinions of international courts are seldom heard. The most important warrants issued by the ICC have led to no arrests, or, in the case that they do lead to arrest, have taken many long years and the decline in power of the perpetrator. Meanwhile the most powerful players in the world, many of whom are guilty of war crimes and crimes against humanity, remain altogether untouchable, and those courts that do issue warrants for their arrest quickly find themselves the victims of international scrutiny.
+ Whereas Mr. Richards proclaims that war as a viable political solution to international problems is decreasing in popularity, there have been many times in history when war has fallen from popularity and then risen again, and many times in history where the world’s powers have proclaimed eras of peace only to find that they are followed by war. War is not a permanent situation—and neither is peace. To presume that the world can attain world peace in the coming decades is delusional and dangerous and will only lead policymakers to ignore real potential crises around the globe. The world, as it is, can work toward world peace, but it cannot expect to attain that peace in any certain number of decades—if the struggle is to be won, it must first be accepted as a perpetual struggle.
It is heartening to read a work so set on the path of world peace. To believe that world peace is an attainable goal is to make world peace possible—it is something none of us should reject and all of us should embrace. But to presume that world peace is imminent and natural, something coming in this next century as the obvious product of development, is dangerous. If world peace is to ever be a reality then those familiar with world events must be an always-active part of bringing about that peace. Exposing the trend of positive events, as Jesse Richards does in this great undertaking of a work, is a critical step toward the development of world peace. It should be suggested reading for anyone intensely interested in a well-rounded view on such affairs. But as we must increase our vigilance in regards to positive events, we must also increase our vigilance in regards to negative events—and we must realize that they exist together, that in the modern, globalized world, wealth builds itself upon the ruins of poverty, and peace in one place comes at the expense of war in another place. This is the unfortunate but very real situation in which we live.
While we hold The Secret Peace in one hand, we must hold in the other the list of those who have died from war and genocide, the list of those who remain without healthy drinking water, the list of those who remain isolated and disenfranchised because of their politics, ethnicity, gender, or religion, and the list of those whose nations are entirely destroyed without making the headlines of a single major news company in the most powerful nation on earth. We must be prepared for a world in which water is the new oil, as today’s experts predict- a world in which twelve, even twenty billion compete for increasingly scare and always-necessary resources. As we enter the next 90 years of the 21st century we need to hold these all together and recognize that while Mr. Richards is correct in arguing that world peace is attainable, and that it in fact might be nearer to us now as a world than it ever has been before, it is still a fragile and far-off thing—and making the mistake of thinking that peace will just come to us will destroy it at once.
Social Media Undermines Principles of The Party
BARON LAUDERMILK - 25 OCTOBER 2011
Beijing has a long history of using propaganda to spread its nationalist message and the Party’s core principles to its younger citizens. It has utilized television programs and newspaper outlets to counter subversive narratives. And Beijing clearly has not accepted any type of challenges to its propaganda. But since the emergence of social media in China, which has captured hundreds of millions of its netizens across the country, Beijing’s Propaganda Department faces a direct challenge. Using social media has become a normal part of life for more than 200 million urban Chinese people. They are using social media websites for the same reasons Americans are in the West: to talk about politics, the news, and probably most importantly, to acquire the facts about social, political, and economic issues. Social media outlets, including Renren, Weibo, and even Facebook, are spreading the truth about corrupt officials, scandals, and questioning and countering messages from the central government. Social networking in China is undermining Beijing’s official stories goals and even threatening to subvert the government’s credibility. Before the advancement of social media, Beijing was able to maintain a strong hold onto its power by controlling all outlets of communication. Prior to the explosion of social media, Chinese peoples were not able to tweet new information they found that could expose a corrupt official, or quickly organize people to protest in the streets. Although young Chinese students were able to shake the Party to its core in June 1989, they were severely disadvantaged because of the lack of communication tools they had at their disposal. During that time, China’s cities were still in their beginnings, and government agencies could easily regulate and monitor email, letters, and cell phone calls During June 1989 in Beijing, China, the only people who had the technology to protest were the students; they had access to computers, emails, phones, and some information, though regulated and monitored by the government. The majority of the factory workers and farmers were left out of the loop. Imagine if an outburst with the same scale as the 1989 incident took place today. Social media itself would have transformed the 1989 incident to something similar to the Arab Spring. Despite the government’s deliberately opaque procedures and corruption, social media has brought down some of the Party’s most powerful members. As I said earlier, five years ago, this would have been impossible. In 2008, a Lin Jiaxing, a former party secretary of Shenzhen Marine Affairs Bureau, was sacked for accosting a young girl when he was drunk. Video footage of him forcing the girl into a men’s bathroom and verbally abusing her was caught on tape. Bloggers got a hold of this information and uploaded it on Weibo and Renren. The story spread across the web like a wild fire. The government was not nimble enough to delete the overwhelming amount of post about the story. The popularization of the issue on the internet contributed to the arrest of Jiaxing. Weibo (The Chinese version of Twitter) users have become more aggressive in striving to expose the actions of corrupt officials. Within mere hours of the high-speed train crash by Wenzhou in late June 2011, online users began publically demanding, all over Weibo, for a report that included the accountable officials. Within five days, the Prime Minister of China, Wen Jiaobo, promised, with a sincere bow in front of hundreds of people, that he would investigate in the accident.Important officials who governed the accident were punished. Certainly social media is shedding light on corrupt practices that are occurring deep behind the secret walls of the Communist Party. Officials a few years ago could prevent a journalist from publishing something detrimental to their career by making a few phone calls to a newspaper company. But in this 21st century, in just a blink of an eye, an official can be fired over a tweet. Social media is empowering Chinese citizens and forcing their officials to be accountable for their actions. One online Chinese activist, Huaguoshan Zongshuji, saw an interesting pattern among corrupt officials. He noticed that although they drove simple cars, and did not wear elaborate suits, they wore extremely expensive watches, which are sometimes valued at one hundred times the government officer’s official salary. Via Weibo, he uploaded a forty-eight page PowerPoint Presentation of officials wearing high priced watches. Within days it was blocked by the government. His story is just an example of how powerful social networking can be in exposing corruption in China, and how the Chinese government is striving hard to protect its own members. The fact that the Chinese government blocked it shows that they knew it would cause the people to become upset. Zhongshuji believes that since there is not any legal method to express dissent, the only option is through online conversation. Social media is also changing many Chinese peoples’ most fundamental views about the people around them. A long time ago, Beijing used filtered and selected information about Japanese people, particularly about their actions during the Nanjing massacre and their invasion in China during World War II, to spark nationalism in the youth. They did this by pushing pugnacious news reports, and emphasizing the negative parts of the Japanese history in textbooks. But social media has allowed more diversified perspectives to be seen, and circulated through social media and networks. The East Japan Earthquake in March 2011 demonstrated that Weibo can allow the truth to come out. Bloggers consistently posted pictures, news, and analysis of the issue. Chinese students studying in Japan also contributed to the discussion by talking about how their Japanese friends were upset and horrified by the event. Although the Chinese media did not air much of the turmoil that was going on in Japan, many Chinese people sympathized with the Japanese people because of seeing pictures of people suffering. In one online pole, 23,029 people expressed support and sympathy for the Japanese people who were affected by the earthquake, while only 260 people responded that they were happy that this happened. Clearly the information that was sent to the Chinese in the 1960s and 1970s that were designed to push nationalist goals have become ineffective because of the widespread growth social networking. Social media is eradicating many of China’s older and outdated stereotypes and traditions. This will make it more difficult for Beijing to control overseas student’s thoughts, especially since they are exposed to free media and press, where they have access to many perspectives from a wide variety of people. The Chinese government has showed that it is nervous and feels threatened by social media. In late February 2011, during the midst of the Arab Spring in the Middle East, police flooded the streets of Beijing after the government realized that students and activities were using social media outlets and microblogging to organize protest. During the day of the protest, police officers were everywhere, armed and ready to forcibly dismantle anything that even slightly appeared to be a protest. No protestors showed up, but the police stayed into the evening to ensure that that there was not any viable threat. The Chinese government is very aware that social media, with its fast updates and connectivity with users all over China and the world, can easily organize people to protest within minutes. Social media is transforming Chinese society and politics in an unprecedented way. Just five years ago, Party officials and government officers had nothing to fear from ordinary citizens. They could embezzle money, cheat whomever they wanted, and, for the most part, get away with it. If an average citizen had a complaint about an official, the official was able to pay off media outlets to ensure stories never leaked. But now, even though the Party still heavily censors media via television, email, and online content, it is having difficulties regulating, monitoring, and deleting the thousands of rapid post that occur every second on Weibo, Renren, and other social networking websites. Social media is bringing down corrupt officials, forcing a long time opaque government to become more transparent, and making officials at all levels more accountable. As long as social networking is thriving in China, it will empower the people, and slowly but surely equalize the people and its government. |
The Chilean Winter: A People's Drive for Fair and Equal Public UniversitiesSARAH VOLPENHEIN - 24 October 2011
SANTIAGO, Chile--Though regarded as one of the most developed and stable countries of Latin America, Chile has erupted with widespread student protests over the last five to six months. The Confederation of Chilean Students (CONFECH) is demanding equal access to quality education. Education protests are not new to Chile. Dressed in their black and white uniforms, students took to the streets in 2006 in what is called the Penguin Revolution. Their demands of “quality education for all Chileans, irrespective of class, ability, or spending power” have not changed. The Chilean education model has essentially flipped since Gen. Augusto Pinochet assumed power after the military coup in 1973. “Chile’s educational model has changed drastically in the last 40 years. Before the Pinochet dictatorship that began in the early ‘70s, as much as 90 percent of university budgets came from the state. Now that figure is around 10 percent,”reported Al Jazeera’s Craig Mauro. Advised by a group of Chilean economists called the Chicago boys who studied at the University of Chicago, Pinochet implemented a slew of neoliberal policies during his dictatorship. Neoliberal reforms encouraged free trade, reduced government spending, and privatized government-run corporations. In particular, the protestors take issue with the high privatization of Chilean schools. About 90 percent of schools are private, and “40 percent of students attend free public high schools” according to an Univision article. Comparatively, roughly 92 percent of U.S. students attended public high schools in 2007 according to the National Center for Educational Statistics. Chilean high schools are divided into three groups. First, there are private schools, often called “colegios privados” or “particulares”. Second, there are public schools, or “colegios publicos”. These are also called “municipales" because municipalities own them. Finally, there are the half-private, half-public schools called “subvencionados” because the government subsidizes them. At first glance, privatization appears to be positive because it yields “the best education in the region”. “In 2009, [Chile] outscored all other Latin American states in the OECD’s PISA rankings,” reported a BBC article. “These are used to compare educational standards across countries.” However, on closer inspection, one realizes that Chile’s education system is divided along class lines. “Of the 65 countries that participated in the PISA tests, Chile ranked 64th in terms of segregation across social classes in its schools and colleges,” said the BBC article citing Chilean Professor Mario Waissbluth. Private schools are expensive, thereby limiting access to quality education for students from a low socio-economic background. “If you are poor,” said Camila LeMaster Esquivel, a Chilean student protester and Ohio University undergraduate, “you go to public schools, which don’t really prepare you for college. These students don’t have the education to pass the exam we all have to take, the PSU.” The PSU, or Prueba de Selección Universitaria, is Chile’s equivalent of the United States’ SAT, the standardized test that determines college admission. There are four types of Chilean higher education institutions. First are the traditional universities, which only accept the highest PSU scores. There are 25 “universidades tradicionales”, all of which were founded before 1980. Sixteen of these are public and nine are private. Second, there are 39 new private universities. Both the traditional universities and the new private universities “focus on long-term (four to seven years) undergraduate programs that lead to the ‘licenciatura’ [translated ‘degree’] and to professional titles”. Third are the 48 professional learning institutes. These are private institutes that offer four-year programs for professional degrees other than those awarded by universities. Finally, Chile also has 117 private technical training centers, which offer two-year programs. According to a student activist video, those students who attend private high schools, on average, obtain significantly higher PSU scores than students who attend public high schools. Consequently, these students get their pick of universities. Furthermore, the majority of higher education scholarships, over 50 percent, go to traditional universities, which require high PSU scores. Students argue that, as a result of privatization, Chile’s schools care less about students’ educational development and more about turning a profit. Banners with the slogan “Education is not for sale” can be seen among crowds of protestors. “Private institutions of higher education...sell you the degree basically,” said LeMaster Esquivel. “My mom was a teacher in one of the technical institutes of higher education. Well, she had some really bad students who offered money to her to get an ‘A’.... The dean told her that she should take the money and give them better grades. He said they had parents who paid both semesters at the beginning of the year so those girls could not fail.” Meanwhile, many university students who want an education drop out due to mounting debt. An estimated 60 percent of university students finish their studies. “Chile’s university fees are on average among the highest in the world,” reported Al Jazeera’s Craig Mauro. The burden of paying these fees weighs mostly on the families. La Otra Prensa reported that Chilean families provide 84 percent of resources that finance higher education. Conversely, the global average contribution by families is 31 percent. Since “no more than 20 percent of the population could finance the cost of higher education with their own resources”, many Chilean students and families take out loans. The lack of scholarships also drives Chilean students toward loans. Although the government offered to reduce the interest rate on private loans from 5.6 percent to two percent, similar to that of loans from public universities, taking out a loan is extremely risky especially considering that 40 percent of university students will drop out. “Students must get a loan to pay for tuition and then their parents get a loan to pay for rent and food,” said LeMaster Esquivel. Since Chilean universities do not have dormitories, students must find the money for housing and transportation as well. And oftentimes, transportation means more than a quick bus ride to school. Many students must travel long distances from rural homes to live in the city where the best universities are located. Indeed Chile’s education system is segregated between rural and urban with less funding, more unqualified teachers, and worse infrastructure in rural schools. The best schools are located in megacities like Santiago. Living in a metropolis like Santiago is far from cheap. LeMaster Esquivel compared a students’ living costs in Santiago to those in New York City. Thus, student protestors are demanding that the playing field be leveled. Students are determined to have their demands met. Unlike the 2006 protesters, they refuse to let their movement die. Although Chilean President Sebastian Piñera has stipulated that they must stop the protests and the occupations of the schools before the government negotiates with them, the students refuse. Armed with mastery of social media management, the students are continuing to mobilize the population for equal, quality education for all. |
Japan's Nuclear Energy Future
ALLISON HIGHT - 14 OCTOBER 2011
After Japan’s former prime minister Naoto Kan took a decidedly anti-nuclear stance at the end of his term, it appeared as if the country could soon be heading in the direction of weaning off their dependence on nuclear energy. When his successor, Yoshihiko Noda, was elected from the same political party, the relatively new Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ), there was a distinct hope that the government’s stance on nuclear power would continue along the same trajectory.
Within weeks of Noda’s inauguration speech, that hope remained shaky at best.
Following the March 11th, 2011 earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear disaster, there arose a call as never before to end Japan’s dependence on nuclear energy. This call was echoed in many other countries as well, most notably Germany, who has pledged to phase out their power plants by 2022. Kan responded by taking an anti-nuclear stance and saying that Japan should engage alternate solutions to replace the energy produced by their fifty-four power plants. However, so vicious was the governmental backlash from his comments that he was forced to retract his words as a personal opinion instead of the official party stance on the issue. After he left office, the team of researchers assembled to address the repercussions of the Fukushima nuclear plant meltdown was disbanded.
Though Noda began his term in office by agreeing to produce a new energy plan in the next year to reduce Japan’s dependence on nuclear sources, higher-ups in the DPJ who have expressed anti-nuclear opinions find themselves distinctly in the minority, despite that fact that polls demonstrate that seventy percent of the Japanese people are in favor of alternate energy sources (up significantly from pre- March 11th numbers). The government and the people, then, are divided to such an extent that rare public protests have occurred in the last few months in an attempt to pressure the DPJ to change their stance on the issue.
However, past party policies and actions do not make it clear what position the DPJ should take. Established in 1996 and expanded in 1998, the DPJ was originally created in response to the conservative Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) to serve as a voice for the people. Valuing small businesses, self-sufficiency, foreign relations, and environmental protection, the party has attracted left-leaning, middle and lower-class citizens, many of the same people who wish to phase out nuclear energy. Although one of the DPJ’s seven proposals is to “lead the world in global environmental protection” by “promot[ing] the use of renewable energy,” their current trajectory seems to be leading them in the opposite direction. Recently, not only has Noda agreed to reopen approximately two-thirds of the power plants that were closed following Fukushima’s fallout, but he is also planning to sell nuclear power technology to several other countries, including Vietnam, Lithuania, Turkey, and the United States, a decision that has left many questioning the government’s true future intentions in regards to energy sources.
Supporters of nuclear use argue that the DPJ’s support of healthy environmental policy falls right in line with their endorsement of the power plants. Indeed, when compared to other power sources, uranium usage is currently leading in dual efficiency and cleanliness, as it generates several million times more power than coal and petroleum when used in equal amounts, while producing a fraction of the carbon dioxide emissions. However, the long-term effects of nuclear by-products may prove even more devastating than atmospheric deterioration, as the waste produced by the uranium reaction takes thousands of years to reach safe levels of radiation.
The appropriate stance for the DPJ to take on the future of nuclear power, then, depends on how long-term the party wishes to think and whether they place more emphasis on the energy demand today or the burden of radioactive waste for future generations. Considering the recent political situation in Japan, it is not surprising that they are currently choosing to concentrate on the immediate need: in the past six years, Japan has had the same number of prime ministers come in and out of office, to the extent that most Japanese people no longer bother to keep track of the name of even the current minister. With the country still in upheaval, there is no evidence that Noda will break this trend. As there seems to be little use, then, in forming long-term plans without guaranteed time to implement them, Noda is focusing on what he sees as the best option for the people right now.
As in any political process, though, support for his actions is vital for significant progress to occur, no matter the direction. Though the majority of the people are not yet recovered enough from Fukushima to support the revitalization of the nuclear industry, causing Noda’s approval rating to steadily decrease – currently at 55% and dropping – a more immediate obstacle is the DPJ’s rival party, the LDP. Though the DPJ holds 106 seats in the upper body of legislation, the House of Councilors, the LDP is not far behind at 83. With a total of 242 seats in the House, both parties hold a significant enough amount of power to severely delay or stop any bills Noda wishes to push through. The LDP is already calling for more debate on the future of nuclear power, arguing that whatever the end result may be, more time is needed to discuss any and all possibilities. However, like the DPJ, they, too, are split among themselves on the issue, making its future even more uncertain.
Clearly aware that his current plan of action is unpopular with Japan’s citizen population, Noda has placed considerable emphasis on the tests that are being done to ensure further safety of the country’s nuclear plants before they are reopened. Though he claims that the tests are rigorous, it is highly doubtful that they can simulate the effects that another earthquake of the same magnitude as the one on March 11th could cause. Additionally, recent research produced by University of Tokyo professor Yoshinobu Tsuji that a tsunami up to twice as high as for what the city is prepared could hit the Hamaoka nuclear power plant has only served to further turn popular opinion against nuclear power.
Noda, then, will have to tread very carefully in the weeks and months to come. The scale of the Fukushima disaster clearly acted as a catalyst to invoke Japan’s public fervor, and unlike for past issues, the people are not willing to consign the country’s nuclear fate solely to the hands of the government. The two will remain at odds, then, until a compromise is reached: whether the people or the prime minister will have to give more, though, remains to be seen.
After Japan’s former prime minister Naoto Kan took a decidedly anti-nuclear stance at the end of his term, it appeared as if the country could soon be heading in the direction of weaning off their dependence on nuclear energy. When his successor, Yoshihiko Noda, was elected from the same political party, the relatively new Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ), there was a distinct hope that the government’s stance on nuclear power would continue along the same trajectory.
Within weeks of Noda’s inauguration speech, that hope remained shaky at best.
Following the March 11th, 2011 earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear disaster, there arose a call as never before to end Japan’s dependence on nuclear energy. This call was echoed in many other countries as well, most notably Germany, who has pledged to phase out their power plants by 2022. Kan responded by taking an anti-nuclear stance and saying that Japan should engage alternate solutions to replace the energy produced by their fifty-four power plants. However, so vicious was the governmental backlash from his comments that he was forced to retract his words as a personal opinion instead of the official party stance on the issue. After he left office, the team of researchers assembled to address the repercussions of the Fukushima nuclear plant meltdown was disbanded.
Though Noda began his term in office by agreeing to produce a new energy plan in the next year to reduce Japan’s dependence on nuclear sources, higher-ups in the DPJ who have expressed anti-nuclear opinions find themselves distinctly in the minority, despite that fact that polls demonstrate that seventy percent of the Japanese people are in favor of alternate energy sources (up significantly from pre- March 11th numbers). The government and the people, then, are divided to such an extent that rare public protests have occurred in the last few months in an attempt to pressure the DPJ to change their stance on the issue.
However, past party policies and actions do not make it clear what position the DPJ should take. Established in 1996 and expanded in 1998, the DPJ was originally created in response to the conservative Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) to serve as a voice for the people. Valuing small businesses, self-sufficiency, foreign relations, and environmental protection, the party has attracted left-leaning, middle and lower-class citizens, many of the same people who wish to phase out nuclear energy. Although one of the DPJ’s seven proposals is to “lead the world in global environmental protection” by “promot[ing] the use of renewable energy,” their current trajectory seems to be leading them in the opposite direction. Recently, not only has Noda agreed to reopen approximately two-thirds of the power plants that were closed following Fukushima’s fallout, but he is also planning to sell nuclear power technology to several other countries, including Vietnam, Lithuania, Turkey, and the United States, a decision that has left many questioning the government’s true future intentions in regards to energy sources.
Supporters of nuclear use argue that the DPJ’s support of healthy environmental policy falls right in line with their endorsement of the power plants. Indeed, when compared to other power sources, uranium usage is currently leading in dual efficiency and cleanliness, as it generates several million times more power than coal and petroleum when used in equal amounts, while producing a fraction of the carbon dioxide emissions. However, the long-term effects of nuclear by-products may prove even more devastating than atmospheric deterioration, as the waste produced by the uranium reaction takes thousands of years to reach safe levels of radiation.
The appropriate stance for the DPJ to take on the future of nuclear power, then, depends on how long-term the party wishes to think and whether they place more emphasis on the energy demand today or the burden of radioactive waste for future generations. Considering the recent political situation in Japan, it is not surprising that they are currently choosing to concentrate on the immediate need: in the past six years, Japan has had the same number of prime ministers come in and out of office, to the extent that most Japanese people no longer bother to keep track of the name of even the current minister. With the country still in upheaval, there is no evidence that Noda will break this trend. As there seems to be little use, then, in forming long-term plans without guaranteed time to implement them, Noda is focusing on what he sees as the best option for the people right now.
As in any political process, though, support for his actions is vital for significant progress to occur, no matter the direction. Though the majority of the people are not yet recovered enough from Fukushima to support the revitalization of the nuclear industry, causing Noda’s approval rating to steadily decrease – currently at 55% and dropping – a more immediate obstacle is the DPJ’s rival party, the LDP. Though the DPJ holds 106 seats in the upper body of legislation, the House of Councilors, the LDP is not far behind at 83. With a total of 242 seats in the House, both parties hold a significant enough amount of power to severely delay or stop any bills Noda wishes to push through. The LDP is already calling for more debate on the future of nuclear power, arguing that whatever the end result may be, more time is needed to discuss any and all possibilities. However, like the DPJ, they, too, are split among themselves on the issue, making its future even more uncertain.
Clearly aware that his current plan of action is unpopular with Japan’s citizen population, Noda has placed considerable emphasis on the tests that are being done to ensure further safety of the country’s nuclear plants before they are reopened. Though he claims that the tests are rigorous, it is highly doubtful that they can simulate the effects that another earthquake of the same magnitude as the one on March 11th could cause. Additionally, recent research produced by University of Tokyo professor Yoshinobu Tsuji that a tsunami up to twice as high as for what the city is prepared could hit the Hamaoka nuclear power plant has only served to further turn popular opinion against nuclear power.
Noda, then, will have to tread very carefully in the weeks and months to come. The scale of the Fukushima disaster clearly acted as a catalyst to invoke Japan’s public fervor, and unlike for past issues, the people are not willing to consign the country’s nuclear fate solely to the hands of the government. The two will remain at odds, then, until a compromise is reached: whether the people or the prime minister will have to give more, though, remains to be seen.
China's Economy Booms: People See Few Benefits
BARON LAUDERMILK - 12 OCTOBER 2011
The world has silently envied China’s incredible economic progress since the late 1970s. Westerners cringed with jealously when China came out as the world’s new economic engine after the United State’s economy tanked in 2008. China’s newly built capitalist economy guided by a one-party system is impressive, even for people who despise the Chinese government and its radical polices. To the average Joe, China seems to be building cities as large as New York city every year. And it seems that China’s bull market economy will be charging into the future without any problems.
Even at many U.S. universities, it appears that the Chinese students are the most affluent people around. They seem to be the new Joneses. At Ohio University, the Chinese students have reaped the benefits from China’s economic miracle. Many students stare in awe when they see a young Chinese student cruising in a brand new Mercedes Benz through the forests and Appalachia of Athens, Ohio. I have heard American college students say, “Those Chinese people are so lucky, their economy is making all the Chinese people rich.”
Unfortunately, the Chinese undergraduates in Western universities, whose’ families typically come from high government positions or state-owned industries, do not begin to represent the whole Chinese population. In Shanghai (average annual incomes are much higher than in almost every other city in China) , the salary of a average Chinese family just reached $10,000 a year in 2011. Earning this income, even if a family saves two- thirds of it, would still not enable to the family to send their child to the West. So the questions become, are the middle class and lower class Chinese people seeing this new wealth to the extent Westerns think they are? How is inflation affecting their savings? Are their wages rising in proportion with the economic gains? What is preventing Chinese people from buying up Western goods?
There is no doubt that since China’s entrance into the globalized world people are better off than they were before 1978, under Mao Zedong’s leadership. The unemployment rate in China is relatively low compared to the developed nations and wages are going up. Coastal factories in Beijing, Shanghai, and Guangzhou are popping up every day, and minimum wages are skyrocketing. Surprisingly, and contrary to what many people believe, an overwhelming number of factories are raising wages because they are having difficulty finding full-time employees. Luckily, much of the rise in wages on China’s coast are incrementally and surely trickling out to all the different regions, including Tibet and Xinjiang, two of China’s poorest provinces. So yes, the Chinese people are seeing a rise of wages across the country, but the average salary in China is still low compared to the United States and European standards. The average wage in southern China is only about 75 cents an hour.
But China’s low employment rate and rising wages do not mean Chinese people buy many of the new goods and services that are typically found in the West, such as cars, homes, laptops and smart phones, because Chinese people save a huge portion of their money. Why are they saving their money when the economy is booming? Here are five good reasons: (1) China’s volatile market puts off investors. To be more specific, savings interest rates are low. (2)The rise of inflation is much higher than saving account rates (3) The soaring price of food. (4)The lack of a dependable social net. (5) The rise of housing prices.
The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is keeping interest so low that it cannot keep up with China’s rising inflation. The New York Times interviewed a couple in Jilin, China, who could not afford to own a home even though they made $16,000 a year, which is much more than the national average. This partly due to the fact that Chinese savings account rates are only three percent while China’s inflation is over six percent. The couple in Jilin, as with millions of other Chinese households, are skeptical of China’s unstable stock market, so they save more than two thirds of their money.
Food prices are soaring. The prices of pork, vegetables, edible oil, flour and even rice are all seeing drastic rises, making households’ budgets tight. Chinese people cannot spend their money on new gadgets and clothes when more than half of it is going towards food. Inflation is not the only reason that is pushing up the price of food. Flooding in southern China is wiping out important crops. A flood in Zhejiang province in June 2011 damaged more than 241,600 hectares, and 432,000 hectares in total have been affected by flooding across the country. The constant rise of prices is making Chinese people stash as much money as possible until the market indicates stability. Currently, there are no signs that food prices are going to decline in the near future. Despite the CCP’s price controls that were implemented in November 2010, the increase in food prices will not end any time soon.
One would think that as the Chinese economy develops, as China buys trillions of U.S. reserves, and as the Chinese government modernizes its military, that it would also funnel some of its new money towards its people in a social safety net. In the last three decades, the CCP eliminated its, “Iron Rice Bowl” socialist policy, which guaranteed people a steady job and retirement benefits, and instead shifted its economy to a more individualistic, take-care-of-yourself type of economy. This has forced Chinese people, even those reaping the prosperity generated by China’s economic boom, to take care of their aging parents, and to save for their own retirement.
Homes throughout China, especially its largest cities, are as expensive as in London and Tokyo. IMF figures demonstrate that a 70- square meter home in Beijing costs 20 times the average households’ income. A survey done by the People’s Bank of China in September, 2011, found that 76% percent of residents saw housing prices as too high, and a large portion of them believed that the prices would keep rising. The possibility rising housing prices across the country will not persuade its Chinese to spend more money on foreign goods. To the contrary, the very idea that housing prices may rise in the near future will compel many Chinese people, young and old, to save money.
The above five reasons why Chinese people are not spending money shows that the economic boom has not allowed the majority of the population to enjoy its benefits. Actually, China’s middle and lower classes are paying for the wealthy elites to live their extravagant lives. The average Chinese couple’s saving account rates are low so the banks can funnel that money into real estate. Inflation is high for the average person, it does not affect the government officials or corporate leaders as much. The lack of a social net increases the feeling of insecurity in the people, but keeps taxes on businesses low. And housing prices are making it virtually impossible for someone earning an average wage in Beijing, Shanghai or Guangzhou to purchase a home, but real estate speculators are becoming rich. Ninety-nine percent of Chinese people are paying for the other one percent to do whatever they want, and buy whatever they want. This situation appears to be very similar to that of the United States.
If the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) can find a way to encourage its people to spend, it will kill several birds with one stone. It will alleviate the West’s anger that China’s government and people save too much and don’t buy international products, and it will also mitigate the protest and dissent against the CCP growing among struggling households, a problem the CCP desperately wants to solve.
The CCP can increase spending by building China’s middle class. It can do this by allocating more funding to its social net to secure children and elders at the minimum.
A health care system which covers children and elders will allieve working young and middle aged workers’ worry about their children’s and parents’ health care, so they will spend more money on consumer goods. The CCP must ensure its people that housing, food and education prices are stable, and will not see random price hikes in the near future. The majority of Chinese people save a huge portion of their money to purchase a home, but if housing prices could be lowered people could spend more money on products, thus encouraging domestic spending across the board.
Finally, it is important that the CCP focus on increasing wages in both the private and the public sector while controlling the rise of inflation. If the CCP can secure a confident middleclass, the lives of average Chinese people will become drastically better. This will calm the West, bring security to the Chinese people, and even bring some legitimacy to the CCP regime.
The world has silently envied China’s incredible economic progress since the late 1970s. Westerners cringed with jealously when China came out as the world’s new economic engine after the United State’s economy tanked in 2008. China’s newly built capitalist economy guided by a one-party system is impressive, even for people who despise the Chinese government and its radical polices. To the average Joe, China seems to be building cities as large as New York city every year. And it seems that China’s bull market economy will be charging into the future without any problems.
Even at many U.S. universities, it appears that the Chinese students are the most affluent people around. They seem to be the new Joneses. At Ohio University, the Chinese students have reaped the benefits from China’s economic miracle. Many students stare in awe when they see a young Chinese student cruising in a brand new Mercedes Benz through the forests and Appalachia of Athens, Ohio. I have heard American college students say, “Those Chinese people are so lucky, their economy is making all the Chinese people rich.”
Unfortunately, the Chinese undergraduates in Western universities, whose’ families typically come from high government positions or state-owned industries, do not begin to represent the whole Chinese population. In Shanghai (average annual incomes are much higher than in almost every other city in China) , the salary of a average Chinese family just reached $10,000 a year in 2011. Earning this income, even if a family saves two- thirds of it, would still not enable to the family to send their child to the West. So the questions become, are the middle class and lower class Chinese people seeing this new wealth to the extent Westerns think they are? How is inflation affecting their savings? Are their wages rising in proportion with the economic gains? What is preventing Chinese people from buying up Western goods?
There is no doubt that since China’s entrance into the globalized world people are better off than they were before 1978, under Mao Zedong’s leadership. The unemployment rate in China is relatively low compared to the developed nations and wages are going up. Coastal factories in Beijing, Shanghai, and Guangzhou are popping up every day, and minimum wages are skyrocketing. Surprisingly, and contrary to what many people believe, an overwhelming number of factories are raising wages because they are having difficulty finding full-time employees. Luckily, much of the rise in wages on China’s coast are incrementally and surely trickling out to all the different regions, including Tibet and Xinjiang, two of China’s poorest provinces. So yes, the Chinese people are seeing a rise of wages across the country, but the average salary in China is still low compared to the United States and European standards. The average wage in southern China is only about 75 cents an hour.
But China’s low employment rate and rising wages do not mean Chinese people buy many of the new goods and services that are typically found in the West, such as cars, homes, laptops and smart phones, because Chinese people save a huge portion of their money. Why are they saving their money when the economy is booming? Here are five good reasons: (1) China’s volatile market puts off investors. To be more specific, savings interest rates are low. (2)The rise of inflation is much higher than saving account rates (3) The soaring price of food. (4)The lack of a dependable social net. (5) The rise of housing prices.
The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is keeping interest so low that it cannot keep up with China’s rising inflation. The New York Times interviewed a couple in Jilin, China, who could not afford to own a home even though they made $16,000 a year, which is much more than the national average. This partly due to the fact that Chinese savings account rates are only three percent while China’s inflation is over six percent. The couple in Jilin, as with millions of other Chinese households, are skeptical of China’s unstable stock market, so they save more than two thirds of their money.
Food prices are soaring. The prices of pork, vegetables, edible oil, flour and even rice are all seeing drastic rises, making households’ budgets tight. Chinese people cannot spend their money on new gadgets and clothes when more than half of it is going towards food. Inflation is not the only reason that is pushing up the price of food. Flooding in southern China is wiping out important crops. A flood in Zhejiang province in June 2011 damaged more than 241,600 hectares, and 432,000 hectares in total have been affected by flooding across the country. The constant rise of prices is making Chinese people stash as much money as possible until the market indicates stability. Currently, there are no signs that food prices are going to decline in the near future. Despite the CCP’s price controls that were implemented in November 2010, the increase in food prices will not end any time soon.
One would think that as the Chinese economy develops, as China buys trillions of U.S. reserves, and as the Chinese government modernizes its military, that it would also funnel some of its new money towards its people in a social safety net. In the last three decades, the CCP eliminated its, “Iron Rice Bowl” socialist policy, which guaranteed people a steady job and retirement benefits, and instead shifted its economy to a more individualistic, take-care-of-yourself type of economy. This has forced Chinese people, even those reaping the prosperity generated by China’s economic boom, to take care of their aging parents, and to save for their own retirement.
Homes throughout China, especially its largest cities, are as expensive as in London and Tokyo. IMF figures demonstrate that a 70- square meter home in Beijing costs 20 times the average households’ income. A survey done by the People’s Bank of China in September, 2011, found that 76% percent of residents saw housing prices as too high, and a large portion of them believed that the prices would keep rising. The possibility rising housing prices across the country will not persuade its Chinese to spend more money on foreign goods. To the contrary, the very idea that housing prices may rise in the near future will compel many Chinese people, young and old, to save money.
The above five reasons why Chinese people are not spending money shows that the economic boom has not allowed the majority of the population to enjoy its benefits. Actually, China’s middle and lower classes are paying for the wealthy elites to live their extravagant lives. The average Chinese couple’s saving account rates are low so the banks can funnel that money into real estate. Inflation is high for the average person, it does not affect the government officials or corporate leaders as much. The lack of a social net increases the feeling of insecurity in the people, but keeps taxes on businesses low. And housing prices are making it virtually impossible for someone earning an average wage in Beijing, Shanghai or Guangzhou to purchase a home, but real estate speculators are becoming rich. Ninety-nine percent of Chinese people are paying for the other one percent to do whatever they want, and buy whatever they want. This situation appears to be very similar to that of the United States.
If the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) can find a way to encourage its people to spend, it will kill several birds with one stone. It will alleviate the West’s anger that China’s government and people save too much and don’t buy international products, and it will also mitigate the protest and dissent against the CCP growing among struggling households, a problem the CCP desperately wants to solve.
The CCP can increase spending by building China’s middle class. It can do this by allocating more funding to its social net to secure children and elders at the minimum.
A health care system which covers children and elders will allieve working young and middle aged workers’ worry about their children’s and parents’ health care, so they will spend more money on consumer goods. The CCP must ensure its people that housing, food and education prices are stable, and will not see random price hikes in the near future. The majority of Chinese people save a huge portion of their money to purchase a home, but if housing prices could be lowered people could spend more money on products, thus encouraging domestic spending across the board.
Finally, it is important that the CCP focus on increasing wages in both the private and the public sector while controlling the rise of inflation. If the CCP can secure a confident middleclass, the lives of average Chinese people will become drastically better. This will calm the West, bring security to the Chinese people, and even bring some legitimacy to the CCP regime.
Guatemalan Presidential Elections 2011
ISAAC PLACKE - 4 OCTOBER 2011
Guatemalan citizens casted their votes in the presidential, congressional, and municipal elections this past Sept. 11. This was the fourth presidential election since the signing of the 1996 peace accords which officially ended a bloody, 36-year civil war.
The results indicate a right-wing candidate, Otto Pérez Molina, as the victor. However, with 36 percent of the vote, he fell short of obtaining the 50 percent plus one vote majority needed to avoid a run-off between himself and the second-place candidate, Manuel Baldizón.
The run-off between the two candidates will be held on Nov. 6.
Looking closely at the campaign raises questions about Guatemala’s future under either of the two candidates, who have had an increasingly violent, expensive, and allegedly corrupt campaign season.
For Guatemalan citizens, the most important issue of the 2011 election has been finding a solution to the instability, crime, and corruption that have plagued Guatemala’s government since the civil war.
According to a 2009 study by Human Rights Watch, Guatemala has 6,000 murders annually and a 99 percent rate of impunity for violent crime- the highest rate in Latin America.
Such a high level of crime is associated with drug traffickers operating in what is called the “world’s busiest intersection for illegal drugs” by Javier Ciurlizza of the International Crisis Group. Along with Honduras, Guatemala was added to Foreign Policy’s Watch List for failed states in 2010, which cited the state’s “utter inability to combat organized crime.”
Remarks from the current president illustrate the depth of the drug trafficking problem: “We had not properly evaluated just how deep the infiltration was. We have confiscated $11.5 billion from the traffickers. Imagine how much money they have at their disposal. $11.5 billion is one and a half times our national budget,” said President Colom in an interview with a reporter from Al Jazeera.
President Colom was forced to declare a thirty-day “state of siege” in Guatemala’s northern Péten region last May after 27 people were found beheaded. A message written using a severed human leg from one of the victims linked the killings to drug gangs.
As the election campaign gains intensity, so has the violence. Drug cartels have an invested interest in preventing a strong, autonomous central government as well as maintaining control of regions key for transporting drugs. By means of bribes, intimidation, and murder, the gangs have attempted to maintain their regional influence by ensuring their chosen candidates are elected to office.
This violence was evident in the 2007 elections, which were marked by 60 attacks against officials and the assassinations of 40 candidates running for municipal offices. Between May and June of this year, 20 candidates had already been killed, according to a report by the International Crisis Group. This extreme violence and instability has enabled both lead presidential candidates to gain strong voter support through their policies of “mano dura”—exercising a “strong hand” in dealing with crime. Mano dura has been a phrase used repeatedly throughout this election, most notably by Pérez Molina who described his policy as “zero tolerance for breaking the law.”
Otto Pérez Molina, now 61 years old, is a retired general and congressman. He ran for president in 2007, narrowly losing to Guatemala’s current president, Álvaro Colom.
In both campaigns, Pérez Molina has used his role in assembling the 1996 peace accords and his long career as an officer in the military and chief of intelligence to assure voters of his ability to bring peace and stability to Guatemala.
His campaign slogan promises “character, decision, and a mano dura.” His policies include a government that works closely with a strong military to implement widespread change and clean the government of corruption. “I believe the army is the only institution that has its own internal processes to implement this purification,” he said in an interview with Plaza Pública.
Although his strong-handed policies and distinguished military service have won him the support of many middle and upper class Guatemalans, they have raised alarm among indigenous groups. In a letter to the United Nations, the Guatemalan Human Rights Commission asked that the UN carry out an investigation into Pérez Molina’s “involvement in the systematic torture of prisoners of war.”
Pérez Molina served as a major in 1982 in the Ixil region of Guatemala, one of the regions most affected by violence. According to the GHRC, “half of all the massacres occurred during this period and in this region. Between 70 and 90 percent of the villages were razed. Acts of torture, murder and mutilation were daily events.”
Alluding to his role as director of military intelligence in 1992, the International Crisis Group described Pérez Molina as “prominent in a counter-insurgency apparatus responsible for repression and human rights abuses.” He has also been linked to the disappearance and torture of Efraín Bámaca Velasquez, a guerrilla commander and prisoner of war.
No investigation by the United Nations has resulted from these allegations.
Similar to Pérez Molina, Manuel Baldizón, a right-wing populist and congressman from northern Guatemala, has also promised a mano dura against crime and corruption. He proposes an increased use of the death penalty, promising public- even televised- executions in Guatemala City’s central square.
Baldizón has received criticism for his political ambiguity. His campaign rhetoric has included goals of social reform and assisting the elderly and poor families, but his policies to bring about these changes still remain unclear. Even in the last month of the campaign, his foremost promise has been to take the Guatemalan soccer team to the World Cup.
Guatemalan politicians have drawn further criticism for the cost of their campaigns. In a country with more than half the population living below the poverty line, politicians in the 2007 presidential elections spent their way to what was called “one of the Western Hemisphere’s most expensive campaigns ever” by Acción Ciudadana, the Guatemalan chapter of Transparency International.
The Tribunal Supremo Electoral, Guatemala’s electoral authority, places a cap of $6.4 million on spending per party. However, parties pay little attention to these laws and the TSE has little ability to enforce them. Last year, parties were estimated to have spent four times this legal limit, according to a report by Acción Ciudadana.
The parties of Baldizón and Perez Molina have been criticized for the cost of their 2011 campaigns, which have already far outspent the candidates in 2007. Both candidates were estimated to have spent $50 to $70 million each in 2011, according to Damien Cave of the New York Times.
The high cost of these campaigns does not necessarily add high quality candidates to the ballot. “Because of the high costs of campaigning, parties tend to sell places on their candidate lists…to the highest bidder. Shared ideology or genuine links to voters matter less than how much money candidates can contribute,” according to a report by the International Crisis Group.
“No one believes that the candidates spending that level of money received their contributions from cake sales or raffles,” said Mark Schneider, vice-president of the International Crisis Group. “There is virtually no doubt that drug money reached into political campaigns at almost every level.”
The November Election
One factor that could still play a role in the outcome of the November 6 election is Sandra Torres, ex-wife of President Álvaro Colom. She divorced Colom in order “to marry the people of Guatemala,” launching her candidacy as a member of the UNE-GANA party, the National Unity of Hope.
However, the Guatemalan courts ruled her candidacy to be in violation of a Guatemalan law banning relatives of the president from succeeding him. Torres was removed from the ballot on August 8, leading to a series of marches in the capital city protesting her rejection.
Although Torres’ name will not appear on the November 6 ballot, she could still have an impact on the outcome of the election. Her party has yet to endorse one of the two candidates and she still has the widespread support of many indigenous groups, which could number over a million votes, said Anita Isaacs of the Inter-American Dialogue.
Whichever candidate wins Nov. 6 will face a presidential term even more arduous than the campaign season. Neither Pérez Molina nor Baldizón is likely to begin their presidency enjoying widespread popularity and will face unifying a divided and distrustful Guatemalan populace in order to overhaul the government and combat powerful drug trafficking. “Both Otto Pérez Molina and Manuel Baldizón have promised to get tough on criminals, but neither candidate has explained how they plan to do it,” said Javier Ciurlizza. “How to change this dynamic will be the most difficult and dangerous challenge facing the winner of the second round.”
Guatemalan citizens casted their votes in the presidential, congressional, and municipal elections this past Sept. 11. This was the fourth presidential election since the signing of the 1996 peace accords which officially ended a bloody, 36-year civil war.
The results indicate a right-wing candidate, Otto Pérez Molina, as the victor. However, with 36 percent of the vote, he fell short of obtaining the 50 percent plus one vote majority needed to avoid a run-off between himself and the second-place candidate, Manuel Baldizón.
The run-off between the two candidates will be held on Nov. 6.
Looking closely at the campaign raises questions about Guatemala’s future under either of the two candidates, who have had an increasingly violent, expensive, and allegedly corrupt campaign season.
For Guatemalan citizens, the most important issue of the 2011 election has been finding a solution to the instability, crime, and corruption that have plagued Guatemala’s government since the civil war.
According to a 2009 study by Human Rights Watch, Guatemala has 6,000 murders annually and a 99 percent rate of impunity for violent crime- the highest rate in Latin America.
Such a high level of crime is associated with drug traffickers operating in what is called the “world’s busiest intersection for illegal drugs” by Javier Ciurlizza of the International Crisis Group. Along with Honduras, Guatemala was added to Foreign Policy’s Watch List for failed states in 2010, which cited the state’s “utter inability to combat organized crime.”
Remarks from the current president illustrate the depth of the drug trafficking problem: “We had not properly evaluated just how deep the infiltration was. We have confiscated $11.5 billion from the traffickers. Imagine how much money they have at their disposal. $11.5 billion is one and a half times our national budget,” said President Colom in an interview with a reporter from Al Jazeera.
President Colom was forced to declare a thirty-day “state of siege” in Guatemala’s northern Péten region last May after 27 people were found beheaded. A message written using a severed human leg from one of the victims linked the killings to drug gangs.
As the election campaign gains intensity, so has the violence. Drug cartels have an invested interest in preventing a strong, autonomous central government as well as maintaining control of regions key for transporting drugs. By means of bribes, intimidation, and murder, the gangs have attempted to maintain their regional influence by ensuring their chosen candidates are elected to office.
This violence was evident in the 2007 elections, which were marked by 60 attacks against officials and the assassinations of 40 candidates running for municipal offices. Between May and June of this year, 20 candidates had already been killed, according to a report by the International Crisis Group. This extreme violence and instability has enabled both lead presidential candidates to gain strong voter support through their policies of “mano dura”—exercising a “strong hand” in dealing with crime. Mano dura has been a phrase used repeatedly throughout this election, most notably by Pérez Molina who described his policy as “zero tolerance for breaking the law.”
Otto Pérez Molina, now 61 years old, is a retired general and congressman. He ran for president in 2007, narrowly losing to Guatemala’s current president, Álvaro Colom.
In both campaigns, Pérez Molina has used his role in assembling the 1996 peace accords and his long career as an officer in the military and chief of intelligence to assure voters of his ability to bring peace and stability to Guatemala.
His campaign slogan promises “character, decision, and a mano dura.” His policies include a government that works closely with a strong military to implement widespread change and clean the government of corruption. “I believe the army is the only institution that has its own internal processes to implement this purification,” he said in an interview with Plaza Pública.
Although his strong-handed policies and distinguished military service have won him the support of many middle and upper class Guatemalans, they have raised alarm among indigenous groups. In a letter to the United Nations, the Guatemalan Human Rights Commission asked that the UN carry out an investigation into Pérez Molina’s “involvement in the systematic torture of prisoners of war.”
Pérez Molina served as a major in 1982 in the Ixil region of Guatemala, one of the regions most affected by violence. According to the GHRC, “half of all the massacres occurred during this period and in this region. Between 70 and 90 percent of the villages were razed. Acts of torture, murder and mutilation were daily events.”
Alluding to his role as director of military intelligence in 1992, the International Crisis Group described Pérez Molina as “prominent in a counter-insurgency apparatus responsible for repression and human rights abuses.” He has also been linked to the disappearance and torture of Efraín Bámaca Velasquez, a guerrilla commander and prisoner of war.
No investigation by the United Nations has resulted from these allegations.
Similar to Pérez Molina, Manuel Baldizón, a right-wing populist and congressman from northern Guatemala, has also promised a mano dura against crime and corruption. He proposes an increased use of the death penalty, promising public- even televised- executions in Guatemala City’s central square.
Baldizón has received criticism for his political ambiguity. His campaign rhetoric has included goals of social reform and assisting the elderly and poor families, but his policies to bring about these changes still remain unclear. Even in the last month of the campaign, his foremost promise has been to take the Guatemalan soccer team to the World Cup.
Guatemalan politicians have drawn further criticism for the cost of their campaigns. In a country with more than half the population living below the poverty line, politicians in the 2007 presidential elections spent their way to what was called “one of the Western Hemisphere’s most expensive campaigns ever” by Acción Ciudadana, the Guatemalan chapter of Transparency International.
The Tribunal Supremo Electoral, Guatemala’s electoral authority, places a cap of $6.4 million on spending per party. However, parties pay little attention to these laws and the TSE has little ability to enforce them. Last year, parties were estimated to have spent four times this legal limit, according to a report by Acción Ciudadana.
The parties of Baldizón and Perez Molina have been criticized for the cost of their 2011 campaigns, which have already far outspent the candidates in 2007. Both candidates were estimated to have spent $50 to $70 million each in 2011, according to Damien Cave of the New York Times.
The high cost of these campaigns does not necessarily add high quality candidates to the ballot. “Because of the high costs of campaigning, parties tend to sell places on their candidate lists…to the highest bidder. Shared ideology or genuine links to voters matter less than how much money candidates can contribute,” according to a report by the International Crisis Group.
“No one believes that the candidates spending that level of money received their contributions from cake sales or raffles,” said Mark Schneider, vice-president of the International Crisis Group. “There is virtually no doubt that drug money reached into political campaigns at almost every level.”
The November Election
One factor that could still play a role in the outcome of the November 6 election is Sandra Torres, ex-wife of President Álvaro Colom. She divorced Colom in order “to marry the people of Guatemala,” launching her candidacy as a member of the UNE-GANA party, the National Unity of Hope.
However, the Guatemalan courts ruled her candidacy to be in violation of a Guatemalan law banning relatives of the president from succeeding him. Torres was removed from the ballot on August 8, leading to a series of marches in the capital city protesting her rejection.
Although Torres’ name will not appear on the November 6 ballot, she could still have an impact on the outcome of the election. Her party has yet to endorse one of the two candidates and she still has the widespread support of many indigenous groups, which could number over a million votes, said Anita Isaacs of the Inter-American Dialogue.
Whichever candidate wins Nov. 6 will face a presidential term even more arduous than the campaign season. Neither Pérez Molina nor Baldizón is likely to begin their presidency enjoying widespread popularity and will face unifying a divided and distrustful Guatemalan populace in order to overhaul the government and combat powerful drug trafficking. “Both Otto Pérez Molina and Manuel Baldizón have promised to get tough on criminals, but neither candidate has explained how they plan to do it,” said Javier Ciurlizza. “How to change this dynamic will be the most difficult and dangerous challenge facing the winner of the second round.”
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