Tag: India

Democracy’s Downward Slide and Totalitarianism’s Upward March – Treading into Darkness, Part I

Recession of democracy

On the day I began writing this (December 18), the depressing spectacle of the House of Representatives impeachment vote on Donald Trump occurred, and I happened to come across an even more depressing op-ed by Fareed Zakaria in the Washington Post.  Zakaria described a trend toward repression of minorities, tribalism, and incipient totalitarianism.

    • The widening schism between Hindus and Muslims in India,  now being codified into laws that repress the latter. For a look at the rising persecution of Muslims in India, check out this in The New Yorker.
    • Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Trumplike attack on the Israeli justice system, together with an accusation that the police and prosecutors are attempting a coup.
    • Hungary’s  Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s moves to silence opposition voices, curtail the power of local governments, and throttle immigration with fences and razor wire and a limit of 10 asylum applications per day.
    • The massive government persecution of the Rohingya in Myanmar.
    • White-hot partisanship in the U.S. political system (compounded by the resurgence of White Nationalism), whipped up by a demagogue whose bent is toward autocracy.

Zakaria refers to the human rights watchdog group Freedom House finding a worldwide decline in global freedom over the past 13 years. He quotes Stanford’s Larry Diamond, coeditor of The Journal of  Democracy, saying that we are seeing a worldwide “Democratic Recession.” Zakaria puts it more strongly: it may be a “Democratic Depression.”

Totalitarianism in the Information Age: the China model

To Zakaria’s list, we can add human-rights abuses in China, on the cusp of becoming a totalitarian surveillance state (more on that in later parts of Treading into Darkness).  The Chinese leadership’s actions to control its population is pulling it so far away from democracy that democratic aspirations are destined to become an illusion for the people of China (no matter what the outcome in Hong Kong).  The Artificial Intelligence-assisted mass surveillance system they have developed in the Xinjiang region to control, police, detain,  sometimes torture, and imprison minorities (such as the Uighur Muslims) serves as a model to extend throughout China going forward.

Continue reading “Democracy’s Downward Slide and Totalitarianism’s Upward March – Treading into Darkness, Part I”

Afghanistan “Win”: Surely You Jest, Mr. President

Is the Joke on Us, or on Our Glorious Leader?

Some days ago, the brat who poses as our nation’s president declared we would commence a winning strategy in Afghanistan.  I believe he said “win” at least five times, eliciting a lighthearted “ha ha ha” among the more jaded listeners.

That this flies in the face of logic—given the seventeen-year history of our military adventure in Afghanistan—is no impediment to Mr. Trump, whose logical faculties (such as they are) are overwhelmed by his egotism, vainglory, and desperate cravings for winning at any cost.

Containment of the Taliban, not defeating them, is the name of the game in Afghanistan, which the generals whom Trump maintains he consulted at length know very well.  (He also said he had looked at the Afghanistan situation “from every angle.” That was not the only time that I laughed out loud at this speech, but it was probably the loudest.) My guess is that the only way they could sell their strategy to him was to tell him it was a “winning” strategy, because the language of zero-sum games is the only language he understands. I’d wager they had a good laugh among themselves once the ruse succeeded.

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Good News, Good News, and Unsurprising Bad News on the Environment: Tigers, Amur Leopards Get a Break, Not So Elephants

For those of us depressed by the continuing hammer blows delivered to the environment by humans, there are a few bright spots. A couple below, although one can’t sugarcoat them.

Bengal Tiger Resurgence

I recently heard that the population of Bengal Tigers is on the upswing in India (they have been increasing in Nepal too). I couldn’t find that recent story with a Web search, but here’s a report from January 2015, with numbers cited by India’s Environment Minister: Bengal Tiger Numbers Up

Assuming we can trust NDTV and India’s environment minister, these are promising numbers—an increase of 58% in seven years. 

Unfortunately, there’s a downside to these stats: the populations are scattered, meaning genetic diversity is still low, and the total number of the big cats, unsurprisingly, is 1/50th of what it was circa 1900 (then 100,000).  At the same time, India’s human population has gone up by a factor of 4.

Continue reading “Good News, Good News, and Unsurprising Bad News on the Environment: Tigers, Amur Leopards Get a Break, Not So Elephants”