Comparing Hugo Chavez’s accomplishments to his U.S. obits was like taking a trip through Alice’s looking glass. Virtually none of the information about poverty and illiteracy was included, and when it was grudgingly admitted that he did have programs for the poor, it was “balanced” with claims of soaring debts, widespread shortages, rampant crime, economic chaos, and “authoritarianism.”
Hugo Chavez put an end to the reign of neoliberal IMF policies that had impoverished the masses of Latin America and inaugurated a new order of resource nationalism and income redistribution that favored the poor and the marginalized.
After eight months of diplomatic hiatus, Iran and the so-called “P5+1” powers—including the United States, China, Russia, France, Germany, and the United Kingdom—were finally able to return to the negotiating table. And, to the surprise of many observers, they managed to pull off a potential breakthrough in the decade-long standoff over Iran’s nuclear enrichment program.
Aung San Suu Kyi has shown great strength as Burma’s opposition leader. During her years of house arrest, she became a symbol of freedom and democracy. Yet these qualities will not necessarily bode well for a potential presidency, given the demands of governing a divided country.
The unthinkable has happened. Sequestration — automatic cuts falling equally on the defense and nondefense parts of the budget — is now in effect. And whatever the results of political maneuvering in the weeks and months to come, “The defense industry,” as a recent article in Politico put it, “isbracing for a bad decade … Senior Republicans on the House and Senate Armed Services Committees acknowledge a shrinking military is inevitable as the U.S. withdraws from Afghanistan after more than a decade of war.”
Drums pound along the Aegean coast. In a natural amphitheater only miles from the ruins of ancient Ephesus the air is split by wailing horns and the raucous cheers of 10,000 spectators drunk on raki and the brute intoxication of camel wrestling.
The GDR Museum in Berlin is actually two museums in one. And these two parts, both devoted to everyday life in the German Democratic Republic, subtly contradict one another. That might not have been the intention of the museum founders. But this tension actually captures the ambiguities of East Germany and the ambivalence that many Germans feel today about the erstwhile communist state.
In fact, sequestration will not “gut” our military. Sequestration will take our military budget back to the level it was in 2007, when we were still fighting two wars.
Once again, Tunisians’ anger has overcome their fear. Spurred by a political assassination, tens of thousands have taken to the streets to protest the state into which their country has fallen. The same sense of decency and dignity that propelled them to the streets before drives them on now.
Pope Benedict’s resignation has spurred discussion of a successor from the Global South. Catholicism has declined in increasingly secular Europe and America while it has risen in Africa, Asia, and South America. It would make sense to appoint a pope who represents a demographic that’s a growth area for the church.