On the Middle East, voting rights, and CHINA !

All quoted verbatim.  [Ed: I'm liking this format, straight-up plagiarism, zero original thought!]

1. Yousef Munayyer on Jared Kushner's peace plan:

'...President Donald Trump's son-in-law and senior adviser questioned [Palestinians'] right to self-determination, putting the burden on them to prove they are deserving of freedom, justice, equality and human rights.

The distinction of being innately less deserving of human rights and freedom is reserved for peoples facing the brutal oppression of colonialism and racism. In the role of historical colonizers, white men considered themselves a superior people with a right to deny everything and anything to others who are less than—only the white man could know what is best for the backwards and savage peoples under his rule. [...Recently,] these attitudes have been dressed up in the language of democratization, as perhaps best captured in the policy of the George W. Bush administration. No form of self-determination for Palestinians could be supported, Bush made clear, until "the Palestinian people have new leaders, new institutions and new security arrangements with their neighbors." Sounds an awful lot like Kushner.

In other words, the fundamental sequence remains the same: The Palestinian people must prove they are deserving of their human rights, their freedom and their equality—until they do so, their oppression is justified. Such a formula is only possible in a framework where people are not created equal. Those who are inferior must accept the dictates of the superior group, including acquiescing to external actors' decisions in regards to their governance, quality of life and rights.[...]

A just peace cannot be built on a foundation of racism. The burden should not be placed on those whose rights and freedom are denied, but rather on those who are denying them. We must move away from outdated frameworks that present the Palestinian people with false choices and threats that seek to strong-arm them into accepting their own subjugation.'

2. David Graham on the voting rights debate:

'The Democratic presidential field has spent most of the week tying itself in knots over whether prisoners should be able to vote—an important but largely abstract debate. Meanwhile, Florida Republicans are close to passing a law that allows felons to vote after serving their time, but places serious hurdles before them.

The debate demonstrates much about the two parties. It contrasts the Democratic tendency to focus on national solutions to problems with the Republican emphasis on state-level policy. It shows a Democratic tendency toward abstraction, and a Republican emphasis on action. And it suggests why conservative policy ideas are winning across the nation, despite evidence that America is a center-left country.

The Democratic Party [...] tends to believe in top-down government solutions, making Washington a natural locus for policy, while Republicans have long emphasized local control. It’s also historically contingent. Starting from the 1930s, Democrats often held a strong advantage over Republicans in national politics.

Since the 2010 election, Democrats have also been badly overmatched at the local level, and while the party made significant gains in 2018, Republicans still have the upper hand in state capitals. That has allowed the GOP to implement its policy views on a range of issues. Republican-led legislatures have expanded gun rights, restricted abortion rights, and hamstrung organized labor, to choose just a few.  On the question of felons and voting, [...] Republican actions on the state level speak louder than Democrats’ conversations.'

3. Narges Bajogli on the source of Iranian determination:

'...what motivated Iranians to support the revolution en masse was a desire to rid the country of imperialism. As a prominent historian of Iran, Ervand Abrahamian has argued that the 1979 revolution should be seen as a continuation of the national struggle for liberation that was cut short in 1953 by a U.S.-orchestrated coup.

In a first for the CIA, the United States deposed democratically elected Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadeq, reinstated Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, and took control of Iran’s oil fields. Domestically, no matter what the shah did in that 26-year interim between 1953 and 1979, the coup cast its long shadow over his rule. His perceived illegitimacy was tied to the sentiment that he did the bidding of the Americans and Brits and sold out his country’s national integrity for power and wealth. [...]

Now, what does this have to do with Iran’s relationship with its proxies? In the 40 years since the revolution, the Islamic Republic has supported groups that are actively engaged in struggles against foreign occupation, whether in Lebanon, Iraq, or the occupied Palestinian territories. (This analysis also drove its policies in Syria, where it believed the United States, Europe, and Israel were using domestic groups, and later mercenaries, to topple Assad for geopolitical purposes.) When one pays close attention to the discourse of these groups, from their official statements to their media output, the emphasis is on sovereignty and the fight against imperialism. Of course the symbolism of Islam as a cultural and political identity is also present, but it is not the driving force...'

4. Nithin Coca on Tiananmen's legacy and Asia's democratic backsliding:

'Tiananmen would be the last mass democracy movement in China. China has not seen anything even remotely approaching the scale of what happened in 1989, when students and workers took not just to the streets of Beijing but occupied the center of many major Chinese cities. The only major anti-government actions since then have been fueled by national or ethnic sentiment in marginal territories such as Xinjiang and Tibet.  [... ]

China is now the top trading partner of, and foreign investor in, most of its neighboring countries. That may be having a coercive effect on neighbors such as Cambodia, where long-term dictator Hun Sen’s crushing of the civil opposition in the last few years took place with Beijing’s backing and blessing. In Thailand, while the junta maintains a veneer of democracy, relations with China have grown ever closer even as Washington has chastised them.

“China’s influence has been there after countries took an authoritarian turn,” said Maiko Ichihara, an associate professor at the School of International and Public Policy at Hitotsubashi University in Tokyo. Chinese money and investment can buffer what could have been, in the past, sanctions or other reprisals from Western countries. “Democratic backsliding has been maintained due to the economic influence of China.”

It also means the role of the region’s democracies is limited. Taiwan, South Korea, and Japan were, in previous decades, democratic and highly developed, and offered models for China. Now, the tables have turned.  “In the 90s there was the idea that countries like Taiwan and Japan could push for change in China,” said [China expert Isaac] Stone Fish. “Now, a lot of those countries are trying to figure out how to prevent China from changing them.”'

Abortion, Inequality, Israel-Palestine, and CHINA !

Quoted verbatim sans comments:

1.  Michael Wear on the American debate over abortion rights:

'Abortion politics in 2019 is a morality play about what happens when one side has all the political power, yet feels culturally embattled. In this atmosphere, victories are not satisfying if they leave the other side with a foothold, a vestige of respectability.  [It] is no longer about policy wins, but about establishing dominance. This is why Governor Andrew Cuomo could not be satisfied with the passage of the Reproductive Health Act, which eliminated several restrictions on the procedure, but instead had to light up the Empire State Building pink, to declare that abortion rights were now creedal in New York. It was not just the passage of the Reproductive Health Act, but specifically the display of cultural force, that made abortion opponents feel so embattled and isolated.

This dynamic was also evident in Alabama, where the people in power hold the opposite position on abortion as their counterparts in New York and recently passed H.B. 314, a bill that virtually outlaws the procedure.

One scene from the Alabama Senate debate furnishes a quintessential example of the decline of our democracy, of the diminishment of any capacity our political process might have had to help us work through difficult issues together. During the committee markup of the bill, lawmakers passed an amendment to provide an exception for rape or incest. On May 9, as H.B. 314 was headed toward a final vote, Alabama’s Republican Lieutenant Governor Will Ainsworth broke protocol by stripping out the amendment without making a motion or acknowledging his Democratic colleagues’ requests for a roll-call vote. Democratic State Senator Bobby Singleton shouted, “There was no motion. You didn’t even make a motion!” Ainsworth simply ignored his colleague’s interjections.'

2.  Walter Scheidel on the history of inequality:

'Inequality has been written into the DNA of civilization ever since humans first settled down to farm the land. Throughout history, only massive, violent shocks that upended the established order proved powerful enough to flatten disparities in income and wealth. They appeared in four different guises: mass-mobilization warfare, violent and transformative revolutions, state collapse, and catastrophic epidemics. Hundreds of millions perished in their wake, and by the time these crises had passed, the gap between rich and poor had shrunk.

The first of these forces was very much a creature of the industrial age. Earlier wars had produced mixed results, as victors profited and losers paid. The Civil War is another example: It launched the careers of John D. Rockefeller, Andrew Carnegie, and other Northern plutocrats, but ruined Southern slave-owners. Not since the times of the ancient Greeks had intense popular military mobilization (paired with egalitarian norms and institutions) helped curb economic inequality.

Second are revolutions that truly transformed societies—the sort that were born of the two world wars. From 1917 on, communists in Russia, China, and elsewhere confiscated, redistributed and collectivized private wealth, and set wages, leveling inequality on an unprecedented scale. [...]

If history is any indication, then, the resurgence of inequality since the 1980s should not have come as a surprise. The effects of violent leveling invariably abate over time: Populations recover when plagues subside, failed states are replaced by newcomers. By now the aftershocks of the 20th century’s great wars have faded. Top tax rates and union membership are down, communism is defunct, and globalization, however reviled, is (still) in full swing. The four levelling forces will not return any time soon: Technology has made mass warfare obsolete; violent, redistributive revolution has lost its appeal; most states are more resilient than they used to be; and advances in genetics will help humanity ward off novel germs.  In the coming decades, the dramatic aging of rich countries and the pressures of immigration on social solidarity will make it ever harder to ensure a fairly equitable distribution of net incomes. And on top of everything else, ongoing technological change might boost inequality in unpredictable ways, from more sophisticated automation that hollows out labor markets to genetic and cybernetic enhancements of the privileged human body.'

3.  Khaled Elgindy on the Israel-Palestine peace process:

'... laying out an economic plan ahead of a political vision is simply the wrong way around. As many analysts have pointed out, prospective donors and investors are unlikely to be forthcoming when they do not know what the endgame is or what it is they are being asked to invest in. Previous U.S. presidents, from Ronald Reagan to Barack Obama, also tried to promote “quality of life” for Palestinians without directly challenging the Israeli occupation. Moreover, the idea that so-called economic peace could be a substitute for a meaningful political horizon has simply never panned out.

By focusing on economics, the U.S. administration has fundamentally misdiagnosed the problem. As numerous United Nations, World Bank, and other reports have found, the greatest obstacles to Palestinian economic growth are restrictions imposed by the Israeli occupation in the West Bank and its ongoing siege of the Gaza Strip. In other words, what Palestinians lack is not funding but freedom. As the Palestinian American businessman Sam Bahour recently put it, reviving the Palestinian economy “doesn’t require a grand plan, nor does it require a grand workshop. It requires Israel getting its boot off at least the economic part of our neck.” [...]

But the biggest reason to doubt the feasibility of the administration’s plan is its own record. Since recognizing Jerusalem as Israel’s capital in December 2017, overturning 70 years of U.S. policy and taking the hotly contested issue of Jerusalem off the table, the administration has closed the Palestinian mission in Washington and systematically eliminated virtually every form of U.S. economic and humanitarian assistance.[...]  The proposition that [the U.S.] is now going to spearhead the international effort to promote investment in Palestinians or work toward the betterment of Palestinian lives is nothing short of fraudulent. Indeed, while U.S. officials have always had a certain blind spot with regard to Palestinian needs and aspirations, never has a U.S. administration shown as much open hostility toward Palestinians and their well-being as the Trump administration.'

4. Dan Meegan on the definition of "fairness" across the political spectrum:

'There is more than one way to decide who is deserving of what.  One is by need: Some people have more than they need, and others need more than they have. Even when liberal leaders describe policies that are beneficial to everyone, they make it clear that the most important beneficiaries are those whose needs are most urgent. [...] Still, there are other ways of judging what’s fair. Conservatives tend to value equity, or proportionality, and they see unfairness when people are asked to contribute more than they should expect to receive in return, or when people receive more than they contribute. [...]

American liberals looking fondly over their northern border often misunderstand why policies considered left-wing in the United States are so popular in Canada. Middle-class Canadians support their health-care system not because it’s good for the needy, but because it’s good for themselves. When they get angry about threats to their health-care system, it is because they take the threat personally—they are defending their own interests rather than those of some underprivileged stranger.'

 

5.  Ethan Kapstein and Jacob Shapiro on China's Belt and Road Initiative:

'The Belt and Road Initiative is as much a domestic initiative meant to address structural weaknesses in the Chinese economy as it is a grand foreign-policy strategy. Given a combination of poor demographics, growing international hostility to its trade policies, and the specter of weakening domestic demand, Beijing cannot rely on homegrown supply and demand to solve its current and future economic problems. The Belt and Road Initiative represents an attempt to use China’s enormous financial reserves to create new markets for Chinese goods, services, and unskilled labor. That’s why the use of Chinese labor to build Belt and Road infrastructure is so often part of the deal. Recipients of Chinese investments are effectively financing Beijing’s efforts to manage its internal economic problems. Understood this way, the Belt and Road Initiative reveals Chinese weakness rather than strength. And that’s why a judo strategy could be so effective.

The United States should start by using existing international norms—set by multilateral institutions such as the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD)—to constrain China’s predatory lending practices and the political leverage they bring. For example, the OECD has long-established norms against the use of tied aid—funds that require recipients to use that foreign aid to purchase goods and services from the donor. Tied aid is frowned on because it forces recipient countries to spend their money inefficiently. And even if Belt and Road funding—which primarily takes the form of loans—does not formally constitute foreign aid, Beijing often violates the spirit of that principle by mandating that infrastructure projects use Chinese contractors...'

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Okay, I'll give one comment: politics are *always* local (domestic), even when it concerns/affects foreign relations.