Academic standards
Can you get away with plagiarism if your source is obscure enough or if the original author is a friend?
Has Iran elected a cheater? Rowhani accused of PhD plagiarism
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| Rowhani |
Excerpts of newly-elected President Hassan Rowhani’s Phd thesis, ‘The flexibility of Sharia with reference to the Iranian experience’, match sentences of a book written by an Iranian author, The Telegraph reported citing activists.
Parts of a book by Mohamad Hashem Kamani, the chairman of Iran’s International Institute of Advanced Islamic Studies, appear in Rowhani’s Glasgow Caledonian University thesis, London-based writer Behdad Morshedi said…
A university spokesman confirmed that the school had received the same accusation from another activist in the United States, adding that the university will be looking into the issue…
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Unpleasant reminder
For all the generalizations about the near absence of national cleavages in China, protests in Tibet and violence in Xinjiang should remind us of the power held by ethnic divisions.
I think that reporter Chris Buckley should have mentioned that the large-scale migration of Han people to Xinjiang is part of a government planned program to incorporate the area into the Chinese mainstream. A similar program has reduced the dominance of the native ethnic groups in Tibet.
27 Die in Rioting in Ethnically Divided Western China
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| Xinjiang |
At least 27 people died in rioting in far western China on Wednesday, when protesters attacked a police station and government offices and the police fired on the crowd, state media said. It was the worst spasm of violence for years in Xinjiang…
Xinhua, reported… “Knife-wielding mobs attacked the township’s police stations, the local government building and a construction site, stabbing at people and setting fire to police cars”… In the initial outburst of bloodshed, seventeen people were killed, including nine police officers and security guards, and the police then fatally shot 10 rioters, it said.
In the past, Uighur residents have often given accounts of unrest sharply at odds with those given by Chinese government officials…
Many members of the Uighur minority, a Turkic-speaking group, resent the growing presence in Xinjiang of Han Chinese people, whom they say get the better jobs and land. Government restrictions on religion have also become a growing source of tensions with Uighurs, who have embraced more conservative currents of Sunni Islam…
Uighurs once formed the vast majority of residents in Xinjiang… In recent decades, the number of Han Chinese residents has grown, aided by migration. Uighurs now make up 46 percent of Xinjiang’s civilian population of 22 million, and Han Chinese account for 40 percent, according to government estimates…
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Just as suspected
Karla Zabludovsky's editor at
The New York Times decided that official corruption is "starting to come to light." But even stodgy old comparative politics textbooks have long commented on corruption in Mexican government and politics. Just coming to light?
Official Corruption in Mexico, Once Rarely Exposed, Is Starting to Come to Light
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| Andrés Granier Melo |
Andrés Granier has a sumptuous wardrobe and lifestyle. He has bragged about owning 400 pairs of shoes, 300 suits and 1,000 shirts, collected from luxury stores in New York and Los Angeles. His purchases barely fit in his several properties, scattered throughout Mexico and abroad…
But his job title, until December, was governor of a midsize southeastern Mexican state, a position that currently pays about $92,000 a year after taxes…
Mr. Granier’s successor discovered that about $190 million in state funds was unaccounted for… in a country where state and local corruption, a serious drag on Mexico’s development, run deep and are rarely exposed.
Watchdog groups are gaining strength, opposition parties are challenging and exposing the faults of the status quo, and social and traditional news media organizations are increasingly seeking to hold officials accountable…
During the uninterrupted 71-year rule of the Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, governors, who often secured their appointments based on friendly ties with the autocratic presidents, were almost expected to pillage state treasuries…
But with governors from opposing political parties succeeding one another and doing away with the unspoken pact of the PRI years, in which incoming leaders protected departing ones, a system of checks and balances… is emerging…
Inroads in transparency, however, have yet to change the culture and mentality of “El que no tranza, no avanza,” or “He who does not cheat, does not get ahead,” a popular motto here. And these victories have yet to transform the country’s image abroad: Mexico fell in Transparency International’s corruption perception index to 105th place in 2012 from 57th in 2002, with a lower ranking indicating that the country is seen as more corrupt…
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Separating political and criminal violence
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| Bono state |
I saw this reported as another example of political violence in Western media, but the Nigerian press (at least
Leadership in Aubuja) is reporting it as criminal activity. I have no way of knowing which version is more accurate, but it's worth remembering that not all the violence in Nigeria is primarily political. However, just to make things less clear, the second part of the article describes how Boko Haram terrorists killed students in two secular schools in the northeast of the country (Maiduguri in Bono state).
(Please excuse Abba Abubakar Kabara's English. It's not far from rustlers to wrestlers. On the other hand, his editors should recognize the difference between cattle and castle.)
Gunmen Kill 77 in Zamfara, Maiduguri
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| Zamfara state |
About 50 people were killed yesterday in Kizara village of Tsafe local government area of Zamfara State by group of gunmen suspected to be cattle wrestlers [sic].
The gunmen numbering about 150 and riding motorcycles besieged the village at about 4am, and suddenly opened fire on any adult community member on sight.
The gunmen also killed the village head, Mallam Lawali Madawaki, the chief Imam Mallam Liman Usman and the leader of the vigilante group.
Eyewitness, Yahaya Bale, said it was a reprisal attack following an earlier organised mission by the community vigilante group who chased the castle wrestlers [sic] to recover some animals they have stolen from the community…
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It's going to be a long march
Xi Jinping, acting in his role as Communist Party leader, announced a long-term campaign to change Party culture. Adjust the vocabulary a bit and he sounds like a business school professor lecturing to MBA students.
Upcoming CPC campaign a "thorough cleanup" of undesirable practices
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| Xi |
Xi Jinping, leader of the Communist Party of China (CPC), said Tuesday that the CPC's upcoming year-long campaign will be a "thorough cleanup" of undesirable work styles such as formalism, bureaucratism, hedonism and extravagance.
"The main task of the campaign is a focus on building work styles," Xi, general secretary of the CPC Central Committee…
Party members should be critical and self-critical in the spirit of rectifying improper work styles, Xi said.
"Winning or losing public support is an issue that concerns the CPC's survival or extinction," Xi said…
The campaign will focus on CPC organs and officials at or above the county level who will be required to reflect on their own practices and correct any misconduct.
Xi said the campaign should focus on self-purification, self-perfection, self-renewal and self-progression…
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Analyzing the Iranian election
A Yale University scholar offers an intriguing analysis of the presidential election in Iran.
They Said No: 2013 Iranian Presidential Post-Election Report
[T]he following post-election report on the 2013 Iranian presidential elections is provided by Navid Hassanpour, a Ph.D. candidate in political science at Yale University.
Last Friday, Iranians voted a surprising “No” to the exclusionist policies of the unelected elite and chose Hassan Rouhani, the unlikely symbol of that negation, as their next President…
A snapshot of the polls in the days leading to the election, showing Rouhani’s surge in the last three days, source: www.ipos.me
The election increasingly became a referendum on the current foreign and domestic policies in a race that pit one so-called moderate (اعتدالگرا) candidate against a host of three (or four depending on the definition) competitive principalists (اصولگرا). In a race charged with the division between the moderates and the principalists, the anguished electorate voted “No” to the failed policies of the past eight years…
- A Brief History of Presidency in the Islamic Republic...
- How did Rouhani Win?...
- The Implications of Rouhani’s Presidency for Iran’s Foreign and Domestic Policymaking...
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Rallying for more victories
The PRI seeks to expand its arena of electoral successes into PAN territory.
Mexico's ruling PRI fights for a comeback in Baja California
Striving to recapture Baja California, the national leadership of Mexico’s ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) gathered in Tijuana on Saturday in a dramatic show of political muscle three weeks before the state’s gubernatorial election…
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| Castro Trenti |
The main purpose was to endorse Fernando Castro Trenti, gubernatorial candidate for a PRI-led coalition, and other candidates in the state’s July 7 elections…
In Baja California, Castro Trenti is squaring off against Francisco Vega de Lamadrid, a former Tijuana mayor who is the candidate of a PAN-led coalition. The PAN first triumphed in Baja California in 1989 and since then has not lost a gubernatorial election in the state…
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If it's worth doing, it's worth doing on a huge scale
The guiding ideology of the Communist elite in China has seemed to be control from the top down. Socialism has always come in second to the authoritarian impulse. Historically, that's the Chinese way (in theory).
Everything from civil society to the military is run the by a tiny elite.
Now may be the time to dust off memories of
The Great Leap Forward, because China seems about to embark on another huge-scale social engineering project. It would put the elite back in charge of a process that's been going on for more than a decade: urbanization.
China’s Great Uprooting: Moving 250 Million Into Cities
China is pushing ahead with a sweeping plan to move 250 million rural residents into newly constructed towns and cities over the next dozen years…
This will decisively change the character of China, where the Communist Party insisted for decades that most peasants, even those working in cities, remain tied to their tiny plots of land to ensure political and economic stability. Now, the party has shifted priorities, mainly to find a new source of growth for a slowing economy that depends increasingly on a consuming class of city dwellers…
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| Farmer searching village rubble |
Across China, bulldozers are leveling villages that date to long-ago dynasties. Towers now sprout skyward from dusty plains and verdant hillsides. New urban schools and hospitals offer modern services, but often at the expense of the torn-down temples and open-air theaters of the countryside…
The building frenzy is on display in places like Liaocheng, which grew up as an entrepôt for local wheat farmers in the North China Plain. It is now ringed by scores of 20-story towers housing now-landless farmers who have been thrust into city life. Many are giddy at their new lives — they received the apartments free, plus tens of thousands of dollars for their land — but others are uncertain about what they will do when the money runs out…
Top-down efforts to quickly transform entire societies have often come to grief, and urbanization has already proven one of the most wrenching changes in China’s 35 years of economic transition…
The broad trend began decades ago. In the early 1980s, about 80 percent of Chinese lived in the countryside versus 47 percent today, plus an additional 17 percent that works in cities but is classified as rural. The idea is to speed up this process and achieve an urbanized China much faster than would occur organically…
Most of the costs are borne by local governments. But they rely mostly on central government transfer payments or land sales, and without their own revenue streams they are unwilling to allow newly arrived rural residents to attend local schools or benefit from health care programs. This is reflected in the fact that China officially has a 53 percent rate of urbanization, but only about 35 percent of the population is in possession of an urban residency permit, or hukou. This is the document that permits a person to register in local schools or qualify for local medical programs.
The new blueprint to be unveiled this year is supposed to break this logjam by guaranteeing some central-government support for such programs, according to economists who advise the government. But the exact formulas are still unclear. Granting full urban benefits to 70 percent of the population by 2025 would mean doubling the rate of those in urban welfare programs...
Look for more articles to come in this series, "Leaving the Land."
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Analysis of Iranian election
AP Analysis: Iran president may help shield rulers
For a lesson in what Hasan Rowhani’s reformist-backed presidency could mean for Iran, a promise Sunday by the ultra-powerful Revolutionary Guard to cooperate with him is a good guide.
Like the rest of Iran’s ruling Islamic establishment, the Guard, which has kept a tight lid on any hints of opposition for years, is for the moment embracing Rowhani...
The reason is because — in one of the more curious twists of Iranian politics — the opposition’s accidental hero Rowhani also may become a lucky charm for the ruling system.
His surprise victory allows the Islamic leadership to seek a bit of legitimacy among liberals and others who felt they exiled off the political map after the crackdowns following massive protests in 2009...
Rowhani does have a people-power mandate that certainly will be factored in by Iran’s rulers. But the scope of his win — more than three times of votes of the runner-up — doesn’t give him any extra-credit powers. Iran’s presidency is still without the tools to take any major initiatives without clearance from supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei or, by extension, the Revolutionary Guard.
The ruling clerics — not the president — hold all the cards in policymaking...
Iran has been here before and it didn’t end well for reformists.
In 2001, reformist Mohammad Khatami steamrolled into his second term as president. The next four years were a stalemate as hard-liners allied with Khamenei blocked attempts at political reforms in parliament. Authorities gave up some ground on social freedoms — letting women’s head scarves slide back and permitting more Western films and music — but there also were pinpoint strikes on dissent with arrests and newspaper closures. The establishment eventually
Now, the Revolutionary Guard and its nationwide paramilitary force, the Basij, are far stronger and more deeply integrated into every level of society, including monitoring social media...
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Moderate Iranian President?
I think it's amusing the way the American media have portrayed the new Iranian president as a moderate. It's rather like calling Rand Paul a moderate of the Tea Party in the USA.
Iran Moderate Wins Presidency by a Large Margin
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| Rowhani |
In a striking repudiation of the ultraconservatives who wield power in Iran, voters here overwhelmingly elected a mild-mannered cleric who advocates greater personal freedoms and a more conciliatory approach to the world.
The cleric, Hassan Rowhani, 64, won a commanding 50.7 percent of the vote in the six-way race, according to final results released Saturday...
Thousands of jubilant supporters poured into the streets of Tehran, dancing, blowing car horns and waving placards and ribbons of purple, Mr. Rowhani’s campaign color...
But if the election was a victory for reform and middle class voters, it also served the conservative goals of the supreme leader, restoring at least a patina of legitimacy to the theocratic state, providing a safety valve for a public distressed by years of economic malaise and isolation, and returning a cleric to the presidency...
Analysts predict at least some change. The president can set the tone of debate on issues from socializing rules for young people to the need for the nuclear program. He will also have some control over the economy — the public’s primary concern lately...
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Labels: elections, Iran, leadershp
What's a cleric?
In Iran, the religious leaders are supposed to be in charge. And they are. But, what is a cleric? It seems that most of them are busy running the country and its businesses. Jason Rezainan's analysis in
The Washington Post seems insightful.
Iranian election shows waning political influence of Shiite clerics
For most of its 34-year-old history, the Islamic Republic of Iran has been run by clerics serving not just as supreme leaders but also as elected presidents, their turban-clad figures becoming familiar worldwide as Iran’s public face.
But the theocratic order… has become increasingly divided, and the presidential election scheduled for Friday is revealing a dilution of its influence…
This year, divisions within some clerical groups — including the powerful Association of Combatant Clerics — delayed their endorsements. Some conservative candidates who would otherwise have counted on clerical blessings entered the presidential race without that backing, while one candidate who won a high-level clerical embrace backed out of the contest…
The reign of clerics in Iran’s presidency lasted 24 years, beginning with Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who served two four-year terms beginning in 1981, and continuing with Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, who served from 1989 to 1997, and Mohammad Khatami, who served from 1997 to 2005. But while most clergymen backed Rafsanjani in the 2005 presidential race, a split between the clerics and the popular vote emerged, leading to a runoff victory for Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, a former mayor of Tehran not eligible for either the black or white turban worn by his three predecessors.
Khamenei succeeded Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini in 1989 to become Iran’s supreme leader… But many top clerics have tried to stay out of the political fray, and the clergy’s role in Iranian society has evolved to the extent that clerics hold a wide range of jobs — particularly in the fields of education, law and trade — that have little do with their religious training…
Among politicians, the clerics who continue to enjoy considerable support do so more because of their political accomplishments than their religious ones…
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Graphic primer on Iranian politics
al Jazeera offers some good graphics to describe Iranian politics.
Infographic: Choosing Iran's next president
As Iranian polls near, Al Jazeera explores the country's electoral system, candidates and ideological divisions.
See also Iran Elections 2013
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Hans Rosling needs teachers
If you've seen Gapminder, you know how great it is for creating teaching tools.
We need teachers!
We are inviting teachers from all around the world to help develop our new project "Gapminder School". If you are a teacher and you want to help, please let us know using the link above.
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Far out
Another space station
Shenzhou-10: China launches next manned space mission
Three astronauts blasted away from the Jiuquan base in Inner Mongolia on a Long March 2F rocket at 17:38 Beijing time (09:38 GMT).
The commander, Nie Haisheng, and his crew, Zhang Xiaoguang and Wang Yaping, plan to spend just under two weeks at the orbiting Tiangong space lab.
Wang is China's second female astronaut and she will beam the country's first lesson from space to students on Earth.
The crew's capsule was ejected from the upper-stage of the rocket about nine minutes after lift-off. Mission controllers clapped enthusiastically once the ship's solar panels had been deployed…
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New politics of a new generation?
The editors of
The Economist are delighted that young Brits seem to have political attitudes and values that agree with those of the editors. And Boris Johnson.
Generation Boris
A GROUP of 17- and 18-year-olds assembled in their lunch hour… When pushed to describe their politics, they agree that the state’s primary role is to protect individual freedom. For them, social and moral causes such as gay rights and sex equality loom larger than things like welfare and health. Asked whether any had joined recent protests against government spending cuts, they respond with raised eyebrows, laughter and effusive denials…
The young are less likely than their elders to consider themselves part of any particular religion, less likely to join a political party or a trade union and, according to the long-running British Social Attitudes survey (BSA), less likely to have a “high or very high opinion” of the armed forces. As far as they are concerned, people have a right to express themselves by what they consume and how they choose to live…
More than two-thirds of people born before 1939 consider the welfare state “one of Britain’s proudest achievements”. Less than one-third of those born after 1979 say the same…
“Every successive generation is less collectivist than the last,” says Ben Page of Ipsos MORI, a pollster. All age groups are becoming more socially and economically liberal…
Just as the construction of the post-war welfare state helps to explain the collectivist instincts of the old, today’s economic adversity and dwindling welfare payments appear to be forging a generation of dogged individualists…
Young Britons’ beliefs probably owe much to the country’s education system. Britain has high levels of university attendance, a factor that correlates with social liberalism, says James Tilley, an academic specialising in public opinion. It is a materialistic society with a flexible labour market; its citizens chart their lives on social media with more zeal than most—all things that tend to contribute to a competitive, individualist mindset.
As yet, there is little sign any of this is permeating mainstream politics. The two main parties, the Conservatives and Labour, broadly adhere to the conventional right-left divide (with economic liberalism on one side and social liberalism on the other). Most young people reject politics altogether…
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| Boris Johnson |
A mainstream politician could yet tap into it. Speaking to young people from different backgrounds and parts of the country, from the engaged to the apathetic, your correspondent often asked if any politicians appealed to them. The reaction was strikingly uniform: silence, then contemplation, then a one-word answer—“Boris”—before a flood of agreement: “Oh yeah, I’d vote for Boris Johnson.” The chaotic, colourful mayor of London, a rare politician who transcends his Tory identity by melding social and economic liberalism, appears to have Britain’s libertarian youth in the bag. The 2020 election beckons.
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Let's have less democracy
Repression ahead
ON A recent stormy night, Moscow’s hip crowd gathered for the opening of the summer terrace at the Strelka architecture and design institute, which has one of the city’s trendiest bars. It has served as a shelter for educated, Westernised and privileged Muscovites.. .
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| President Putin |
When Vladimir Putin returned to the Kremlin a year ago many expected repression to be swift and brutal. But he took his time, letting the public and the West get used to each small tightening of the screw. A year on the growing repression is clear…
The former president (now prime minister), Dmitry Medvedev, who symbolised a quasi-thaw, has not yet been fired, but he has been weakened…
[F]aced with mass protests by civil activists and ordinary citizens, not politicians, the Kremlin is trying to extend its control to other areas, including the internet and even entertainment magazines which carry protest banners…
A problem with Russian politics is that so much of it happens in one man’s head. A turn towards repression may not be a sign of Mr Putin’s strength, but rather of his fear and desperation. Some advisers say he is worried about instability and is doing as much as he can to eliminate anything or anyone that contributes to it…
What he does not see is that the biggest destabilising factor of all was his own return to the Kremlin. In trying to hold the situation still, he destabilises it further, forcing further repression. Lacking a coherent ideology, the Kremlin is justifying itself by ratcheting up its confrontation with the West and its search for enemies within. It has partly succeeded… Nationalism, xenophobia and intolerance, once part of the political fringe, have become mainstream… Confrontation with the West has a polarising effect on the Russian elite, squeezing out those most linked to the West and strengthening the siloviki, the security services, who demand more purges…
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Details on Iranian elections
Giving credit where credit is due. The article about the Iranian candidates' unhappiness with the debate format was suggested by one of Rebecca Small's students, whose last day of high school classes is today. Thanks, Sofia Diez.
Rebecca Small, who teaches in Virginia, suggested an intriguing article about the Iranian electoral campaign. That sent me off looking for more background. Here's Rebecca's suggestion and my discoveries.
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Transparency but no records
The halls of Westminster are not swarming with lobbyists. Persuasion gets done in other ways. For instance, the PM, professed fan of greater transparency, is going to a private meeting with many of the world's movers and shakers without aides, without taking notes, and without telling the public who he saw or what was said.
The US president isn't going this year, but plenty of other current and former US big shots will attend.
Conspiracy theorists, by the way practically foam at the mouth when Bilderberg is mentioned.
David Cameron to attend Bilderberg group meeting
David Cameron is to attend the secretive Bilderberg group at the luxury Grove hotel in Watford… in a move that is likely to raise questions about his pledge to lead Britain's most transparent government.
Downing Street said it was acting in an open manner by publicising the prime minister's attendance in advance…
No 10 is to clarify the position because ministers are usually expected to be accompanied by civil service note-takers when they meet business leaders…
The PM's spokesman said: "He will participate in a discussion around domestic and global economic issues. He feels it is an opportunity to discuss economic issues with senior ministers, businesspeople and academics."
Downing Street said that it would not publicise any details of the prime minister's meetings. "It is a private meeting so we are not going to go into any further details," the spokesman said.
"On a wider point the prime minister has always been clear about the importance of transparency which is why this government has taken a number of steps in terms of publishing more data, more information about meetings."…
Cameron and Nick Clegg pledged when they formed the coalition to lead the most transparent government to date. The coalition agreement said: "The government believes that we need to throw open the doors of public bodies, to enable the public to hold politicians and public bodies to account."…
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A fight for the soul of Chinese Communist Party
Constitutionalism as a revolutionary doctrine?
Drawing the battle lines
IN DECEMBER China’s new Communist Party chief, Xi Jinping, said something that encouraged advocates of political reform. No organisation or individual, he declared, had a “special right to overstep the constitution and law”. He was simply quoting the constitution… Officials are now warning optimists not to get carried away.
Liberal calls for “constitutionalism” mean that the document should be above any other law or party edict… But some in the party are clearly concerned about attempts to promote a reform agenda using the constitution as a shield. Now constitutionalism has come under fire.
The assault began on May 21st with an article in a leading party journal by Yang Xiaoqing of Renmin University. The main components of constitutionalism, it said, belonged to “capitalism and bourgeois dictatorship, not to socialist people’s democracy”. It said constitutionalism was “deceptive”: in fact only politicians supported by “big interest groups” could get elected.
On the following day Global Times, a Beijing newspaper, said that debate about constitutionalism was not just a theoretical one. It was being used, it said, to negate China’s political system and try to turn it into a Western one. Calling for constitutionalism was in fact unconstitutional…
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A new era in Chinese politics
Chinese
President Xi Jinping and his wife Peng Liyuan wave upon their arrival
in San Jose, Costa Rica
for a state visit.
I don't recall ever seeing the spouse of a Chinese president pictured with him while on official business. Jiang Qing, the wife of Mao Zedong, was the last leader's wife who made news. And she died in prison.
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