Remember, we're in charge
I guess they needed reminding because the Communist Party of China delivered a powerful message to "publishers" of news about who is in charge.
China seeks to eradicate 'vile effect' of independent journalism
Top Chinese internet portals had been forbidden from producing original reporting on politically sensitive topics in what experts say is the latest step in President Xi Jinping’s battle to bring Chinese journalism under control…
Such independent journalism had “seriously violated regulations and had a completely vile effect,” the watchdog’s Beijing operation said, according to Reuters.
 |
| Chinese president Xi Jinping meets staff at China Central Television (CCTV) |
Citing a CAC official, the Global Times, a Beijing-controlled tabloid, said online portals were permitted to publish stories on “social and political issues” only if they had been sourced from government-controlled news agencies.
Law enforcement against such websites would be “enhanced”, the official warned…
Qiao Mu, a journalism professor from Beijing’s Foreign Languages University, said online portals had long been barred from publishing original news stories about politically sensitives subjects.
Previously, however, the enforcement of such regulations has been patchy…
Qiao said he also believed recent news events in China – including deadly flooding and an international tribunal’s rejection of Chinese claims in the South China Sea – meant Beijing was nervous about losing control of the media narrative.
“This has not been a quiet summer … authorities are worried that [such] reporting might have an effect on social stability,” he said…
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Labels: censorship, China, Communist Party, political culture, politics
Reception of unwanted information
There are a lot of questions raised by this report. How many dishes were turned in? How many were seized? How long was the collection period? How many still functioned? What were the demographics of the owners? Was it more than a publicity stunt by the Basij?
One thing to note is that many of the Farsi language satellite channels are sponsored by monarchist exiles in the USA and Europe who are intend to undermine the authority and legitimacy of the revolutionary government.
[Thanks to my editor for spotting this article that I missed.]
Iran destroys 100,000 'depraving' satellite dishes
Iranian authorities have destroyed 100,000 satellite dishes and receivers as part of a widespread crackdown against illegal devices they say "deviate morality and culture".
 |
| Destroying old satellite dishes |
General Mohammad Reza Naghdi, the head of Iran's Basij militia, oversaw the destruction ceremony in Tehran on Sunday and warned of the impact that satellite television was having in the country…
"What these televisions really achieve is increased divorce, addiction and insecurity in society."
Naghdi said that a total of one million Iranians had already voluntarily handed over their satellite dishes to authorities…
Iranian police regularly raid neighbourhoods and confiscate dishes from rooftops, and under Iranian law, satellite equipment is banned and those who distribute, use, or repair them can be fined up to $2,800…
"Most of these satellite channels not only weaken the foundation of families but also cause disruptions in children's education and children who are under the influence of satellite have improper behaviour," Naghdi said.
There are dozens of foreign-based Farsi satellite channels broadcasting mostly news, entertainment, films and series…
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Labels: censorship, civil society, Iran
Courts and the conflicts of a multi-ethnic state
Geographic isolation prevents some conflict over religious differences in Nigeria, but in areas where the ethnic groups and religious groups interact, conflict is visible. This is one of the least serious, as long as people confine their conflicts to the courts. (Rule of law, don't you know.)
Letter from Africa: Nigeria's war of the religious robes (26 June 2016)
Almost all of Nigeria's many inter-religious crises have erupted in the north of the country, where the majority of the country's Muslims live, along with a sizeable Christian minority.
But, over the past few weeks, a religious conflict of a peculiar nature has sprouted in Osun state, south-west Nigeria, which has a large population of Muslims as well as Christians.
While previous religious conflicts have involved machetes, the battle in Osun is being fought with religious garments…
Back in the beginning of June a judge ruled that female Muslims who attend public schools in the state could wear their hijabs to class.
 |
| Nigerian women wearing hijabs |
The state's branch of the Christian Association of Nigeria (Can) said Christian students would wear garments associated with church activities to schools if the state governor implemented the court ruling.
And they made good on their threat…
Some wore maroon choir robes and others donned ankle-length, white garments…
 |
| Nigerian boys in religious garb |
Mr Aregbesola [the governor] announced plans to "reclassify" schools in the state…
The reclassification entailed merging some schools. For example, some male students were dispatched to the Baptist Girls' High School… while some Muslim students were asked to join the Baptist High School in another town…
But while schools, such as the Baptist High School, ultimately complied with the directive, they drew the line at allowing Muslim students to turn up for classes wearing the hijab…
Eventually, the Muslim association in the state took the matter to court.
After three long years, Justice Jide Falola ruled at the beginning of June that the use of hijabs by female Muslim students in Osun was their fundamental human right to freedom of religion…
Nigeria's Muslims applaud lifting of hijab ban in Lagos schools
A leading Muslim group in Nigeria has welcomed a court ruling lifting the ban on girls wearing the headscarf in government schools in Lagos state.
The Muslim Rights Concern (MRC) said the Lagos Court of Appeal's ruling was a victory for the rule of law.
The judges said the ban violated the religious rights of Muslim girls, overturning a lower court's ruling…
Nigeria's population is roughly divided between Muslims and Christians, with both groups being staunch believers.
The majority of Muslims live in the north and Christians primarily are in the south - though the southern state of Lagos has a more religious mix.
In June, the High Court in the southern state of Osun also lifted the ban on Muslims girls wearing the headscarf.
It caused religious tension in the state, with some Christian boys insisting on wearing church robes to school…
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Labels: civil society, cleavages, judiciary, Nigeria, rule of law
Textbook addendum
Here are a couple paragraphs I added to my
"Corrections and Updates" page. Your students could add them to their textbooks.
Brexit and May
In the spring of 2016, Prime Minister David Cameron was facing the disintegration of his Parliamentary majority and his government. The demand for Britain's withdrawal from the EU had become irresistible. Even members of the government, when given permission to disagree with the official line, had joined the Brexit (Britain exit) campaign.
Cameron called for a referendum on the issue, assuming that people would not vote to leave the EU. Trade, travel, and occupational opportunities were too great, he assumed.
Boy, was he wrong. Just over half of British voters favored Brexit in the referendum. He resigned.
After a short intra-party campaign, Theresa May was elected leader of the Conservative Party and became the second woman to be Prime Minister of the UK. She had campaigned against Brexit, but promised to carry out the will of the people in ways that didn't hurt the country. During the summer of 2016, she made the rounds of EU prime ministers and presidents (most importantly Germany and France), to discuss how best to end Britain's EU membership while maintaining the trade, travel, and immigration advantages.
Prime Minister May and many observers suggested that no one should expect formal action of the UK's withdrawal from the EU until 2017.
Labels: EU, leaders, politics, UK
Oops!
I'm not sure what this event says about politics or the government in Russia, but there are invisible politics going on. Wait and see…
One Russian Security Agency Raids Another, in Rare Sign of Dysfunction
Russia’s main domestic intelligence service raided the Moscow headquarters of an investigative agency on Tuesday, in a rare sign of dysfunction in the country’s domestic security services…
Agents of the Federal Security Service, or F.S.B., the main successor to the Soviet K.G.B., searched the offices of the Investigative Committee, the powerful branch of the prosecutor’s office that deals with politically hued crimes.
The raid was all the more baffling because the two agencies are generally viewed as operating in lock step…
The F.S.B. searched the offices of the director of the committee’s Moscow operation and arrested a deputy head of the headquarters… and the two top officials in the department of internal affairs…
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Labels: politics, Russia
The many faces of crisis in Nigeria
If you're into making lists, Nigeria offers opportunities to make many lists: cleavages, geographic areas, populations, and crises.
Nigeria Finds a National Crisis in Every Direction It Turns
Militants are roaming oil-soaked creeks in the south, blowing up pipelines and decimating the nation’s oil production. Islamist extremists have killed thousands in the north. Deadly land battles are shaking the nation’s center. And a decades-old separatist movement at the heart of a devastating civil war is brewing again.
On their own, any one of these would be a national emergency. But here in Nigeria, they are all happening at the same time, tearing at the country from almost every angle…
Mr. Buhari took office a year ago, promising to stamp out terrorism in the north and to rebuild the nation’s economy…
Beyond low prices for the nation’s oil, the source of more than 70 percent of the government’s revenue, Nigerian officials have been tormented by a new band of militants claiming to be on a quest to free the oil-producing south from oppression. They call themselves the Niger Delta Avengers…
As a result, Nigeria’s oil production in the second quarter this year dropped 25 percent from the same period a year earlier…
“We are not asking for much, but to free the people of the Niger Delta from environmental pollution, slavery and oppression,” the Avengers wrote on their website…
On the opposite side of the country, Boko Haram is still raging…
Another longtime battle is flaring in the middle of the country, between farmers and nomadic Fulani herdsmen looking for grazing pastures. Hundreds have been killed in battles as herdsmen roam into new territory to look for vegetation for their cattle…
And with their demands for economic equality for the south, the Avengers have been trying to stoke the aspirations of separatists elsewhere in the nation…
Now, a Biafran separatist movement is simmering again…
The south has long been a reservoir of anger and resistance, a place where countless billions in oil revenue are extracted for the benefit of distant politicians and companies abroad. Yet drinking water and electricity can be scarce, and the swamps people live around are regularly polluted…
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Labels: economics, environment, leadership, Nigeria, politics, pollution
Tiny baby step forward
The Nigerian government has announced that there has been serious corruption in military procurement. The announcement implies that rumors of military shortages last year were true. Will the government have more to say? Does this have anything to do with rule of law?
Nigeria Says Arms Deals Irregularities Had Serious Consequences
Irregularities in Nigerian military procurement deals as armed forces were fighting Islamist militant group Boko Haram had serious consequences, Information Minister Lai Mohammed said on Friday.
Military procurement over the last few years is being investigated by the country's Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC).
A committee recommended the "further investigation" of 18 serving and retired military personnel, 12 serving and retired public officials and 24 chief executive officers of companies involved in arms deals…
Mohammed said… a total of $685,349,692 was spent on procurement and operations in the period [2011-2015]…
See also:
Corruption in Nigeria, not just Boko Haram, is at the root of violence
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Labels: corruption, leadership, Nigeria, rule of law, transparency
Backgrounder on China and the South China Sea conflict
Unless this conflict escalates, it's not likely to be a major topic for comparative politics, but it's good to get a basic understanding of the issues. Max Fisher, writing in
The New York Times does a good job in this article.
The South China Sea: Explaining the Dispute
After an international tribunal in The Hague ruled emphatically against China in a territorial dispute with the Philippines, many Chinese state media outlets responded on Wednesday by publishing a map. It showed the South China Sea, with most of the waters encircled with the “nine-dash line” that has long represented its claims there.
This week’s ruling may have delivered a sweeping victory in court to the Philippines… But it has only escalated the larger dispute, which involves several Asian nations as well as the United States…
What follows is an explanation of why this body of water is considered such a big deal, and why it may be a harbinger of global power politics in the decades ahead.
1. What is the dispute about?
At its most basic level, this a contest between China and several Southeast Asian nations over territorial control in the South China Sea, which includes some of the most strategically important maritime territory on earth…
This is also about whether China will comply with international laws and norms, which Beijing sometimes views as a plot to constrain the country’s rise…
2. What does this week’s ruling mean?
The tribunal ruled almost categorically in favor of the Philippines… It also said China had broken international law by endangering Philippine ships and damaging the marine environment.
Maybe most important, the tribunal largely rejected the nine-dash line that China has used to indicate its South China Sea claims…
But while the ruling is considered binding, there is no enforcement mechanism… Whether China chooses to defy or comply with that pressure, though, could help to shape its place in the international community…
3. What is the ‘nine-dash line’?
This little line has shown up on official Chinese maps since the 1940s (it began with 11 dashes). It demarcates a vast but vague stretch of ocean from China’s southern coast through most of the South China Sea…
For China, the line represents long-lost historical claims that the country, after two centuries of weakness, is finally strong enough to recover. For the other nations, the line is a symbol of what they characterize as a naked power grab by China.
4. Why is the South China Sea so important?
The United States Energy Information Agency estimates there are 11 billion barrels of oil and 190 trillion cubic feet of natural gas in deposits under the sea… The waters also contain lucrative fisheries… The area’s greatest value is as a trade route…
5. Why does it matter who controls those trade routes?
This gets to a core contradiction in the South China Sea dispute: It is driven by territorial competition, yet all countries involved want open sea routes. Everyone benefits from the free flow of goods between Asia and the rest of the world, and everyone suffers if that is disrupted…
[T]he Chinese… suspect that the global status quo is engineered to serve Western interests first. So it is hardly surprising that China is seeking greater control over waterways it relies on for economic survival…
6. So this is about China’s rise?
China sees itself as a growing power that has a right to further its interests in its own backyard, just as Western powers have done for centuries…
Something Americans often miss is that for China, this is in part defensive. The history of Western imperialism looms large. Chinese leaders often distrust the United States’ intentions, and consider their country to be the far weaker party…
7. Why is the United States so involved in this?
The United States has a treaty obligation to the Philippines… As the world’s largest economy, it also has a real interest in maintaining open sea lanes — and, as the world’s biggest naval power, it often assumes the role of policing them. Plus, as the world’s only superpower, the United States often acts as a balancer in regional disputes.
But this is also, for Washington, about shaping what sort of major power China becomes.
American officials insist that they do not oppose China’s rise. Their concern is whether China will work within what scholars call the liberal order — the postwar system of international laws and institutions — or seek to overturn it…
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Labels: China, international relations, policy, resources
Back to the future in Iran
Many people long for the days of President Ahmadinejad
Polling gives a dark forecast for Iranian president Hassan Rouhani
 |
| President Rouhani |
The latest poll from IranPoll, the Canadian outfit linked to Maryland University, is bad news for president Hassan Rouhani. Just under three quarters – 74% - of Iranians surveyed on 17-27 June say there has been no improvement in the economy as a result of last year’s nuclear agreement with world powers. With a presidential election looming next year, probably in June, Rouhani’s lead over possible challenger Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the former ‘principle-ist’ (or fundamentalist) president, has narrowed to eight percentage points from 27 points in May 2015.
Economic growth in the Iranian year ending in March was far smaller than expected….
But how widely will any benefits of growth be distributed? Back in March the state’s statistical centre reported poverty and inequality had increased in the previous 12 months.
And poorer Iranians are the target group for Rouhani’s principle-ist opponents. The recent ‘pay cheque scandal’ played into their hands…
Principle-ists have been showing nostalgia not just for the egalitarianism of the 1979 Revolution and the noble sacrifices of the 1980-88 war with Iraq but for the landslide election victory won by Ahmadinejad in 2005 on the slogan of ‘putting the oil money on the sofreh’ (the dining mat used by poorer Iranians)…
The populism of the Iranian principle-ists shows striking similarities with populism elsewhere. It is critical of bankers, often anti-intellectual, and pushes a notion of national control against an international, or even global, elite. Its idea of nation is not just nostalgic but hostile to diversity, and extols the values of supposed ‘simplicity’ against the wicked ways of the big city – praising the morality police acting against ‘bad hijab’ is a topical example…
In the 2005 presidential election, Ahmadinejad not only promised to put oil revenue on the sofreh, he scorned the middle classes and intellectuals…
Whereas his reformist predecessor, Mohammad Khatami, spoke in universities and international bodies of a “dialogue among civilisations”, Ahmadinejad made repeated provincial trips around Iran addressing huge crowds of people who felt neglected by central government. Those feelings of neglect are just as strong today – and president Rouhani has little time to address them.
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Labels: Iran, leadership, politics, social classes
The UK's new PM
The BBC has a profile of Theresa May, the new PM.
Who is Theresa May: A profile of UK's next prime minister
Theresa May is the new Conservative Party leader and will become the UK's second female prime minister on Wednesday, taking charge at one of the most turbulent times in recent political history.
The 59-year-old home secretary's carefully cultivated image of political dependability and unflappability appears to have made her the right person at the right time as the fallout from the UK's vote to leave the EU smashed possible rivals out of contention.
Long known to have nurtured leadership hopes, Mrs May - whose friends recall her early ambition to be the UK's first female PM - could have reasonably expected to have had to wait until at least 2018 to have a shot at Downing Street…
 |
| Another Iron Lady? |
But it is her toughness which has become her political hallmark. She has coped with being one of only a small number of women in the upper echelons of the Conservative Party for 17 years and has been prepared to tell her party some hard truths - famously informing activists at the 2002 conference that "you know what some people call us - the nasty party"…
The daughter of a Church of England vicar… Theresa May's middle class background has more in keeping with the last female occupant of Downing Street, Margaret Thatcher, than her immediate predecessor…
Born in Sussex but raised largely in Oxfordshire, Mrs May - both of whose grandmothers are reported to have been in domestic service - attended a state primary, an independent convent school and then a grammar school in the village of Wheatley…
Like Margaret Thatcher, she went to Oxford University to study and, like so many others of her generation, found that her personal and political lives soon became closely intertwined.
In 1976, in her third year, she met her husband Philip, who was president of the Oxford Union…
 |
| Theresa and Phillip May |
Her university friend Pat Frankland, speaking in 2011 on a BBC Radio 4 profile of the then home secretary, said: "I cannot remember a time when she did not have political ambitions…
An early advocate of Conservative "modernisation" in the wilderness years that followed [Tony Blair's election], Mrs May quickly joined the shadow cabinet in 1999 under William Hague as shadow education secretary and in 2002 she became the party's first female chairman under Iain Duncan Smith.
She then held a range of senior posts under Michael Howard but was conspicuously not part of the "Notting Hill set" which grabbed control of the party after its third successive defeat in 2005 and laid David Cameron and George Osborne's path to power…
Generally thought to be in the mainstream of Conservative thinking on most economic and law and order issues, she has also challenged convention by attacking police stop and search powers and calling for a probe into the application of Sharia Law in British communities…
Her social attitudes are slightly harder to pin down. She backed same sex marriage. She expressed a personal view in 2012 that the legal limit on abortion should be lowered from 24 to 20 weeks. Along with most Conservative MPs she voted against an outright ban on foxhunting.
What is undisputable is that at 59, Mrs May will be oldest leader to enter Downing Street since James Callaghan in 1976 and will be the first prime minister since Ted Heath who does not have children.
While the early years of Mrs May's time in Downing Street may be dominated by the process of divorcing the UK from the EU and the deal she will be able to strike, she has also insisted she won't be content with the "safe pair of hands" tag that is often attached to her.
Brexit, she has said, won't be allowed purely to define her time in office and she has promised a radical programme of social reform, underpinned by values of One Nation Toryism, to promote social mobility and opportunity for the more disadvantaged in society.
But with a slender parliamentary majority of 17 and a nation still riven by divisions over the EU referendum and anxiety over the future, she will face as tough a task, some say even tougher, than any of her recent predecessors in Downing Street.
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Labels: gender, leadership, politics, recruitment, UK
China's firewall
The firewall is political. It's becoming more effective.
The Internet was supposed to foster democracy. China has different ideas.
It is part of China’s larger effort to… disprove the notion that the flow of ideas across the World Wide Web would be an unstoppable force toward democracy. News and information that might threaten the Communist Party are kept out of the country under a system of censorship known as the Great Firewall, while foreign social-media networks such as Facebook and Twitter that allow private citizens to share ideas and join forces are also banned. Behind the wall, China’s own social-media networks are closely policed to ensure public opinion does not coalesce into a threat to one-party rule…
Indeed, social media is increasingly being harnessed by autocratic regimes to bolster their rule, says University of Toronto political scientist Seva Gunitsky. It helps dictatorships gauge public opinion and discover otherwise hidden grievances, while also allowing them to disseminate propaganda and shape the contours of public debate.
“China has been at the forefront of this, and they are quickly getting very sophisticated about it,” he said. “Social media can allow autocrats to become stronger, more informed and more adaptable…
Censors work selectively, especially targeting posts that threaten to spur some form of collective action. Pro-government voices generally do not engage critics in discussion or argument… but do often subject them to personal attack…
Ordinary citizens, meanwhile, were warned off with a threat of up to three years in jail for spreading rumors if their posts were viewed more than 5,000 times or reposted 500 times.
Real-name verification was introduced for social-media accounts, while the government warned Internet giant Sina last year to intensify its own censorship of online comments…
Broadening the campaign, China’s Internet regulator told news websites on June 21 to crack down on online comment sections, cleaning up comments that violated what are described as “nine don’ts and seven bottom lines,” including endangering state security, challenging socialism and inciting ethnic hatred…
Some posters are popularly believed to be paid — the “wumao” (the 50-cent Party) who are supposedly given half a renminbi ($0.08) for every post praising the government or denigrating its critics.
But a much larger number may just be employees of the state, doing part-time work outside their main jobs to support the party’s agenda.
Various arms of the Chinese government, together with individual state employees, by their own admission operate more than 150,000 official Weibo [a government-approved version of Twitter] accounts, but the real number of accounts run by state employees could be far higher…
Others are volunteers, reportedly recruited by the Communist Youth League in the millions to spread “positive energy” and “civilize” the Internet…
True believers could come from a new breed of young people, brought up after the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests, who are proud of China’s rising global power and suspicious of Western criticism as an attempt to block its rise…
President Xi says he wants an Internet that is “clear and bright” but in April told leaders of the country’s top Internet companies, as well as officials and academics, that he did not want to shut down criticism entirely.
Indeed, he called for “more tolerance and patience” toward netizens and said he welcomed online criticism “whether mild or fierce,” as long as it arises from goodwill, the People’s Daily reported.
Authorities then apparently censored negative reactions to his speech on social media…
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HERE
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Just The Facts! 2nd edition is a concise guide to concepts, terminology, and examples that will appear on May's exam.
Just The Facts! is available. Order HERE.
Amazon's customers gave this book a 5-star rating.
The Comparative Government and Politics Review Checklist.
Two pages summarizing the course requirements to help you review and study for the final and for the big exam in May. . It contains a description of comparative methods, a list of commonly used theories
, a list of vital concepts, thumbnail descriptions of the AP6,
and
a description of the AP exam format
. $2.00.
Order HERE.
What You Need to Know: Teaching Tools, the original version and v2.0 are available to help curriculum planning.
Labels: censorship, China, Internet, politics, social media
Just The Facts! 2nd edition is a concise guide to concepts, terminology, and examples that will appear on May's exam.
