Laziness on my part - I even read a piece recently on the CDU victories in state elections describing them as the opposition party. I looked up the German government but saw they were the largest party, pattern matched that to Scholz having high profile roles in Merkel's governments, and assumed away the rest. All I can say in my defense is apparently our resident German was as surprised as I am!
Soriek
2yr ago
But these are totally different places and eras. I'm talking about the society depicted in the Iliad, Greece around the 1100s. Maybe we could get hints at it from more contemporary literature from other places, but Gilgamesh is about a society 1000 years earlier.
How, like, preexisting are we talking though? The Trojan War (supposedly) happened some 400-500 years before the Odyssey and the Iliad reached their moden forms. Even if they were stories that were passed down from the conflict till their final form, you'd still expect to see massive change as successive cultures inserting their own values and re-interpretations. It's taken us far less long to re-do many of our classic books and movies in ways that fit with our evolving culture.
Or put otherwise, the Greeks of the Dark Ages had forgotten how their ancestors read and wrote, forgot how they built their architecture, forgot how they sustained urban life or organized their societies, but we're sure they didn't forget anything else?
What archeological evidence do we have from then? Honest question I don't much about it. I also don't know anything about The Tale of Sinuhe, would definitely be interested to learn more.
Soriek
2yr ago
That's fair and to be clear I certainly wouldn't claim that ancient morality was the same as ours. But I'd also be skeptical that there was no change in culture or values across regions and time periods, and likewise would think there's a limit to what records from one era in Babylon could tell us about a different era in Greece. And if the books were actually written in the 600s then this would be fairly close to the time period the Iliad was written in itself, and I would even have the same questions about a (comparatively) modern culture writing moral narratives about a more ancient one.
Soriek
2yr ago
To be fair Greer doesn't say Tolkien invented the trope, and specifically references older examples like Cinncinatus or Yu and Shun, he's mostly claiming Tolkien popularized it.
On another note, it seems to me that YA fiction is moving in the direction of their heroes not having much self doubt at all and being more pure power fantasies where the protagonist unashamedly seeks power, gets it and uses it to humiliate their enemies.
Oh really? I'm probably pretty out of date with what's popular right now/
Soriek
2yr ago
Yeah, I guess I should have said if Harry believed in a higher power things would be different, but by necessity he can't hear the call from a source he would trust completely, because he doesn't have one.
Soriek
2yr ago
Oh really? I was honestly unaware, my impression was very little had survived from that era at least in terms of writing.
Soriek
2yr ago
I like this take a lot. I even think Greer might be sympathetic in ways. Much of his writing about how people have less autonomy or self-governance is extremely American specific, they wouldn't make much sense in one of the many countries with a long tradition of serfdom (and of course wasn't true for the majority of Americans who came over as indentured servants or slaves). The way I interpret his argument at least is that American fiction expresses a unique dislike of larger systems partially because Americans have a genuine cultural memory of a different era and have some sense that the present state is historically unnatural.
At the same time, is there nothing moden about this trend? Was America writing popular fiction about plucky rebels fighting the empire in the nineteenth century? I think it's fair to say that when you read books like Huckleberry Finn or The Scarlett letter there's definitely themes of distrusting authority, but nothing (to my knowledge) like a complete revolutionary narrative, despite the fact that we were so much closer to that actual period of American history. The dystopian fiction about all encompassing, opppressive governments and corporations does seem to rise in tandem with the size and influence of the actual government and actual corporations. If Americans have an inherent distrust of institutional authority, it still took those institutions growing in size and scale for our distrust in them to grow towards producing a genuinely revolutionary literary culture.
Soriek
2yr ago
Notice how frequently divinity appears. Yudhishthira and Aeneas are the progeny of gods, Rama is a god, etc. Indeed, this should not be surprising - when the hero is given a form of divine mandate, that mandate is often moral itself. To obtain power to carry out this mandate cannot be immoral. These gods are not The Corporation from the Waifu Catalogue or some evil ROB.
In contrast, Katniss Everdeen, Harry Potter, Divergent, etc. are not given such a mandate (I haven't read the last one, but from what I've heard, I don't recall any mention of gods in the Greek or Abrahamic sense). They are products of minds raised in a far more secular society.
That's a good point, in a culture where we don't expect to get commands from an unquestionable authority we'll all be less confident in our mission and actions. It makes sense that Harry Potter feels less confident where weird randoms tell him he's got all this stuff to do vs if God himself came down and gave him his assignment.
How much do we actually know about Bronze Age morality?
This is an honest question from someone who doesn’t know a ton about the era.
People here and elsewhere sometimes point out that the Bronze Age Mindset is a bit of a LARP, its followers mostly white collar workers idealizing an unrealistic world they would hate if they inhabited. It’s hard to take people seriously whose main experience with conflict is arguing on Twitter when they exalt the warlike morality of the Iliad or the Odyssey.
My question is: were the actual people writing the Odyssey and the Iliad also LARPing? These are books portraying the height of the Bronze Age civilizations by people who emphatically did not live in them, but rather in their ruins. Today we’re apparently Tanner Greer-maxing because I’m quoting another piece of his to you: “How I Taught the Iliad to Chinese Teenagers.”
I spend about 15 minutes outlining what we know about Mycenaean civilization through archaeological discoveries: the grandeur of their palaces, how they fought, their role in an entire ecosystem of Near Eastern civilizations. But most of all I focus on the mystery of their fall, the “Bronze Age Collapse” that littered the Greek isles with Mycenaean ruins, ruins that would have towered over the humble abodes of “Dark Age” Greece (pictures of Dark Age archaeological finds are included in the slides to drive home this point).
I then have students read Book IV.35-62. Here Hera declares that in exchange for the destruction of Troy, she will allow Zeus to destroy Argos, Sparta, and Mycenae without complaint. These three cities were devastated in the Bronze Age collapse. This gives us another way to think about the Iliad. Post-apocalyptic fiction is a popular genre with high schoolers. But if you actually lived in a post-apocalyptic setting… what would your fiction be about?
Homer’s Greeks lived in the ruins of a golden age. They had forgotten how to write and read, but they still remembered a time when the Aegean was full of great cities, wealthy kings, and enormous armies. The Iliad portrayed that golden world as it was imagined hundreds of years later—and explained why this golden age was no more. It is a true piece of post-apocalyptic fiction.
Do we expect the illiterate, post-apocalyptic Greeks to be the same morally and socially as their highly advanced ancestors? Can we be confident their portrayal of those societies is how the ancients would have portrayed themselves, or could they just be later cultures trying to insert themselves and their customs into that time period? I imagine ancient Greece was a more violent place than modernity, but the portrayal of its inhabitants as people who killed, looted, and enslaved without a second thought - was this really how they felt back then? Or was this the tribal, warlike peoples who came after them back-projecting their contemporary values onto the golden age? When I look up ancient literature in the Bronze Age I don’t see anything from Greece - how much do we really know about these people, how they felt, and what they thought?
Soriek
2yr ago
@Ioper as well, Cincinnatus is the most classic trope of the reluctant hero, but even he was of a high ranking patrician family and never questioned that he was the right man to lead when requested. Likewise, King Arthur was still the son of the actual King and Brutus one of the most influential and powerful people in the country. This feels qualitatively different to me than the modern YA protagonist, a mundane teenager nervous of responsibility and convinced they're not the right person for the job. Cincinnatus/Arthur also immediately become the Dictator/king who is in charge of the imperial machine, whereas the YA trope is more about a tiny cog in the machine raging against it. You don't see that same kind of distrust of power inherent in the old myths.
Or, to put it a different way, King Arthur is chosen by prophecy via martial display and Harry Potter chosen by a school admissions board - one feels much more tailored from our modern neuroses than the other!
Does our fiction say anything about our society?
(The way I've been encouraging myself to read fiction again is by convincing myself it's anthropology/history/a window into culture)
Tanner Greer once authored a piece called "On the Tolkienic Hero," arguing that while history is littered with heroes who had no distrust of power and who conciously sought out their quest, J.R.R. Tolkien popularized the notion of a hero as a character whose very goodness is that they don't want power, that they will only shoulder power as a temporary burden. Nowadays we see this trope everywhere in the most popular form of writing: Young Adult fiction, from Harry Potter to Hunger Games to Star Wars. In a piece in City Journal Greer explores the implications of this - what could a culture that produces these kind of myths tell us about our society?
Greer has also written at length in the past about how he feels that modern Americans have lost agency as the country moved from self employed, locally-governed settler communities towards our current era of vast corporations and vast bureaucracy. His thesis here is that we see this expressed in our fiction - the modern, powerless YA protaganist raging against the machine is symptomatic of a society where people feel themselves to be at the whims of distant and impersonal forces:
As unconscious illustrations of common beliefs about authority, fate, and morality, [French Fairy Tales] offered a rare window into the ancien regime as the common man experienced it. The fairy realm of the French peasant mirrored his lived reality. His was a vicious and empty moral order, where personal destiny depended on the arbitrary whims of the powerful...
like the fairy tales of old, [American] escapist yarns can escape only so far. Their imagery and plotting are irrevocably tied to our society...these fictional narratives share a set of attitudes and convictions about the nature of authority, power, and responsibility. They provide a window into the moral economy of the twenty-first century’s overmanaged meritocrats...
The defining feature of the YA fictional society: powerful, inscrutable authorities with a mysterious and obsessive interest in the protagonist. Sometimes the hidden hands of this hidden world are benign. More often, they do evil. But the intentions behind these spying eyes do not much matter. Be they vile or kind, they inevitably create the kind of protagonist about whom twenty-first century America loves to read: a young hero defined by her frustration with, or outright hostility toward, every system of authority that she encounters...
It is not just twenty-first-century teenagers who feel buffeted by forces beyond their control...one-third of Americans now find themselves employed by corporations made impersonal by their scale. The decisions that determine the daily rounds of the office drone are made in faraway boardrooms—rooms, one might say, “where adults discuss things out of earshot.” What decides the destiny of Western man? Credit scores he has only intermittent access to. Regulations he has not read. HR codes he had no part in writing...
The modern-day fairy tale is not at peace with HR. Our fairy realm’s preoccupation with the problems of the micromanaged life resonates. Its paranoia reflects a culture that has lost faith in its own ruling class. The YA novel’s adolescent attitude toward authority speaks to the experiences of the many millions shaken by their own impotence. The mania for dystopia is a literary sensation custom-made for the frustrations of our age.
Counterarguments:
1. Women's Liberation
In general when Greer talks about missing a past where people had more autonomy, he's really talking about men, and I think it's right to say that men are more likely to be disillusioned by modenity than women. The society that created these modern myths is one where women finally gained the right to have a voice, get a mortgage, start a business, etc, and Greer himself points out that most YA authors, protaganists, and readers are women. Should we see the portrayal of the teen girl protaganist finding empowerment against an oppressive society as just a story of the time, articulating a struggle many women went through in the last century? (Remember that even authors writing about young people are often from a previous generation and have lived through more cultural change).
Counterpoint: the female YA protaganists don't seem that different from the males in terms of their position in society. This might be just because more male protaganists are written by women and so also embody themes that women have lived through. On the other hand, compare modern "Tolkienic" women protaganists to heroines written by women authors in a different age, like Scarlett O'Hara of Gone With the Wind, Elizabeth Bennet of Pride and Prejudice, Anne Shirley of Anne of Green Gables. All of these characters to me feel much more self-confident in their rank or purpose. Also, their much more sexist and heirarchical societies are not portrayed as particularly dystopian or oppressive, even with those books do grapple with themes of patriarchy.
2. Fiction written by commoners rather than elites
For a long time most great literature was created by a privledged elite class - of course they weren't going to portray their society as oppressive, they were the ones doing the oppressing! Elizabeth Bennet and Scarlett O'hara are literally from wealthy landowner families, of course they don't question their (relative) empowerment. Nowadays anyone can take a stab at writing fiction, so of course you're going to have more perspectives from people who don't feel particularly powerful and whose relation to society has been more subservient.
Counterpoint: Not all empowered female protaganists from that era were from wealthy backgrounds - Jane Eyre and Anne Shirley were orphans. Counter-counterpoint - their authors kinda were, Lucy Maud Montgomery was from a political elite family in Canada and Charlotte Brontë was at least relatively privledged, if not a giga-elite, so maybe their perspectives still don't incorporate the common person on the street.
3. ? Insert yours
Despite the counterpoints I listed to my own arguments, I think the answer is likely a combination of all of the above - late stage capitalism and advanced bureaucracy means we are now governed by vast, distant forces, but also fiction is increasingly created by women and normal people whose historical experience of being treated like second class citizens are going to bleed into the art we create.
Soriek
2yr ago
Liberia
Liberia’s runoff election between incumbent George Weah and Joseph Bokai happened Tuesday. The first round had them absolutely neck and neck with respectively 43.83% and 43.44%. Since the first round more opposition parties sided with Weah, but currently Bokai seems to be pulling ahead. Weah’s election in 2017 was the first peaceful, democratic transfer of power so hopefully this election is respected as well. I prepared this section in advance because I honestly expected the results to be out by now but I will update this section as they come in!
United Kingdom
Suella Braverman is out as Home Secretary, to be replaced by the Foreign Secretary James Cleverly:
He will inherit a department dealing with the fallout from Ms. Braverman’s face-off with Britain’s largest police force, the Metropolitan Police of London, over pro-Palestinian marches in the capital.
Also looming on his agenda: a decision due Wednesday from the Supreme Court on the lawfulness of the government’s plan to deport asylum seekers to Rwanda, a signature policy for the Conservatives that has been divisive with the public…
In his most recent role, Mr. Cleverly oversaw Britain’s foreign relations amid the uncertainty prompted by Britain’s withdrawal from the European Union and wars raging in Gaza and in Ukraine.
It’s an interesting decision to shuffle the Foreign Secretary at a time when international relations seem so tumultuous, and he’s being replaced by…David Cameron? This rather surprising outcome caught quite a few of us off guard, including these commentators (are all reporters in Britain this brutal?) It must be surreal leaving power after Brexit and coming back to whatever exactly the Tory party is now. Commentators don’t have much to say with regards to his nomination:
“Sunak is not that interested in foreign policy,” said Jonathan Powell, a former chief of staff to Prime Minister Tony Blair. “This is a case of, ‘who can I give foreign policy to so I don’t have to worry about it for the next year?’”
But the domestic politics of Mr. Cameron’s appointment “are pretty hard to divine,” Professor Bale said, “leaving aside, of course, the day or two of distraction it will provide from Suella Braverman’s belated departure.”
In defense of his selection, Cameron has significant experience dealing with foreign statesmen and was generally well liked abroad. On the other hand, the big issue he’ll be thrust into is Israel and Palestine, and the last PM I know being brought back as a Foreign Secretary was Balfour, and that sure didn’t end out too great for Palestine…
Mr. Cameron’s six years in Downing Street will make him an exceedingly well-connected foreign secretary. But critics are scrutinizing the foreign policy positions of his government, some of which look questionable in hindsight.
Mr. Cameron played host to President Xi Jinping of China in 2015, heralding a “golden era” in relations with Beijing. He joined a U.S.-led military intervention in Libya in 2011, which resulted in the overthrow of its dictator, Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi, but was criticized in Britain for the messy aftermath.
Soriek
2yr ago
Iraq
I’ve covered a while back the mess of the last Iraqi election, where the anti-Tehran winner Moqtada al-Sadr was ousted by the Iranian aligned Federal Supreme Court, leaving the loose coalition of pro-Iran parties, known as the Coordinated Framework, still running the show. In more exciting news, that same Supreme Court has now ruled that it will terminate the Mohamed al-Halbousi’s tenure as the Parliament Speaker, the highest role a Sunni can hold in Iraq’s consociational government. Ostensibly the reason was because of a dispute between him and another Sunni official, also now removed, though it leaves the government a little rudderless. It is unclear who will replace him but the position must be held by a Sunni.
The United States Institute of Peace offers a one year retrospective on Al-Sudani, the leader who took over in Al-Sadr’s wake:
Iraq has played an important role in Iran-Saudi and other rapprochement efforts in the Middle East for a few years now. As prime minister, al-Sudani has continued on the path toward regional integration and collaborative engagement.
They [the government under Al-Sudani] have leveraged the relative political stability and security of the current moment to pursue the “Development Road,” a project that promotes Iraq as a dry canal of ports, highways and railways that connect Asia to Europe — as ambitious and big a vision as other countries in the region.
Iraq has also signed contracts with General Electric, Total Energies, Siemens and others to improve energy production domestically while sharing a piece of the economic pie. The al-Sudani government’s support for financing the al-Muhandis company and connecting Iraq and Iran by rail might be seen as entrenching Iran’s interests and agenda — which are often viewed as malign by many of Iraq’s citizens, neighbors and western supporters. But another view might see the move as part of a pragmatic approach to portray Iraq as a web of mutually beneficial economic interests in the region.
In his first year, al-Sudani also had to work with Iran and the Kurdistan Region leadership to prevent further Iranian missile and drone attacks on Iranian opposition based in Iraq. Khor Mor gas field was attacked multiple times, with fingers pointing to Iran and its proxies attempting to hamper Kurdish and Iraqi aspirations to become a player in the global gas market.
Relations with Turkey is also a mix of working through difficult portfolios, including the expansion of Turkish military attacks inside Iraq against the Kurdistan Workers' Party, water issues, oil export via Ceyhan, trade and construction.
Furthermore, Iraq’s Federal Supreme Court ruling that a 2012 Iraq-Kuwait maritime agreement was unconstitutional raised alarms among gulf neighbors regarding Iraq’s commitment to its obligations.
Also, minor spatterings of the Hamas-Israel war seem to have spilled over to the US in Iraq as well with attacks on multiple US targets. Secretary of State Anthony Blinken visited Iraq last week and spoke with Al-Sudani about avoiding future anti-American violence. However, the attacks have continued.
United States troops in Iraq have been targeted in new attacks using drones and explosives, military and security sources reported.
Three attacks took place on Thursday, the sources told Reuters. The incidents add to the more than 40 assaults that US and allied troops based across the Middle East have come under since the Israel-Hamas war started on October 7…
As well as two drone assaults at bases, a US-led coalition convoy was hit by an improvised explosive device (IED) blast in the vicinity of Mosul Dam.
The security sources said the patrol was accompanied by Iraqi counterterrorism forces and that a vehicle in the patrol was damaged. Three US troops sustained minor injuries but had returned to duty, the official added.
Drone attacks targeted American and coalition forces at the Ain al-Asad airbase west of Baghdad and al-Harir airbase in Erbil. Both drones were destroyed before reaching their target, the sources said.
A statement from Iraqi Kurdistan’s counterterrorism service added that the attack at al-Harir had caused a fire at one of its fuel depots, but added that US-led coalition forces had evacuated the airbase on October 20.
Soriek
2yr ago
Venezuela
The deadline for Venezuela to approve Maria Machado for the general election draws closer without any formal activity yet. If this demand is not approved then America’s sanctions will snap back into place. Speaking of voting, Venezuela is now holding a referendum over whether to reopen a territorial dispute with neighboring Guyana, which Guyana considers “an existential threat”. They’re probably not wrong - the territory in question, the Essequibo region, is like two thirds of the whole country.
The Tunisia-sized swath of jungle west of the Essequibo River in the dispute is rich in gold, diamonds, timber and other natural resources.
Guyana launched a case at the world court in 2018 seeking to have U.N. judges uphold the 1899 ruling. It returned to the court last month after Venezuelan authorities published five questions the country plans to ask in a consultative referendum scheduled for Dec. 3 about the future of the Essequibo.
“The collective decision called for here involves nothing less than the annexation of the territory in dispute in this case. This is a textbook example of annexation,” said Paul Reichler, an American lawyer representing Guyana…
It is a significant escalation in frictions between the countries that have increased since 2015 as a result of oil exploration operations by ExxonMobil and other companies in offshore areas intersecting the disputed territory.
The Venezuelan government maintains that Guyana does not have jurisdiction to grant concessions in maritime areas off the Essequibo.
The referendum is scheduled to take place six weeks after Venezuela’s opposition held a presidential primary that exceeded participation expectations, including in areas long considered strongholds of the ruling party.
Perhaps coincidentally, on Tuesday, the same day Guyana will be presenting to the ICJ, ExxonMobil is beginning production at a third offshore facility under Guyana’s EEZ.
Soriek
2yr ago
Ukraine
The long expected reality seems to be approaching that the EU will struggle to complete its promised contributions to the war in Ukraine:
Early this year, EU leaders promised to provide 1 million rounds of ammunition to Ukraine’s front line by spring next year in what would have amounted to a serious ramp-up of production. But the 27-nation bloc, for over half a century steeped in a “peace, not war” message and sheltering under a U.S. military umbrella, is finding it tough to come up with the goods.
“The 1 million will not be reached, you have to assume that,” said German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius, ahead of a meeting of EU defense and foreign affairs ministers in Brussels.
U.S. aid to Ukraine is also politically up in the air, but existing appropriations should last a bit longer
Militarily, Ukraine has some breathing space: Under previous spending bills passed by Congress, Mr. Biden can still draw about $5.6 billion in matériel from the military’s reserves (mostly thanks to a Pentagon accounting error that overvalued aid that has already gone to Ukraine).
For context, a $500 million drawdown in June was enough to fund Bradley and Stryker vehicles, air defense munitions, artillery, multiple launch rocket systems, anti-tank weapons, anti-radiation missiles and precision aerial munitions, according to the State Department.
And a pause in new funding does not affect existing Pentagon contracts under the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative. That means new weapons and equipment will continue to be shipped to Ukraine in the coming months and years.
As of May, the Defense Department reported that $5.6 billion had been contracted to produce items for Ukraine such as HIMARS missiles, tactical vehicles, radar, ammunition and many others.
I’ve also heard anecdotally, though cannot verify, that the DoD can just significantly undervalue the equipment they’re shipping over to stretch the remaining funds out longer.
Soriek
2yr ago
El Salvador
While some activists for democracy have been worried by President Bukele looking increasingly nearer to taking an unprecedented second term, he maintains substantial support from the population as well as, uh, bitcoin enthusiasts:
With President Nayib Bukele’s re-election date less than three months away, Bitcoin is seeing continued increases in institutional support within El Salvador, suggesting a strong foundation for the country’s experiment with Bitcoin as legal tender…
Although these two years [since switching from the US dollar to Bitcoin] have been marked by growing pains, many clear signs now exist that El Salvador’s new economic model is gaining acceptance in the broader world economy. For instance, the S&P upgraded the nation’s credit rating in November, citing consistent efforts to manage its debt obligations and overall economic stability. A major boost to this growing stability has been Bitcoin and its new opportunities, as tourism has massively increased with visitors from the US alone doubling since Bukele first took office. Bukele’s administration credits Bitcoin with this success, with Vice President Ulloa calling it the “driving force” of the “rebirth of the country." The data seems to bear this out, as El Salvador has become popular with foreign full-time residents in addition to tourists, due to the ease of using bitcoin in daily life.
Also, El Salvador has now agreed to begin levying substantial fines of $1,130 on travelers coming from Africa and India. Coincidentally, this is exactly the kind of action the US has been requesting of Central America, coming at a time when Bukele doesn’t want too much US criticism of his constitutionally murky candidacy in the election in three months:
El Salvador’s aviation authority said most passengers who have to pay the fee are headed to Nicaragua on the commercial airline Avianca. Because of its lax visa requirements, Nicaragua is a transit point for migrants from Haiti and Cuba, as well as from Africa, who are trying to reach the U.S.
A U.S. embassy spokesperson declined to say whether the U.S. had requested the fee. But the ability to help the U.S. control migration could be a political boon for El Salvador President Nayib Bukele as he seeks reelection despite a constitutional prohibition and faces scrutiny for his human rights record…
While the Biden administration has said Central American nations “ need to step up and do more” to control migration, not all of them have received the request with open arms.
“Most governments have recognized that what is of clear interest to the United States is migration and so therefore it becomes a bargaining chip,” said Pamela Ruiz, Central America analyst for International Crisis Group. “They will either become partners or adversaries on this issue.”
Soriek
2yr ago
Mali
When the military of Mali overthrew the government and expelled the French and the UJN, they left themselves with only a bare bones, tatterdemalion military, working together with the Wagner Group at times, to fight the resurgent Taureg insurgency in the north, which I’ve covered in the past here. Observers, including me, predicted they would lose control of the situation. However, they actually seem to be making progress:
Mali’s military has seized control of the northern town of Kidal, marking the first time the army has held the Tuareg rebel stronghold in nearly a decade, state broadcaster ORTM reported Tuesday…
Soldiers from Mali’s army, accompanied by mercenaries from Russian military contractor Wagner, have been battling Tuareg fighters for several days in an effort to take control of the town following the departure of United Nations peacekeepers two weeks ago.
Germany
The Guardian touches on Germany’s rough economic period:
Industrial production has fallen for five straight months and is more than 7% below its pre-pandemic levels. The International Monetary Fund expects Germany to be the weakest economy in the G7 group of leading rich nations this year, and the only one to see output fall…
After shrinking this year between July and September there was a good chance, according to Brzeski, of a similarly weak performance in the final three months of 2023. Those two consecutive quarters of contraction would leave the economy in a technical recession.
Germany has managed to find alternative sources of energy to make up for the loss of Russian gas from the Ukraine war but it has been more expensive. Energy-intensive sectors such as chemicals have been particularly hard hit.
There have been other adverse shocks. Germany’s strong export performance in the years running up to the pandemic was in part due to strong demand from China, which has now moderated. Meanwhile, its motor industry is being attacked on two fronts – from cheap Chinese electric cars, and from the incentives provided by Joe Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act for low-carbon manufacturing to migrate to the US.
Also, @Southkraut has covered Die Linke’s former leader Sahra Wagenknecht leaving to form a more immigration skeptical party. She brought nine other lawmakers with her, but apparently they hadn’t formally stepped down from their seats to allow Die Linke to replace them. On Tuesday the beleaguered and divided Die Linke has announced that they see no path forward and will now dissolve their caucus. In the last election they had 4.9% of the vote (39/736 seats) and will be unlikely to win enough to gain seats in the next election. However, the party will continue to exist and work in the state governments it participates in. It’s unclear what exactly the future holds.
Following the trend of I guess everyone becoming more immigration skeptical, the governing CDU [edit: coalition of the SPD, Greens, and FDP] has announced more immigration controls, apparently against the wishes of their coalition partner the Greens:
Stricter measures to deal with a large number of migrants arriving in Germany have been agreed by the chancellor, Olaf Scholz, and state leaders, as NGOs criticised Italy’s plans to create centres in Albania to accommodate asylum seekers.
After a marathon session of talks in Berlin that continued into the early hours of Tuesday, Scholz said the measures would help speed up asylum procedures, restrict social benefits for migrants, and provide more federal funding for local communities.
Soriek
2yr ago
Armenia
I’ve covered before how Armenia went from being a quasi-Russian protectorate to eventually moving from the camp. In the 2020 war Russia did little to back Armenia up; after the Ukrainian invasion Armenia condemned Russia, joined the International Criminal Court which indicted Putin, canceled joint Russian military drills, and even started doing military drills with the US. When the most recent invasion happened Russia of course did nothing. The most recent update and perhaps final step in Armenia leaving the Russian orbit is Armenia this week formally announcing that they will not attend the Russian-led Collective Treaty Security Organization summit, which normally includes Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and, in theory, Armenia.
Of course, the United States didn’t really back Armenia up in NK either, so they’re left to deal with their unruly neighbor on their own. Rather than choose to continue to fight, they chose instead the route of peace. Both leaders have now said a diplomatic treaty between them is very near to finalized. Armenia has, unsurprisingly, rejected Russia’s offer to broker the deal.
Separately, Armenia has now signed on to a deal that does involve Russia - a transit trade agreement with the former two countries as well as Iran, Syria, and Turkmenistan. The North-South transport corridor has been a project Iran has wanted for some time now, but that in theory was intended to pass through Azerbaijan, so it will be interesting to see what future it has in light of the conflict - clearly the impacted countries are all still interested!
Soriek
2yr ago
Myanmar
The war between the Bamar military junta of Myanmar and their one trillion ethnic secessionist groups has been waging forever, but a twist in the past two years has changed the power dynamic quite a bit - several of the rebel groups have been for the first time working together. For the first time in a while it seems like the military is on the defensive from multiple angles:
Myanmar’s military government faced a fresh challenge Monday when one of the armed ethnic groups in an alliance that recently gained strategic territory in the country’s northeast launched attacks in the western state of Rakhine.
The Arakan Army launched surprise assaults on two outposts of the Border Guard Police, a paramilitary force, in Rakhine’s Rathedaung township, according to independent online media and area residents. The attacks took place despite a yearlong cease-fire with Myanmar’s military government…
The offensive in the northern part of Shan state was already seen as a significant challenge for the army, which has struggled to contain a nationwide uprising by the members of Peoples’ Defense Force. The pro-democracy resistance organization was formed after the army seized power from Aung San Suu Kyi’s elected government in February 2021. It also set up loose alliances with several of the ethnic armed groups.
“If combat persists, it will open a significant new front for the regime, which is already overstretched with fighting, including on its eastern border with China,” Richard Horsey, the senior adviser on Myanmar for the Crisis Group think tank, said in an emailed statement.
This comes on the Heels of the United Nations releasing a grim retrospective on the conflict:
About 90,000 people have been displaced in Myanmar due to the intensifying conflict between the country’s military rulers and an alliance of ethnic armed groups, the United Nations said.
“As of 9 November, almost 50,000 people in northern Shan were forced into displacement,” the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said in an update on Friday.
A further 40,000 people have been displaced by clashes between the military and its opponents in neighbouring Sagaing region and Kachin state since early November, OCHA added…
On Thursday, Myint Swe, appointed as Myanmar’s president after the coup, told a national defence and security council meeting in the country that “if the government does not effectively manage the incidents happening in the border region, the country will be split into various parts”.
Soriek
2yr ago
I haven't responded earlier mostly because I'm trying to think of something more intelligent to say and unfortunately I don't have a ton lol. I found the first two books pretty rough but I liked the last book the most; the battle scenes were impressive and the sense of resolution in the final sections was very satisfying. I think I came to appreciate the series more as a whole after having read the entire thing in a way that no individual book probably could have achieved, just because it all kind of builds up grand epic style. I also came to appreciate the prose more, which previously I found kind of a slog but I think helped establish the series of something that felt older or out of a different time. I listened to a lecture on Tolkien's translation of Beowulf and heard that Tolkien was interested in how Beowulf made references to other events or writings that we have no remaining records of now, and tried to sort of recreate the effect of a document that existed in a time and world separate to ours but constantly referencing or hinting at it in tantalizing ways, and I think he definitely achieved that.
Overall I'm definitely grateful to have read the series and the suggestions people like yourself offered here definitely helped me appreciate the series more, especially understanding it as a sort of shell of a former world full of magic and life. I actually am trying to read the Simarillion now as you recommended, and will report back when that's completed.
It might be relevant that Tanner Greer himself who made the argumment is a devout Mormon. I think there's something more specific happening that I maybe did a bad job getting at, but tried to articulate downthread. It's not that Tolkien invented the reluctant hero, but that in the modern YA trope (that's taken off since then) you see a different kind of post-divine revelation, post-destiny, post-prophecy kind of relationship between purpose, power, and morality.
I think a hero who accepts their mission specifically because it was handed down from God is of a very different nature, this is someone who believes there is an absolute authority that can and will be answered to. The moderns protagonists don't believe that, which is part of why they're so uncertain about their mission and nervous about accepting. It's the very breakdown in authority and trust that partially defines their reluctance and their character. The fact that their worlds are exagerrated, disfigured pastiches of totalitarian governments and corporations is another sign their stories are reflecting the psychology of people inhabitating a highly modernized world rather than calling back more traditional themes and motifs.
Separately, surprised to see you joining the crowd here blaming modern malaise on the Jews. I thought you were pretty solidly in my camp against that kind of vulgar count-the-jew philosophy.
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