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This is not a tongue-twister. These are the names of two people who could not be more different. But both of them share tragedies that dramatically illustrate how obscurantism is alive and well at the dawn of the 21st century.
Malala Yousafzai, Pakistani, is 14. A month ago, as she was returning home in the school bus, she was hit by a bullet that went through her head and neck, and lodged in her shoulder. Miraculously she survived, and is now recovering in a hospital in the United Kingdom. Her sin? Activism in favor of more education for girls.
One of the most surprising aspects of Barack Obama’s re-election was how uncertain that outcome was. How could it be that Obama, who only four years ago aroused such enthusiasm across all regions, social classes, races, religions and economic sectors, was now reduced to begging for votes door to door in what looked like a tight election with an uncertain winner? The bad economy is the obvious answer. But the president's low-energy defense of his record, his reluctance to explain more vividly the political constraints which limited what he could actually achieve and his reticence to remind voters of the grave and multifaceted disaster he inherited, were also very surprising characteristics of his campaign.
Hurricane Sandy reminded us of several lessons: 1) The fundamental protagonist when disasters strike is the government, not business. 2) Political conflict becomes uninteresting and counterproductive. People want rescue, immediate help and support to recover and rebuild, not ideologically infused speeches. 3) Governors and mayors of the places ravaged by the disaster are the main players – at times even more than the president. Barack Obama played an effective and much applauded role, but the mayor of New York, Michael Bloomberg, and New Jersey's governor, Chris Christie, were the leaders who responded most directly to the needs and demands of Sandy’s victims.
David Barboza is The New York Times bureau chief in Shanghai and the author of an article of immense importance recently published in that newspaper. Barboza's article meticulously documents how family members of Wen Jiabao, China's prime minister, have amassed an enormous fortune and how their economic success coincides with his ascent to power. In principle, this is nothing. Hardly a day goes by without a scandal breaking somewhere in the world involving the shady business deals of politicians, government officials and their accomplices in the private sector. And to say there is corruption in China is to state the obvious. But this article, and this scandal, are different.
For Franklin D. Roosevelt it was radio. And for John F. Kennedy, television. For Barack Obama’s first election it was internet, and in particular, Facebook. This has been widely commented: in each of those elections, a new technology contributed to the victory of the candidate who took best advantage of it.
So which technological innovation will go furthest toward determining the winner in the upcoming American elections? The answer is data mining, and more concretely, microtargeting.
What awaits Venezuela after Hugo Chávez’s latest victory? Four main issues will grab the attention of the government and the nation. First, the toxic economic legacy that Hugo Chávez inherits from himself. Second, the president’s precarious health. Third, the succession battles among his closest collaborators. And fourth, Chávez’s attempts to ensure that in case he is no longer able to perform his duties, he gets to designate his successor without having to call new elections, as is now prescribed by the Constitution.
Who do you feel most mistreated by? Your telephone company? Your bank? The airlines? Relationships between companies and their customers are inevitably fraught with conflicts of interest. Companies seek to extract from customers the most money for the longest possible time, while the latter aim to pay the least, get the best possible quality and have the widest freedom of choice. We know that. But it is easy to forget, as companies go to great lengths to bury their clashing interests with their customers under massive marketing and advertising efforts. Companies insist on persuading us that they are our friends and trusted allies — indeed, part of our family — and that their decisions on price, quality and services are guided by our interests and their ethics.
Ambrose Bierce once said that war is God's way of teaching Americans geography. This quip can be updated to note that there is nothing like an economic crash to spur popular interest on the workings of markets and finance. As a result, while some economies are crashing, the celebrity of some economists is booming. One of these celebrated economists is Martin Wolf, the chief economics commentator at the Financial Times and surely one of the world's most influential columnists. A few days ago I spoke with him at a conference in Istanbul.
It was one of those turning points that just go unnoticed in the media. According to the Australian Treasury Department, on March 28 of this year the economies of the world’s less developed countries, taken as a whole, surpassed in size those of the richer ones. “We can now see it for what it was -- a historical aberration that lasted about 1½ centuries," wrote the Australian columnist Peter Hartcher, referring to the fact that, until 1840, China had been the world’s largest economy. “The Chinese look at this and they say, 'We just had a couple of bad centuries’,” wryly remarked Ken Courtiss, a renowned expert also quoted by Hartcher. Courtiss adds: "In the blink of a generation, global power has shifted. Over time, this will not just be an economic and financial shift but a political, cultural and ideological one.”
Spain and Italy: which one is worse off? Economically, Spain; politically, Italy. But since a bad political situation tends to hurt the economy, and a sick economy always poisons politics, the answer could easily be reversed. The political situation in Spain may deteriorate, and the economic edge that Italy now enjoys over Spain may quickly vanish. In any case, what matters is that both nations are doing poorly, and their situation is highly volatile. Now the emergency is to bail out Spanish banks, but not long ago it was the real possibility that Italy might lose its access to international financing -- a threat that had previously alarmed Spain. Before that was the political crisis in Italy, which paralyzed the government and eventually led to the replacement of Silvio Berlusconi by Mario Monti. So the emergencies hop from one country to the other in fits and starts that make predictability and stability remote memories. It is prudent to assume that the emergencies and surprises will continue, as long as no Europe-wide economic policy framework appears that would be socially tolerable, financially credible and sustainable in time.
Why does the economic crisis in Europe keep getting broader and deeper? Ignorance? Too much power concentrated in too few hands? Or perhaps just the contrary: that those who ought to be making the necessary decisions lack the power to do so? I think it is a diabolical combination of these three factors.
ExxonMobil -- with revenues of about $450 billion (yes, $450 billion) – displaced WalMart as the world’s largest company. Most countries do not have annual incomes of that magnitude. Steve Coll, an elegant writer and dogged investigative reporter just published a book on which he had been working for years: Private Empire. The book shows how in the 1990s, ExxonMobil – which already was a huge company – laid the foundations that enabled it to becoming the dominant giant that it now is.
Two of today’s main trends are the dizzying growth of people’s access to the internet, and the deepening of economic inequalities. These two trends are converging. There will be one internet for the haves, and another for the have-nots. This does not mean there will be two different webs, or that internet for less affluent users will cease to offer the great opportunities it has brought to all, regardless of age, income level or nationality. Indeed, the popularization of internet has, in many positive ways, served to counteract the concentration of wealth, income and power.
Argentina has more psychologists per capita than any other country in the world. This fact came to mind when president Cristina Fernández de Kirchner announced the nationalization of Repsol YPF, the country’s main oil company. Argentina has a long and calamitous history of forced nationalizations and wasteful public sector management. And here it was, repeating the same mistakes, oblivious to history and experience.
I have just interviewed Álvaro Uribe, the controversial ex-president of Colombia. My first question was: “President, the authorities have arrested your agriculture minister, the secretary of the president’s office, and the director of your intelligence services. There are also proceedings against your interior minister and your press secretary. This can only mean one of two things: either you have poor judgment in selecting your senior staff, or a process of judicial hounding is going on against you and your team.” Uribe answered that one can’t generalize, and that each of these cases had to be discussed separately, which he proceeded to do. He is convinced that his colleagues are worthy public servants, innocent of the charges against them (corruption, illegal telephone wiretaps, etc.). The implication is obvious: if so many of his close associates are facing prosecution, and the ex-president thinks they are innocent, then he must think that something strange and ominous is going on.
What is it that we are never short of? What is it that always seems to be available in abundance — even in the poorest, remotest parts of the world?
Arms.
When was the last time that we heard of a war, an insurgency or a guerrilla movement that ceased or abated because one of the sides in the conflict ran short of bullets?
Never.
Where there is war money always appears, and where there is money, arms always appear. And they don’t just appear where there is war and money. Arms abound even in the most miserable parts of the planet. In ghettos where there is a shortage of everything — where babies don’t have milk, students don’t have books, and hunger is a daily experience — arms are never in short supply. Pistols, revolvers, rifles, submachine guns, grenade launchers and other small arms are tragically common in the slums of the world.
Forbes magazine recently published its annual list of the world’s richest people. This coincided with another event, the meeting of China’s National People’s Congress (NPC) which is formally one of the supreme organs of the Chinese state, representing the legislative branch. Surprisingly, there is a connection between the two events. The list of the delegates to the NPC includes many of the country’s richest people. Some of them also appear on the Forbes list.
Will Israel bomb Iran’s nuclear plants? If Greece goes under, will Europe slip into economic chaos and destabilize the global economy ? Will China go off the rails? The list of grim prophecies is long, and easy to draw up. It is surprising, then, that good news doesn’t get more attention. And lately, the world has got some good news. World poverty in 2010 was half of what it was in 1990, and the number of people living in poverty has fallen throughout the globe.
War and new technologies that boost the power of armies have been with us since the dawn of history. Firearms relegated the sword to museums, in World War I tanks replaced cavalry and in 1945 the atomic bomb inaugurated the age of mass destruction. In this new century another artifact has appeared which has forced generals to rethink their tactics. Nothing very sophisticated: an old bomb buried on a dusty road or placed in a bag of rubbish on the roadside, set off remotely with a cellphone or a garage-opener when enemy troops are passing. The improvised explosive devices (IEDs) popularized by the insurgents in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan are as cheap as they are lethal.
What do Nicolas Sarkozy, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Vladimir Putin have in common? Well, all of them will soon be facing difficult electoral contests. The same goes for Barack Obama and Hugo Chávez. And many other presidents. This year there will be presidential elections or changes of heads of government in countries that together account for over half of the world economy. But this is not all. Even more significant is the fact that many leaders who must seek the people’s votes in upcoming months bear the responsibility of making decisions which, for better or for worse, directly influence the many, grave and simultaneous crises which are now shaking the world. And the demands of national politics are often at odds with those that emanate from international politics and economics.