Grier's Notes: February 11, 2024
News from around the world
President Zelensky has fired Ukraine’s top general as part of a larger shakeup of the nation’s military leadership. With Ukrainian forces apparently stalled in their attempts to regain territory from Russia, Zelensky has been facing public pressure to show he has a plan to regain momentum in the war.
Public pressure is less of a concern in Russia where a candidate who was attempting to run on an anti-war platform has unsurprisingly found himself disqualified from the ballot. There may well be a significant number of Russians who are unhappy with the lives thrown away in Putin’s attempt to reclaim Ukraine for Russia but the Kremlin has little interest in giving them a chance to voice their views.
The EU has been forced to walk back regulations on farming after anti-government protests by farmers spread from France to several countries. The farmers across Europe share a common unhappiness about the challenges of ever-increasing regulations and cost pressures which are making farming unviable. With French farmers discovering that mass protest was effective at forcing the government to make concessions, farmers across the continent have quickly followed their example in bringing their tractors from the fields to the streets to increase the pressure on the EU.
Michelle O’Neill has become the first Sinn Fein leader to be named as Northern Ireland’s First Minister. Her appointment marks a breakthrough for the political party previously affiliated with the IRA and reflects how Sinn Fein’s growing public support has meant it has gained increasing bargaining power. While the party’s ambitions to reunite Northern Ireland with the Irish Republic is not likely to happen in the immediate future Sinn Fein will use its growing power to try to start the discussion.
The Spanish legislature rejected Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez’s controversial amnesty bill. The defeat happened because a Catalonian separatist party joined with the opposition to vote the bill down. Unlike the opposition which strongly opposes the entire concept of giving an amnesty to those convicted of breaking the law in support of independence movements, the Catalonians argued the amnesty does not go far enough because it exempts terrorism offences from the amnesty. While the defeat threatens to undermine Sanchez’s coalition, he is counting on the fact that the separatists will eventually have to accept his amnesty as a better alternative than forcing new elections that are likely to produce a government completely opposed to any such deals.
While not fighting over the amnesty bill Spain’s PM has found time to wade into the controversy over whether Spain’s Eurovison entry features “anti-women” lyrics”. He has come to band’s defence backing the argument that lyrics should be read as a critique of misogynist attitudes rather than an endorsement.
Hungary’s President Katalin Novak made a surprise announcement that she was resigning over the granting of a pardon to a man convicted of covering up a child abuse scandal. The former President acknowledged the pardon was a mistake and it should not have been issued. Also stepping down was the former Justice Minister who recommended the pardon who had been set to lead the ruling Fidesz’s campaign in the upcoming EU elections.
Alexander Stubb has been elected as Finland’s next President. The centre-right candidate campaigned a champion of the shift in Finland’s foreign policy from its traditional attempt to balance Russia and the West to a more assertive embrace of the West including active involvement in NATO.
Benjamin Netanyahu says that victory of Hamas is within sight as Israel prepares to launch an operation on Rafah the last remaining bastion of Hamas in Gaza. The challenge Israel faces is that it is under heavy international pressure to limit civilian causalities which makes an assault on Rafah challenging.
Senegal’s status as one of Africa’s most stable democracies is looking questionable after President Macky Sall abruptly postponed elections scheduled for February. Sall insists his concern was ensuring there was time to sort out disagreements over the disqualification of several would-be candidates and not an attempt to extend his term-limited time in office as some opposition leaders fear.
Libera’s new President Joseph Boakai took a drug test along with several other senior officials as a way of setting an example for the country and demonstrating the government’s commitment to high ethical standards.
Nigeria’s government is facing pressure to declare of state of emergency over a sharp rise in kidnappings. With thousands of people held for ransom in the last year, it is clear that current efforts to discourage kidnapping such as a blanket ban on paying ransoms are not working.
Namibia’s President Hage Geingob passed away in a hospital where he was receiving treatment for cancer. The 82-year-old had served as President since 2015 the culmination of a long career which began before Namibia’s independence from South Africa was recognized in 1990.
Ilham Aliyev won a fifth term as Azerbaijan’s President helped out perhaps by numerous irregularities noted by election observers and his success at blocking any serious opponent from entering the race against him.
Despite having their leader in jail and being forced to run as independents after the party was barred, Imran Khan’s supporters won the most seats in Pakistan’s elections. However, this success may not lead to power with the second-place finisher former PM Nawaz Sharif promising to work with the third-place party to form a government that would keep Khan and his legislators out of government.
Myanmar has announced it plans to enforce mandatory conscription rules requiring both men and women to serve two years in the armed forces. The introduction of conscription comes as the military rulers struggle to deal with multiple insurgencies which has seen the government forces lose control of territory in several regions.
The party that won the most votes in Thailand’s last election is in danger of being ordered to dissolve after a judge found that its promise to soften the lese majeste law was in itself a violation of the law against criticizing the monarch.
Thailand is planning to recriminalize marijuana as second thoughts about the decision to decriminalize the drug in 2022 have grown. The rapid growth of cannabis shops has produced a backlash leading the government to make a U-turn on the policy.
President Xi recently met China’s regulators to discuss what to do about the increasingly shaky stock market. The problem the government faces is that the markets’ struggles reflect not some sort of regulatory issue but a growing pessimism about the state of China’s economy which cannot simply be ordered away by the President no matter how much power he has accumulated.
With Indonesians set to vote this week Prabowo Subianto appears strongly positioned to finally win the Presidency. His campaign has been assisted by a vigorous campaign where he has become a literal cartoon character frustrating activists who want him to be better remembered for his role in the Suharto regime where he was accused of being behind a campaign that saw dissidents detained and tortured. However, Indonesia’s youthful voters seem quite willing to accept the new version of Subianto as a friendly grandpa.
Javier Milei is facing a struggle to get legislative approval for his massive reform package which is in danger of stalling after it was sent back to committee for further study shortly after winning approval in principle. While Milei has made several concessions in an attempt to ease concern about the package legislators remain weary of embracing his radical efforts to remake Argentina’s economy.
Nayib Bukele won a crushing victory in his re-election campaign with more than 82% of the vote and his party winning a commanding share of El Salvador’s legislature. Voters did not appear troubled by the complaints that Bukele had violated the spirit of the constitution by running for a second term.
Mexico’s President Andrés Manuel López Obrador has strongly criticized a report that the US believes his first run for President was financed by drug gangs. AMLO has faced criticism as President for what some see as a relaxed approach to the drug gangs who have significant sway in Mexico though he insists his policies are not motivated by some desire to be helpful to drug lords but by the fact that the previous attempts to reign in the gangs had resulted in significant violence without much apparent success.
Nicaragua’s oppression of the Catholic Church continues to intensify. President Daniel Ortega sees the Church as a rival for power and has ignored international criticism of his campaign against Christianity.
Haiti’s Prime Minister Airel Henry rejected calls from protesters that he resign. Henry continues to delay elections with the argument that the unsettled state of the nation makes it impossible to hold an election at this time which ironically itself has helped fuel violence as protests demanding elections turn violent.
Unlocking the past
Last week was a big one for men who frequently think about the Roman Empire.
Much of what we know about antiquity comes from the writings that have been passed down for the last 2000+ years. Because most ancient writing was done on scrolls which did not have long lifespans that means that what we do know comes from the works which happened to be preserved and copied throughout the centuries while a much larger number of writings have been lost to the ravages of time.
In 1750 an entire library of scrolls was discovered in the ruins of a building destroyed by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 AD. While the explosion was bad news for the owners of the library, it had the side-effect of preserving hundreds of scrolls that would have otherwise disintegrated. The problem was that the scrolls were so delicate that attempts to open them up and read them frequently meant their destruction. So this has made Herculaneum scrolls, as they have been named, a source of frustration for scholars with hundreds of scrolls that have survived but cannot be read.
In the last decade new technology has enabled scholars to pioneer the concept of “virtual unwrapping” in which X-rays and computer imaging are used to “unwrap” scrolls that cannot be physically opened opening up new possibilities about how to read the Herculaneum scrolls. In 2023 the Vesuvius Challenge was launched to try to crowdsource an effort to read the scrolls. It offered a series of prizes for people who could achieve various tasks necessary to make the scrolls readable.
Last week organizers of the Challenge announced that it had achieved its first major goal with several teams successfully decoding a significant share of a scroll. The success proves that it is in fact possible to turn the digital scrolls into readable material opening up tantalizing possibilities that we will be able to add hundreds of new pieces of writing to our knowledge of the ancient world and offers a demonstration of the potential to harness the creativity of our modern world to solve long-standing mysteries.
Links
Why your appendix is not useless
The civilizations lost under the seas
The sun’s poles are about to flip
Pigeon accused of being a Chinese spy cleared
Japan’s trendy cafes where you can cuddle with a pig
Quote of the day
No one ever grew wise by chance.”-Seneca