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Ed Webb

Chile to re-write Pinochet-era constitution in win for protesters - Reuters - 0 views

www.reuters.com/...s-chile-protests-idUSKBN1XL1I1

Chile protests constitution

shared by Ed Webb on 16 Nov 19 - Cached
  • The Chilean government has agreed to write a new constitution to replace one dating back to the Pinochet dictatorship, bowing to demands of protesters who have taken to the streets in often violent demonstrations in recent weeks.
  • the president, cabinet members and political allies had agreed Congress should lead the process of re-writing the constitution. The document would be put to a public referendum.
  • reconfiguring the social contract
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  • A new constitution has repeatedly arisen as a central demand of protesters. Critics have long said the existing document, written and approved during General Augusto Pinochet’s 1973-1990 military dictatorship, lacks legitimacy.
  • Opponents of the overhaul say the current charter has been a pillar of stability for Chile, among the region’s strongest and most investor-friendly economies.
Ed Webb

Are the Arab revolutions back? | Algeria | Al Jazeera - 0 views

www.aljazeera.com/...volutions-191126074112926.html

opinion analysis ArabWorld uprisings protests revolution revolutions democracy

shared by Ed Webb on 28 Nov 19 - No Cached
  • are the revolutions of the Arab world and its neighbourhood back? Or perhaps more accurately - did they go anywhere to begin with? How are we to read these seemingly similar uprisings reminiscent of the glorious days and nights of Tahrir Square writ large?
  • Two counter-revolutionary forces have sought to derail the Arab revolutions: the governments of regional authoritarian powers (with the help of the United States and Israel) on one side and the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL or ISIS) - the offspring of their geopolitical machinations - on the other.
  • Since this new wave of protests began, various attempts have been made to explain them in the context of global or local trends.  Similar demonstrations have taken place around the world and been attributed to the austerity measures of incompetent governments. In Chile, Ecuador, Argentina and elsewhere in Latin America, public anger with economic mismanagement has sent thousands of people on to the streets.
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  • postcolonial states across the Arab and Muslim world, all the way to Asia, Africa and Latin America have lost their raisons d'etre and therefore their legitimacy.
  • Within what historians call the longue duree frame of reference, the success of counter-revolutionary forces in derailing these uprisings is but a temporary bump. The fundamental, structural causes of the Arab (and other world) revolutions remain the same and will outlast the temporary reactionary stratagems designed to disrupt them.
  • More specific patterns of regional histories need to be taken into account before we turn to more global trends.  
  • Defiance of abusive state powers and their foreign backers - think of the junta in Egypt and their US and Israeli supporters, or Bashar al-Assad and his Russian and Iranian enablers - cannot be suppressed by yet another abusive total state. The statism at the heart of old-fashioned total revolutions - that one good state will follow one bad state - has long since lost its relevance and legitimacy. What we are witnessing today is the sustained synergy of delayed defiance, open-ended revolutions, and public happiness that in its revolutionary potential is far more enduring than the false promises a total state can deliver.
  • The naked brutality of state powers in suppressing the transnational uprisings were clear indications of their absolute and final loss of legitimacy.
  • In its global configuration, that "democratic" spectacle has resulted in the murderous Hindu fanaticism in India ("the largest democracy in the world") and the corrupt and ludicrous reality show of Donald Trump in the US ("the oldest democracy in the world") or else in the boring banality of Brexit in the United Kingdom. The world has nothing to learn from these failed historical experiments with democracy. The world must - and in the unfolding Arab revolutions - will witness a whole different take on nations exercising their democratic will. Delayed defiance will systematically and consistently strengthen this national will to sovereignty and in equal measures weaken the murderous apparatus of total states which have now degenerated into nothing more than killing machines.
Ed Webb

The biggest story in the UK is not Brexit. It's life expectancy - The Correspondent - 0 views

thecorrespondent.com/...2853464790-1aff976b

demographics UK austerity politicaleconomy Britain analysis politics

shared by Ed Webb on 16 Dec 19 - Cached
  • Once a state becomes highly unequal, it can enter a spiral of decline. All the most unequal rich nations in the world are now falling apart in one way or another and all have a "strong man" in charge: USA, Russia, Brazil, Chile, Turkey, Israel. On 12 December 2019, the people of the UK confirmed their membership in that club of the world’s most unequal affluent countries headed by a strong man.
  • More equitable countries tend not to have a leader who matters all that much, a head of government who is not that well known. They also tend to have lower far-right voting, higher overall turnout at elections, higher spending on public goods as a proportion of GDP, fewer (social class)-segregated schools, better quality secure housing, less homelessness, much better mental health, and higher life expectancy. Jobs in such countries are better paid for the majority of people and less precarious.
  • Nowhere else in Europe is life expectancy falling. Nowhere else in Europe has rising infant mortality. Nowhere else in Europe (bar Germany) has as many people sleeping rough on the streets. Germany only has as many rough sleepers because a very small proportion of the very large numbers of refugees it accepted are without housing. The UK accepts almost no refugees.
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  • there has been a long, slow disintegration of social norms and expectations. Today, new independent countries are hardly ever formed, but the UK has gone about creating the circumstances in which still future separation is possible.
  • Great social change has often happened in the past when a younger generation has been fully exposed to the folly of their parents and grandparents. 
  • Following Suez, young people voted differently to their parents in sufficient number to bring in governments in 1964 and 1966 that helped to slowly transform the UK, making it one of the most equitable countries in Europe.
  • The Conservative government – which could now hold power until at least December 2024 – will pretend it cares about the health service, about poor Britons, about the north of the kingdom, about young people’s futures, and it will pretend well. It is well practised.
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