Counterproductive Counterinsurgency: Is Mozambique Creating the Next Boko Haram? - Lawfare - 0 views
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Mozambique has a small terrorism problem, but the government’s response threatens to make it a big one. Hilary Matfess of Yale University and Alexander Noyes of RAND Corp. contend that Mozambique is overreacting to the danger with a heavy-handed crackdown that is inflaming tension while doing little to disrupt the most radical elements there. Indeed, they argue that Mozambique risks following the path of Nigeria, where a ham-fisted government response to a radical sect led to a surge in support for the group that became Boko Haram
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Mozambique’s current approach threatens to escalate the crisis. The experience of other African countries provides an instructive lesson: A hardline response that depends solely on repression will only make things worse.
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Mozambique is 27 percent Catholic and 19 percent Muslim, with significant Zionist Christian, evangelical, and other religious communities, and these groups have enjoyed relatively harmonious interfaith relations
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How Do You Know If You're Living Through the Death of an Empire? - Mother Jones - 0 views
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The fall of an empire—the end of a polity, a socioeconomic order, a dominant culture, or the intertwined whole—looks more like a cascading series of minor, individually unimportant failures than a dramatic ending that appears out of the blue. Carts full of olive oil failing to arrive at some nameless fort because of a dysfunctional military bureaucracy, a corrupt official deciding to cook the books and claim taxes were collected when they really weren’t, a greedy aristocrat bribing that official instead of paying his bill, an aqueduct falling to pieces and nobody willing to front the funds to repair it.
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What shrank Rome down to a mere few tens of thousands by the year 550 was the end of the annona, the intricate state-subsidized grain shipments that brought food to the city first from North Africa and then from Sicily. The megacity of Rome was an artificial creation of the Roman state and its Roman-style successor. Rome suffered plagues and sieges in the 530s, but Rome had dealt with plagues and sieges before. What it could not survive was the cutting of its grain supply, and the end of the administrative apparatus that ensured its regular delivery.
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Those were small things, state-subsidized ships pulling up to docks built at state expense, sacks of grain hauled on squealing carts and distributed to the citizens, but an empire is an agglomeration of small things.
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What is deadly dull and can save the world? (Hint: you probably hate it) - The Correspo... - 0 views
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"If you could name one thing that would really change your life, what would it be?" I ask. I’m expecting him to say a better house, or more food, or a doctor, or education for his kids. I’m expecting him to mention one of the things relief money often provides for.But Lebrun grins broadly at me, revealing a missing tooth, and says, "What would help me most? A land registry."
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What Lebrun needs is security – security he can build a future on. And he needs agencies to safeguard that security. What Lebrun needs is bureaucracy.
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Bureaucracy is also the system that organises everything into procedures that are the same for everybody. It’s what holds societies together. It’s not excessive; it’s indispensable.
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Cameroon releases 333 prisoners amid national dialogue | Cameroon News | Al Jazeera - 0 views
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Cameroon's President Paul Biya has said he will drop charges against 333 prisoners arrested for their alleged roles in a two-year separatist uprising, but rebel leaders dismissed the move as a political stunt and pledged to keep fighting.
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during talks launched by Biya to end fighting between rebels and the military that has killed more than 1,800 people, displaced over 500,000 and put a major dent in the economy
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one of Biya's largest concessions yet amid what has become a major threat to his nearly 40-year rule
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President's eldest son, Mahmoud al-Sisi, sidelined from powerful intelligence position ... - 0 views
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Mahmoud al-Sisi, President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi’s son and a senior official in the powerful General Intelligence Service (GIS), is being reassigned to a long-term position at Egypt’s diplomatic delegation in Moscow
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perception within the president’s inner circle that Mahmoud al-Sisi has failed to properly handle a number of his responsibilities and that his increasingly visible influence in the upper decision-making levels of government is having a negative impact on his father’s image
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suggestion that the president’s son be sidelined also came from senior government figures in the United Arab Emirates, a close and influential ally of Egypt, who view Mahmoud al-Sisi’s role as having become damaging to the president
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Iranian protesters strike at the heart of the regime's revolutionary legitimacy - 0 views
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If the unofficial reports of dead and wounded are anywhere near accurate, this might be the most deadly uprising since the 1979 revolution.
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Iran’s turmoil is not driven by U.S. policies, nor is it merely some circumstantial spasm. The protests are the latest salvo in the Iranian struggle for accountable government that stretches back more than a century. And the fury and desperation of the Iranians on the streets this week strikes at the heart of the legitimacy of the revolutionary system.
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After the monarchy was ousted, collective action — both spontaneous and opportunistic — was a primary mechanism for gaining advantage in the chaotic struggle for power.
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Nigeria's Buhari Resurrects Hard-Man Habits to Curb Dissent - Bloomberg - 0 views
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Nigeria’s government is reviving old habits from its authoritarian past to stifle criticism.Evoking memories of Nigeria’s three decades of military rule, the repression risks undoing progress Africa’s top oil producer has made since the restoration of multiparty democracy in 1999. Governance and other reforms have helped more than double average annual foreign investment since then -- a pace President Muhammadu Buhari needs to sustain to help reduce the world’s largest number of people living in extreme poverty.
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Buhari won a popular vote in 2015 claiming to be a “converted democrat,” and was reelected in February. That assertion has been eroded by crackdowns on civil-society organizations, increasing arrests of journalists and planned laws to regulate social media.
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“Investors are less keen on venturing into regions that are considered to be within the grip of erratic strongmen.”
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A European bunfight breaks out over food labels | The Economist - 0 views
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The European Commission in Brussels will this year propose rules that would require the nutritional qualities of all foods to be displayed on the front of their packaging. The idea is to tip off shoppers about what makes them fat. But the measure, backed by nutritionists, is being attacked by its opponents as nothing less than an assault on the European way of life.
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Nearly all grub sold in Europe has had to divulge its nutritional qualities (or lack thereof) since 2016. But the nagging only goes so far. The information is found on the back of the pack, written in a font size usually reserved for the finer points of insurance contracts.
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Nutri-Score is unkind to many staples of Italian cuisine. A meal of prosciutto, gorgonzola and tiramisu turns out to be entirely at the wrong end of the spectrum. Even olive oil, the elixir at the heart of the country’s famed Mediterranean diet, gets only an amber light from the grading system. For Italians, ever alert to the possibility that condescending northerners are holding them to an unreasonable standard, this is provocation enough. How can their food be bad when Italy has among the lowest adult obesity rates in the rich world?
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