Monthly Archives: June 2022

Opening the major event in Strasbourg, Youth Action Week which marks the 50th anniversary of the Council of Europes youth sector, Council of Europe Secretary General Marija Pejinovi Buri called on young people to remain engaged in revitalising democracy and in addressing the emerging threats to human rights, democracy and the rule of law, including in the context of the ongoing military aggression of Russia against Ukraine.

This week will see the emergence of ideas and examples that will be a source of inspiration, both in the Council of Europe and in all the countries of our continent, said Marija Pejinovi Buri to some 450 participants of the Youth Action Week, noting that their recommendations proposed as a result of the week will be heard, as they come at the important moment, marked by the return of the populism and nationalism on our continent.

They threaten to silence your voice, she warned, stressing that the most extreme example of such tendencies is the brutal, illegal and ongoing aggression of Russia against Ukraine. The consequences are shocking: rape, murder and torture, so many crimes that we had hoped never to see again in Europe, the Secretary General said. Many young people remained in the country and witnessed these horrors, which will stay with them forever. Others have fled their homes and communities in search of safety in neighbouring countries. Our thoughts are with them all. The Secretary General added that several young Ukrainian activists are participating in the Youth Action Week and mentioned other ways the Council of Europe works with Ukrainian youth organisations and authorities, and adjusts its activities to the evolving situation.

For half a century, the Council of Europe has been leading the development of participative and inclusive youth policies, youth work and youth research in Europe. Much has been done; the importance of these achievements for Europe has been reiterated by the Secretary General, as well as by other speakers at the opening session: Ambassador Breifne OReilly, Permanent Representative of Ireland and Chairperson of the Committee of Ministers; Spyros Papadatos, President of the Advisory Council on Youth and Vronique Bertholle, Deputy Mayor of the City of Strasbourg. Actively promoting participatory democracy and engagement with young people is one of the priorities of the Irish Presidency, which supports the event.

Among the milestones of the Council of Europes work with and for youth since 1972 are the establishment of two European Youth Centres, in Strasbourg and Budapest; setting up of the European Youth Foundation to provide financial and educational support to young peoples projects; the creation of a unique co-management system bringing together governments, Council of Europe and young people to make sure the voice of young people are taken into account in policy-making at the national and international levels. The campaigns All Different All Equal and the No Hate Speech Campaign were initiated by young people and reached out to them in all member states. The Council of Europe will continue its work with young people, governments and other actors in its member states, under the Youth sector strategy 2030, the Committee of Ministers Recommendation on protecting youth civil society and young people, and in other frameworks, stressed the speakers.

The Youth Action Week is a flagship event of the youth campaign to revitalise democracy Democracy Here, Democracy Now. Throughout the week, young people are debating such urgent issues as the right to vote, non-discrimination, gender equality, the role of education in building democracy, the threat of hate speech, minority youth, disruptive youth participation, digital citizenship, as well as peace and the resilience in the face of armed conflict.

Speech by the Secretary General

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Young people should stand up against populism, nationalism and extremism that risk silencing their voices, says Secretary General - Council of Europe

I suppose many people will have asked themselves whether there is not a contradiction of sorts in a society which appears to prohibit state legislatures from infringing the right of all citizens to keep and bear firearms on the one hand but upholds a right for the same state legislatures to prohibit all abortions, even for juvenile rape victims, on the other hand.

If all human life, from embryonic to centenarian, is sacred and requires protection, is it rational to allow hot-headed young men to buy, keep and carry multiple automatic weapons capable of inflicting slaughter of the innocents of whatever age?

And yet in a few short days the US Supreme Court has interpreted the US constitution in exactly those ways. Reversing Roe v Wade has the effect of putting every state in the US in the same position as Ireland. It is for state legislators to decide on the circumstances, if any, in which any pregnant woman is legally permitted to terminate her pregnancy as it is in Ireland.

Of course, Ireland and the US are coming to this issue from very different places we had as a people by referendum enacted the 8th Amendment to forestall any court decision such as Roe v Wade or any legislative decision to legalise any kind of abortion. The US, by contrast, had a Supreme Court decision enshrining as a constitutional right a womans right to choose, so as to prevent conservative states from outlawing or radically restricting the same right to choose.

The US 2nd Amendment provides as follows: A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.

In the Heller case in 1986, the late Justice Scalia delivered the majority opinion and in a very detailed historical analysis argued that the wording of the amendment did not imply that the citizens right to keep bear arms was in some way conditional on their potential use in a state militia. He viewed the right as part of the Bill of Rights in the US constitution and that it derived from the right of individual self defence rather than idea of membership of an organised militia.

The recent mass shooting of schoolchildren in Uvalde, Texas, is but a grotesque example of where Americas gun culture has bought its citizens. There have been 1.5 million gun-deaths in the US in the period 1968 to 2017, which as the BBC pointed out recently is more than the entire death toll of American soldiers in battles and wars since the declaration of independence in 1776.

In 2020, there were 45,000 gun-deaths, a 43 per cent increase since 2010. Of them nearly 25,000 were suicides while nearly 20,000 were classed as homicides. Of the 7.5 million new first-time gunowners in 2019 to 2021, half were women and 40 per cent were black or Hispanic. What do they fear?

The American conservative right alliance which supports abortion bans but opposes assault rifle bans is growing in power. It opposes socialised medicine as a stepping stone to communism or Nazi-ism. It supports political action committees which spend vast sums of money raised from the wealthy to drive tax cuts and influence election outcomes.

As I wrote here some months ago, the Republicans are likely to win control of both Houses of Congress this autumn. Trump could easily emerge as their candidate for 2024 unless Floridas governor, Ron DeSantis, can head him off. The re-election of Biden or Kamala Harris seems very unlikely now. The Trump-packed Supreme Court may well target gay marriage in the coming months, if Justice Clarence Thomas is to be believed. His spouse was active in Trumps stolen election conspiracy.

The January 6th Committee has produced compelling evidence of the seditious plot by Trump and his cronies to quash the result of the 2020 election. But Teflon Trump supporters simply dont care. They are adept at targeting the people they dont like while shielding their own madmen from scrutiny or penalty.

Just wait for Trump to come up with a joint Trump-Putin solution for Ukraine. Trumps silence on the Putins savage war has been deafening.

Trumps erstwhile British acolyte, Boris Johnson is using Ukraine to throw shapes on the international stage. But how long will his party allow him to sit figuratively at the wheel of a badly dented political Land Rover, a vehicular throwback to the glory days of Churchill and empire?

Economic out-workings of Ukraine war have the potential to radicalise and polarise opinion in the western democracies. There is little room for complacency or optimism as long as Rupert Murdoch broadcasts Tucker Carlsons toxic views into the homes of middle-America.

The fruits of populism are showing signs of ripening, falling and rotting

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Michael McDowell: The fruits of populism are ripening, falling and rotting - The Irish Times

MANILA Just weeks after appointing A-list technocrats to his cabinet, President-elect Ferdinand Bongbong Marcos Jr is showing his populist stripes.

The Filipino leader, who will officially be sworn in by the end of this month, has made the unprecedented move of appointing himself as incoming agriculture secretary, thus concurrently serving in key top positions in the next government.

The surprising move comes amid soaring inflation, as millions of Filipinos grapple with record-high energy and food costs.

According to the Philippine Statistics Authority, inflation hit 4.9% in April, the fastest pace in more than three years and way higher than the 2-4% inflation target band set by the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) for 2022.

The Department of Energy, meanwhile, has warned of a continuous increase in gasoline prices for the foreseeable future, driven by the ongoing conflict in Ukraine.

The incoming presidents critics claim he lacks the expertise and understanding of pricing mechanisms to transform the Philippines agricultural sector.

Others sense that the namesake son of a former Filipino dictator is merely engaging in pie-in-the-sky populism, particularly in regard to his promise to slash the price of staple foods by more than half.

In particular, he has claimed he will cut rice prices by more than half to 20 pesos (US$0.3704) per kilo.

To do this, Marcos has said there must be a regular and thorough inventory of rice harvests held by the Department of Agriculture (DA) and the National Food Authority (NFA), both of which will procure rice harvests from local farmers at higher and more competitive prices. According to Marcos, this will prevent rice cartels from controlling the supply.

Marcos likely realizes that well-targeted agricultural policies and programs will be key to maintaining his popularity and political stability after his recent landslide election win.

As to agriculture, I think that the problem is severe enough that I have decided to take on the portfolio of Secretary of Agriculture, at least for now and at least until we can reorganize the Department of Agriculture in the way that will make it ready for the next years to come, Marcos told a news conference days before his inauguration.

We need to change many things. There are offices that are no longer useful, or need retooling post-pandemic since things are being done differently now, added the new president-elect while vowing to enhance the countrys food security and overhaul the agriculture sector.

To be sure, the Philippines agricultural sector is in deep crisis. Despite having one of the most fertile agricultural lands in the world, the country has repeatedly faced food shortages in recent decades.

Despite a deep economic recession in 2020, the Southeast Asian country remained the worlds largest rice importer, according to the United States Department of Agriculture Foreign Agricultural Services.

A year earlier, the Philippines imported 2.9 million metric tons of rice, with imports nearly quadrupling in the last three years. Nearly 80% of the Philippines rice imports are sourced from Vietnam, underscoring the formers precarious situation.

Meanwhile, the average age of farmers in the Philippines is around 58 years old, which portends a long-term labor shortage in the critical sector.

The Philippines food security crisis is the upshot of a failed land reform program, a lack of investment in rural infrastructure and agriculture financing, and a proliferation of import cartels and predatory middlemen who have crushed various agricultural industries.

Things came to head in 2018, when the government confronted a simultaneous increase in the price of rice, a rapid depletion in food reserves and weevil infestations that devastated crops.

In the third quarter of that year, the price of milled rice jumped to 46 pesos (US$9) per kilo, pushing millions of Filipinos close to or over the poverty line.

Outgoing President Rodrigo Dutertes administration was thus forced to revisit its policy of quantitative restrictions (QRs), which ensured only a few suppliers secured import licenses from the National Food Authority (NFA) to protect domestic producers.

In 2019, the Philippines passed a landmark Rice Tariffication Law, which liberalized rice importations in order to reduce the price of staple food in the country.

The move was particularly controversial, with several senators and civil society groups warning of further damage to the countrys already fragile agriculture sector.

Meanwhile, the price of staple foods such as rice has not significantly declined, with the ongoing shocks to global energy and food markets triggering fast-rising inflation in the Philippines.

On the campaign trail, Marcos Jr zeroed in on the sad state of the countrys agriculture sector as a central theme of his candidacy. He vowed to halve the price of staple foods such as rice by amending the Rice Tariffication Law and strengthening food production at home.

Our farmers are pitiful because even without being ravaged by typhoons and calamities, they are already in a catastrophe because they are even being charged for water for irrigation, Marcos said during an interview in April.

After winning the presidency, Marcos Jr sought to reassure jittery markets by appointing seasoned technocrats to key positions in his cabinet, including at the department of finance, national economic and development authority and the BSP.

All the while, though, the new Filipino leader has refused to budge on his various populist pledges, which analysts and observers note hell be able to more readily implement as acting agriculture secretary.

From the very beginning, I have always said that agriculture is going to be a critical and foundational part of our economic development or economic transformation as we anticipate the post-pandemic economy, Marcos Jr told the media earlier this month.

He alleged neighboring Vietnam and Thailand were planning on forming rice export cartels, which if true would further exacerbate the Philippines food insecurity.

You may have noted that Thailand and Vietnam, for example, one of our main sources of imported rice, have decided to ban their rice exports at least for now. So we have to compensate for that by increasing production here in the Philippines, he said.

Marcos Jr has already promised to overhaul the Department of Agriculture by reorganizing its attached agencies such as the National Food Authority (NFA), the Food Terminal Incorporated (FTI) and the Kadiwa program.

Marcos Jr has emphasized the need to overhaul the countrys agricultural sector as a critical and foundational part of the Philippines post-pandemic recovery and long-term economic transformation.

Yet there are few, if any, indications so far that the new Filipino leader is willing to address entrenched structural problems, including price-distorting food import cartels, predatory intermediaries and, perhaps most importantly, the lack of land reform, which continues to keep countless Filipino farmers in abject poverty.

Some critics fear that Marcos Jr, who has been accused of corruption and tax evasion, seeks direct control over the 71 billion peso ($1.4 billion) agricultural trust fund, which they note was previously misappropriated by his ex-dictator fathers cronies.

Leading legislators and experts, meanwhile, have openly questioned the feasibility of Marcos Jrs populist pledges including his ambitious food price pledge.

Impossible. You kill the livelihood of 3.6 million rice farmers, said leading economist and congressman Joey Salceda, who warned of potentially disastrous repercussions of the new presidents promise to halve the price of basic commodities such as rice.

Rolando Dy, executive director of the Center for Food and Agribusiness at the University of Asia and the Pacific, similarly dismissed the pledge as impossible, while calling on the new Filipino president to instead focus on appointing competent officials.

He has to rely on good advisers. He has to appoint competent undersecretaries for operations and high-value crops, Dy said.

Read more:

Marcos bids to be man of the Filipino farmer - Asia Times

A review of Francis Fukuyama, Liberalism and Its Discontents (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2022).

***

American liberal democracy is in serious disarray. Nothing better both symbolizes and exemplifies that disarray than the fact that Washington, D.C., the seat of the federal government, has become an armed camp. Congress, the Supreme Court, and the White House are defended by a variety of police forces, high-tech nonscalable fences, anti-ram car barriers and bollards, search points, x-ray screeners, and virtually every other security device known to man. It is all a necessary reaction to the invasion of the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, by a mob seeking to overturn the election. With a large number of armed Americans in the grip of conspiracy theories and continuing to regard the Biden administration as an illegitimate tyranny, the possibility of recurring violence cannot be discounted.

The picture is further darkened by the impending congressional elections, in which any number of election deniersthose who cling to the big lie that the 2020 election was stolen from Donald Trumpare on the ballot for positions overseeing elections themselves. And looming large in the background, of course, is the specter of Trump returning to the presidency in 2024, a development that could well spell the end of Americas two-and-a-half-century experiment in constitutional self-government.

It is within this foreboding climate that Francis Fukuyama has written a slender volume, Liberalism and Its Discontents, a defense of liberalism against the severe threat it faces not only in America but around the world. If the institutions of liberal democracy are under assault, so too are the ideas behind those institutions, and it is those ideas with which Fukuyama grapples.

The problem, as Fukuyama sees it, does not arise from deficiencies within liberal doctrine itself but, rather, from the way in which liberalism has evolved in recent decades, with certain sound liberal ideas pushed to extremes. These distortions have led to challenges that come from both left and right, authoritarian populism on one side, and authoritarian progressivism on the other. But the twinned threats are not symmetrical. The one coming from the right is more immediate and political; the one on the left is primarily cultural and therefore slower-acting.

One of the distortions of liberalism travels under the name of neoliberalism. Deregulation and privatization pursued by Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher in the 1980s had salutary effects on economic growth. But what began as a valid insight into the superior efficiency of markets, writes Fukuyama, evolved into something of a religion, in which state intervention was opposed as a matter of principle. Abroad, this led to disaster. For example, when the neoliberal Washington Consensus was applied to the former Soviet Union, where no rule-of-law infrastructure was in place, large chunks of the Soviet economy were gobbled up by clever oligarchs whose malign influence continues to the present day.

Here at home, deregulation of the financial sector led to the crisis of 2008, which brought hardship to millions of Americans. Something similar can be said about free trade and open-door immigration, both of which promisedand probably deliveredimproved aggregate economic welfare but had deleterious second-order effects. There were adverse distributional consequences, which took the form of deindustrialization, and a social backlash, which is one of the factors underpinning the political crisis that confronts the United States today.

If neoliberalism pushed liberal premises in an untoward direction, a similar process was underway on the left, where liberalism, in Fukuyamas telling, evolved into modern identity politics, versions of which then began to undermine the premises of liberalism itself. Identity politics has become kind of a bugaboo among conservatives of all stripes. But Fukuyama is simultaneously sympathetic and critical. When it came to various groupswomen, African Americans, homosexualsliberalism has historically fallen short of its universal promises. Understood in this fashion, Fukuyama writes, identity politics seeks to complete the liberal project, and achieve what was hoped to be a color-blind society.

The trouble is that identity politics itself veered into an extreme doctrine. Fukuyama traces the path from Herbert Marcuse, the philosopher of the New Left, to critical theory, which took aim at the very concept of individualism as a Western invention, a product of a blinkered Eurocentrism that fails to take into account the fact that real world societies are organized into involuntary groups in which people are categorized according to characteristics like race or gender over which they have no control. But Fukuyama offers a compelling defense of liberalism from this charge, demonstrating how individualism is hardly a white or European characteristic. And even to the extent that liberal individualism may be a historically contingent by-product of Western civilization, at the same time, it has proven to be highly attractive to people of varied cultures once they are exposed to the freedom it brings.

In one of the most incisive sections of his book, a chapter entitled Are There Alternatives, Fukuyama takes note of the many legitimate criticisms made of liberal societies:

They are self-indulgently consumerist; they dont provide a strong sense of community or common purpose; they are too permissive and disrespect deeply held religious values; they are too diverse; they are not diverse enough; they are too lackadaisical about achieving genuine social justice; they tolerate too much inequality; they are dominated by manipulative elites and dont respond to the wishes of ordinary people.

The question that must always be posed, however, in response to such criticisms is, compared to what? The principal alternatives to liberalism in the 20th centurycommunism and fascismboth had some rather glaring disadvantages: draconian repression, genocide, and expansionist aggression. What else is on offer these days? Fukuyama takes up the contemporary alternatives to liberalism put forward by both right and left.

On the right, various postliberal theorists share the conviction that liberal society is a moral wasteland and that the free market, liberalisms economic component, only compounds the problem, relentlessly dissolving bonds of family, religion, and tradition, undermining civilization itself. Fukuyama readily concedes that liberal societies provide no strong common moral horizon around which community can be built, pointing out that this is a feature and not a bug of liberalism. The question he poses is, even if it were desirable, whether there is a realistic way to roll back the secularism of contemporary liberal societies and reimpose a thicker moral order. In an increasingly secular and diverse society such as Americas, he argues, restoring a shared moral horizon defined by religious beliefwhether imposed by persuasion or coercionis a practical non-starter.

From the left, Fukuyama considers the possibility of a vast intensification of existing trends in which [c]onsiderations of race, gender, gender preference, and other identity categories would be injected into every sphere of everyday life, and would become the primary considerations for hiring, promotion, access to health, education, and other sectors. But Fukuyama, pointing to strong limits on the electorates acceptance of this cultural agenda, judges it unlikely that anything like it will be realized.

Liberalism and Its Discontents is Fukuyamas 10th book. Within the confines of a review, it is difficult to do justice to the wide scope of an argument that, drawing on philosophy, history, and economics, traverses a mere 178 pages. It is a volume that further cements Fukuyamas well-deserved reputation as one of Americas most thoughtful and perspicacious students of political, social, and intellectual life.

Even as Fukuyama points to liberalisms resilience, it would be foolish to charge him with complacency about the possibility of either the left- or right-wing alternative to liberalism reaching fruition. After all, he has written this volume out of a sense of urgency about the perils in which liberalism finds itself. But even with liberalisms resilience in mind, it is important to consider the extraordinary character of the current moment. Things that would have been thought impossiblelike the election of a malevolent carnival barker as president of the United States, like a coup attempt by that same president, or like a major war in Europehave already occurred. This is a moment of maximum fluidity. There are no guarantees that American liberal democracy will continue to be liberal and democratic. It is all too probable that more unimaginable shocks lie in the future.

More:

Defending Liberalism From the Right and Left - Lawfare