The New Sick Man of Europe: the European Union | Pew Global Attitudes Project

European hegemony may no longer be sustainable.  The European economic community is being held together by a fragile piece of paper called the Euro.  Aside from the currency, which a Pew Foundation survey reports is still favored by most European countries, there is little else Europeans agree about or even like about each other.  Perhaps the onslaught of diversity perceived by growing right wing groups is the only glue left to hold Europeans together.  The current economic crisis has seen much conflict and scapegoating regarding immigrants from mostly the African continent; but now Europeans seem to be turning against one another.

“The European Union is the new sick man of Europe. The effort over the past half century to create a more united Europe is now the principal casualty of the euro crisis. The European project now stands in disrepute across much of Europe.

Support for European economic integration – the 1957 raison d’etre for creating the European Economic Community, the European Union’s predecessor – is down over last year in five of the eight European Union countries surveyed by the Pew Research Center in 2013. Positive views of the European Union are at or near their low point in most EU nations, even among the young, the hope for the EU’s future. The favorability of the EU has fallen from a median of 60% in 2012 to 45% in 2013. And only in Germany does at least half the public back giving more power to Brussels to deal with the current economic crisis.

The sick man label – attributed originally to Russian Czar Nicholas I in his description of the Ottoman Empire in the mid-19th century – has more recently been applied at different times over the past decade and a half to Germany, Italy, Portugal, Greece and France. But this fascination with the crisis country of the moment has masked a broader phenomenon: the erosion of Europeans’ faith in the animating principles that have driven so much of what they have accomplished internally.”

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Most Muslims in Region Reject Violence Against Civilians – Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life

The Pew Forum on Religion continues to bring us facts and figures to enlighten our view of the religious world which is often clouded by a sensationalist media and the rose colored lenses of young ambitious journalists trying to move up the career ladder or older ones stuck in yesterday’s phobias and mired in a short and myopic view of a changing modern world where the acts of the few motivate and move the masses through the loud megaphone that is our entertainment driven media establishment…. Read the Pew article and tell us what you think…

“A new Pew Research Center survey report finds high levels of concern about religious extremism among Muslims in the North Caucasus area of Russia and the neighboring Central Asian countries of Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan. The survey also finds that few Muslims across the region support the use of violence against civilians in the name of Islam, though there is somewhat more support for suicide bombing and similar violence among Muslims in Kyrgyzstan than in Russia or Kazakhstan.”

via Most Muslims in Region Reject Violence Against Civilians – Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life.

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John Brennan: The debate over drones | The Economist

To kill or not to kill?  Seems to be the question for a post cold war America that struggles to find a useful venue and vehicle for its newly found monolithic world power status and the ways in which that lonely status make it an irresistible target for any group looking to be taken seriously and seeking a megaphone for its cause.

No one is raising the important issue of how simple and relatively inexpensive it might be to deploy this drone technology against the US and its allies.  It seems logical that drone technology would be simpler and cheaper to create and deploy than a nuclear weapon, or a so called “dirty bomb.”  So, what is really at stake here might be who is angry at the US and why?  How can the US justify unilaterally searching out its defined enemies and taking them out gangster style no matter national sovereignty or international law.

The London Economist tackles this issue in a straightforward way yet with a focus and a lens that seems a bit ideologically myopic and perhaps a bit nostalgic for the cowboy days of George W.  

You be the judge:

“T WAS so much simpler when George W. Bush was president. Outlining America’s plans for Osama bin Laden a few days after the September 11th attacks in 2001, Mr Bush declared: “there’s an old poster out West, I recall, that says, ‘Wanted: Dead or Alive.” For all those at home and abroad made uncomfortable by sweeping assertions of American power it was a moment of predictable provocation. Without surprise, they heard a swaggering Republican president vowing to make his country’s attackers pay, and seeming to pay no more heed to legal niceties than a cowboy bent on a lynching.

Yet 12 and a half years later, the cautious, lawyerly Barack Obama—a Democratic president with nothing of the…”

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Europe’s Galileo GPS Plan Limps to Crossroads – NYTimes.com

Perhaps the most amazing thing about the internet, in the words of the famous Chicago Anthropologist, Clifford Geertz, is that it is providing an important medium, “web of significance” if you will, for world culture, politics and spirituality, to name a few, to commingle as people and organizations of all kinds connect in real time and for seemingly less than pennies…  The Europeans are working hard and putting down their cash, in these times of fiscal constraint and investment scarcity, to deliver an important variable in the world wide web equation: The Europeans promise to deliver a competing satellite system to the American system which, unlike the American’s, is purely a business and free enterprise system without the government restraints and military industrial complex implications of the American satellite venture.  The NYTs provides some light on the Euro project…

“With lofty dreams of European unity increasingly grounded by economic woe and the weight of narrow national interests, an array of computer screens here in central Italy blinks with faint signs that — far away in space, at least …”

via Europe’s Galileo GPS Plan Limps to Crossroads – NYTimes.com.

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George Packer: Hillary Clinton’s Diplomatic Legacy : The New Yorker

Amazing to see how young, vibrant and bubbly Hillary Clinton became a “Senior Statesman.”  Anything is possible in today’s world and now we await Hillary’s next big step….

“After four exhausting years, Hillary Clinton leaves the State Department with an impressive record of air miles logged, town-hall meetings held, important but neglected issues highlighted, international crises defused, gaffes avoided, citizens of the United States and the world wowed, and White House policies …”

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Egypt: To the barricades, again | The Economist

The so called “Arab Spring” seems to be turning into the “Democratic Quagmire” as the popular elections lead to discontent, factions and public frustration as the aftermath of destabilizing revolutions give way to hart times in the Middle East.  The London Economist Magazine, ever the vigilant and sobering watchdog, gives us a glimpse on what is happening on the ground and the political currents that move the streets.

“WITH angry crowds across the nation baying against him, Egypt’s president wagged his finger at the people in a late-night televised speech. He declared a curfew for some cities, he called for support for the police, he deployed the army to the streets. Seemingly as an afterthought, he added a conciliatory call for …”

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Pew Hispanic Center – Chronicling Latinos Diverse Experiences in a Changing America

Some of the descendants of today’s native Americans are also the descendants of today’s Mexican Americans.  For thousands of years there has been a natural migration from well below the Rio Grande to cold northern parts of what is today’s “Upper Midwest.”  The region today that is loosely made up of the Dakotas, Michigan, Wisconsin and Illinois. Ironically, even the then pilgrims were considered “illegal aliens” by the then natives.  The same natives who “hosted them” and welcomed the pilgrims in what we now call “Thanks Giving.”  Certainly the then natives must have thought of the pilgrims as “illegal aliens” but gave them quarter and kindness nevertheless.

But “my oh my” how times have changed and how the Thanksgiving tables have been turned.  The immigration debate promises to change how we all define America and maybe even begin to tie together a North American Continent that continues to play a role for new comers.  We may yet get the facts straight and muster up some of that native hospitality that made that long cold winter of immigration survivable for the original pilgrims.  

We may yet repair the growing divisions in our country and continue to be a beacon of giving, welcoming and building for future generations.  Like the Statue of Liberty, a symbol with open arms, allowing our culture to continue to welcome and thank all of us who were here before the next comers, like the native Americans who taught us that Thanks Giving lesson.

Get the facts at Pew.  The Pew Hispanic Center continues to provide resources and leadership in this important area:

“The nation’s total immigrant population reached a record 40.4 million in 2011, according to an analysis of Census Bureau data by the Pew Hispanic Center. Over the last decade, the number of immigrants in the U.S. has grown by more than 9 million. The number of unauthorized immigrants living in the U.S. grew in the early part of the decade before peaking at 12 million in 2007. It is now at 11.1 million as of 2011, the last year for which an estimate is available.”

Related:

New Data: Statistical Portrait of the Foreign Born, 2011

Report: Unauthorized Immigrants: 11.1 Million in 2011

Report: Net Migration from Mexico Falls to Zero

via Pew Hispanic Center – Chronicling Latinos Diverse Experiences in a Changing America.

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Mexico and the United States: The rise of Mexico | The Economist

The London Economist, like no one else can, gives us Americans a view of our neighborhood and the sleeping giant South of the Border…

“NEXT week the leaders of North America’s two most populous countries are due to meet for a neighbourly chat in Washington, DC. The re-elected Barack Obama and Mexico’s president-elect, Enrique Peña Nieto, have plenty to talk about: Mexico is changing in ways that will profoundly affect its big northern neighbour, and unless America rethinks its outdated picture of life across the border, both countries risk forgoing …”

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Taking Shelter in Tel Aviv : The New Yorker

One step forward, two steps back, it seems in the Middle East dilemma …  A humane look at the psychological trauma perpetuated by Israel’s families as they get caught between Israel’s military policy and palestinian desperation.

“When the sirens went off on Thursday evening in Tel Aviv advising residents to seek shelter, it took my friends and family a few minutes to understand what was …”

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Israel and Gaza: Edging closer to war | The Economist

The Obama victory and the Arab spring have ushered in a new era for the Middle East as the extremes write the next chapter …  What’s next?

“IF THE latest round of violence between Israel and Hamas, the Palestinian Islamists who run Gaza, were to end this weekend, everyone involved—except for the families of the …”

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State of denial | The Economist The Policy ThinkShop Proposes that there is now a “NEW AMERICAN ELECTORATE”

The London Economist provides some sober analysis on the Republican meltdown that represents the Presidential Election of 2012.  The Republican disconnect between the young, women and Latinos could spell a new era of demographic consequences that are now clearly irreversible and that will mandate Republican philosophical change that may not be possible for another generation.  Millionaire money, gerrymandering and voter suppression is clearly not enough to the blossoming diversity and generational succession that is now apparent in the “NEW AMERICAN ELECTORATE.”

“FOR conservatives casting about for comfort, there are plenty of plausible reasons to dismiss talk of a crisis. Mitt Romney could have run a better campaign. He reacted slowly when Barack Obama defined him as a heartless plutocrat, and flip-flopped on policies so frequently that even campaign allies struggled to keep …”

 

This Economist article is only one soul-searching conservative attempt to explain the current state of the Republican mind.  It may take Conservatives, Tea Party stalwarts and Right Wingers another decade to figure it out.  By then, the NEW AMERICAN ELECTORATE may have moved on.  America is moving forward right past the right, its billionaires and its antiquated vision of “a real america”.

More via Lexington: State of denial | The Economist.

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The foreign-policy debate: Neoconservatism goes underground | The Economist

The London Economist, ever the sober and clear voice of the pragmatic business minded political middle, reports and deciphers the Romnian ideological Etch A Sketch which now sings a song of sober statesmanship and moderation in hopes of capturing the American Middle Class and undecided vote …

 

“WARMING up for last night’s foreign-policy debate, I was curious about what the neoconservative crowd was thinking these days, so …”

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