| | | | When Terrorists Die, Do Their Ideas Die With Them? | | | Apropos of ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi's death at the hands of US forces, Santiago Segarra, Ali Jadbabaie, and Richard Nielsen ask at Foreign Policy whether ideas outlive the terrorist ideologues who espouse them. To find an answer, they gathered data on page views for 6,000 documents "posted to the largest online library of jihadi material from 2011 to 2014," to determine whether writings became less popular after jihadi authors were killed. The answer: no. "Instead, their deaths made them temporarily more popular. These spikes start when their deaths are announced and last for about a week, matching the news cycle," Segarra, Jadbabaie, and Nielsen write—concluding that while Baghdadi's death may help in other ways, it's difficult to kill an idea. | | Rachel Maddow vs. the Oil Industry | | | In a New York Times review, Fareed writes that Rachel Maddow's Blowout "is a rollickingly well-written book, filled with fascinating, exciting and alarming stories about the impact of the oil and gas industry on the world today." Among other implications, the book details how oil has fueled the ambitions of Russian President Vladimir Putin, who engineered state acquisition of oil resources and pushed Russia to become a "full-blown petrostate," while Western capitalists partnered with him unabashedly. Maddow does well to illustrate oil's dominance, Fareed writes, but the book is not prescriptive. "Blowout is a brilliant description of many of the problems caused by our reliance on fossil fuels," Fareed writes. "But it does not provide a path out of the darkness." | | UK Readies for a Brexit Election | | The "dignified and sensible" thing would have been to wait until Brexit's conclusion before holding an election, Simon Jenkins writes for The Guardian, but that's not what Britain is in for. After Parliament agreed to hold a nationwide vote on Dec. 12, commentators have pointed out the risks involved for Prime Minister Boris Johnson.
"The betting is still that, with his poll lead and high popularity, Mr Johnson will win a majority in December," The Economist writes. "But there is much scope for the election to go wrong for him." Pitfalls include a volatile electorate (voters now align more strongly with Leave or Remain than with parties); the iffy prospect of making up lost Tory votes in London with support from Labour strongholds that backed Brexit; Johnson's failed promise to have left the EU already; a right flank exposed to no-deal-supporting Nigel Farage and his Brexit Party; and the possibility that Britons will vote on other issues—and won't buy Johnson's promises to spend more on public services.
After all, Theresa May called an early election and saw her parliamentary majority collapse; if the same thing happens to Johnson, it would knock his plans off course. As The Wall Street Journal writes in an editorial, "Voters frustrated that Brexit hasn't happened know that this is their last chance. No other leader or party will make it happen." | | Latin America's 'Militarized Democracies' | | As protests crop up across the world, Latin America is seeing its share, with mass mobilizations in Ecuador, Chile, Bolivia, Haiti, and elsewhere; at Foreign Affairs, Moisés Naím and Brian Winter write that much of Latin America was "already primed to combust" before these movements. The region's economies relied on commodities, Naím and Winter write, and growth pushed nearly 100 million people into the middle class between 2003 and 2013—but now that commodity prices have dropped, mismanagement of the region's growth is being revealed. The expansion is over, and stark inequality (and middle-class anxiety) remain.
Latin America's unrest has been met with a troubling trend, Javier Corrales writes for Americas Quarterly: "Latin America used to be known as the land of the military junta. It is now at risk of becoming the land of militarized democracies." In Ecuador and Chile, governments turned to security services to quell protests, using brutal force; in Brazil, President Jair Bolsonaro did the same in response to demonstrations over Amazon fires; in Mexico, the military was strengthened in response to the drug war; and in Uruguay, a proposed law would create a National Guard in response to a spike in domestic crime. The trend is dangerous, Corrales writes: "Governments end up being indebted to generals. Generals get too used to certifying or setting policies. Policies become too focused on the need to maximize security. And security is conceptualized mostly in terms of repression." While there are no easy answers to unrest, in Corrales's view, empowering the military shouldn't be one of them. | | | | | | |
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