Foreign News Round-Up

I'm going to try and do this once a week. Pick three foreign news stories and post them here and try to put in my point of view. Like most Americans, I am sadly under-educated on what's going on inside other countries. I have a long way to go, but hopefully this is a start. The hyperlinked article for the title is something interesting I read a while ago and is connected to the last foreign news article.

*Riots in Greece Over Teen Shooting:

Crazy that youth in Greece would get this worked up over the shooting of one 16 year old by the cops. That sounds a little callous- what I mean is that I guess it's not a common enough occurrence for it to be something to riot over. I'm not up on the latest on Greek crime or Greek police- but I don't know whether the youth outrage over the shooting death of a fellow teen is great (shows they are involved and will not stand for random shootings) or terrible (not all of the facts are known, was it a completely random shooting, was a group of teens really attacking police). I mean, even the Rodney King riots only took place after the police were acquitted.

*Kenyan Prime Minister Raila Odinga says that foreign troops must go into Zimbabwe

The most important part of the article for me is when Odinga rails against other AU leaders for treating Mugabe with "kid gloves." I don't know how other liberals feel, but I always have trouble with reconciling my humanitarian impulses with my thoughts on respecting national sovereignty. On the one hand, I think that humanitarian missions are in our best interests, particularly in the prevention of genocide and mass suffering. On the other hand, national sovereignty counts for something, and it's pretty easy to stuff things like future Iraq wars under the guise of humanitarian efforts rather than self-interested aggression. That's why I think we must act to strengthen global institutions. I don't know if it is within the rights of any STATE to unilaterally disregard national sovereignty without opening up their borders to attack, but what about an international body with real teeth? This isn't a fleshed out idea of course, just a starting point. I actually want to work towards a world where national boundaries are a bit more porous, to a world with more of a European Union, federalist type structure. I think that the East African Union is a great idea, at the very least regionalism is needed to solve to going concerns that our globe faces.

Between Darfur and Somalia the AU's troops are stretched thin, so the troops would either have to be from African nations or some amalgamation with UN or European troops. It seems that the power-sharing is just not going to work- Mugabe needs to go.

*Thai Opposition Set to Form New Government

I must admit that I'm always fascinated by parliamentary governments. Something about a vote of no confidence always gets my juices flowing. I think the US should consider a parliamentary style government, with a President head of state and Prime Minister head of government. Some critics say that we'd never get anything done under a parliamentary style government (especially if we went to some kind of proportional representation). To that I say.. well, we don't really get too much done now. Mostly this is just my grass is greener outlook I guess.

I read somewhere that instead of fostering a greater democracy the growing Thai middle class actually wants more autocracy. Weak democracies mean that the elected official pretty much has the run of things after elections are over. No institution has the power or credibility to stand up to these elected officials who destroy civil liberties and preach nationalism and populism to the poor, so long as they follow their leader uncritically. Well, there is one force that does have the power... the military. To many in the middle class, there's not much difference between military rule and the rule of their corrupt elected officials, both suppress civil liberties, but at least the military officers come from middle class or elite backgrounds and are not as beholden to the votes of rural poor as the elected official is.
And that's part of what it comes down to. I think it's comical to call the people in the middle truly "middle class," simply because they are socioeconomically speaking sandwiched between the super-rich elite and the large number of rural poor. The rural poor makes up a much much much larger percentage of the population, the middle class is not a middle class but a lower elite, and acting as a lower elite, they want a leader who is beholden to them. Not saying that they're not right about their opposition to these corrupt elected leaders. It's just that, I don't think the motives are as pure as we're made to believe.