Middle East

A Palestinian university poll last week confirmed that Hamas is growing in popularity in Israel’s West Bank. According to Ghassan Khatib, the university’s vice president, the student elections at Birzeit University in Ramallah are the closest the West Bank comes to free and fair elections. Because of this, the ballot is closely monitored as an indicator of public opinion in the territory. Fatah won the elections, as usual, but with a greatly reduced lead. Going into the elections, Fatah held five seats more than Hamas in the student council. Now, that lead has reduced to two seats, with Fatah winning 24 out of the 51 seats, and Hamas winning 22. A January poll conducted by the Jerusalem Media and Communications Center indicated Hamas’s war with Israel in January boosted Hamas’s popularity among Palestinians, especially in the West Bank. As Hamas’s popularity grows, watch for its political power and firepower to grow also.

On April 13, the Pakistani government approved the peace agreement concluded February 17 between the provincial government in Pakistan’s North-West Frontier Province and the Taliban. This agreement handed over the greater Swat region to the Taliban, allowing it to enforce its Islamist sharia law, supposedly in exchange for an end to the Taliban insurgency. This Tuesday, a spokesman for Pakistan’s military said the agreement has enabled the Taliban in the area to regroup—hardly a surprising development. The national government’s approval of the agreement, however, represented “an acknowledgment of defeat on the part of the state,” says Stratfor—making it extremely difficult for the state to ever regain control of this part of the country. This recognition of what amounts to a Taliban emirate makes it increasingly likely that Pakistan will become an Islamist state. Maulana Sufi Muhammad, leader of the Taliban group in the Swat region, made statements last weekend denouncing Pakistan’s constitution, parliament and Supreme Court for being un-Islamic, and calling for sharia law to be imposed throughout the country. Additionally, Maulana Abdul Aziz, the imam who instigated the uprising that led to the raid on the Red Mosque back in 2007, called on Pakistanis to be prepared to sacrifice in order for Islamic law to be enforced nationwide. The imam has been released on bail. These developments in Pakistan underscore the reality that the Taliban does not intend to disarm, but rather seeks to extend its influence and control to the whole country.

At the opening session of the Durban Review Conference in Geneva on Monday, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was given the opportunity to add his bit to the farcical “anti-racism” conference, which in reality serves as a forum for Israel-bashing. On what happened to be the eve of Israel’s Holocaust Remembrance Day, Ahmadinejad made headlines by delivering an anti-Semitic rant in which he downplayed the Holocaust and Jewish suffering during World War ii, attacked Israel as the “most cruel and repressive racist regime,” and reprimanded Europe and America for supporting the Jewish state.

Europe

“There is a risk of revolution in France,” declared former French Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin recently. In the past few weeks, French workers have caused power blackouts in the Paris region, kidnapped their bosses, and held large strikes. Of course, not everyone is convinced that a revolution is coming, but the very fact that the subject is being discussed shows how bad the situation is. Fear of revolutionaries can lead to very harsh regimes coming to power. Watch for Europe to start taking desperate measures as conditions get worse.

There is more racism in Europe than previously reported, according to statistics published Wednesday. A survey carried out in each of the EU member states last year by the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights (fra) found that 37 percent of immigrants and individuals from ethnic minorities surveyed said they were discriminated against in the past year. Twelve percent said they had experienced a racist crime. “The survey reveals how large the ‘dark figure’ of racist crime and discrimination really is in the EU,” said fra Director Morten Kjaerum. “Official racism figures only show the tip of the iceberg.”

Figures released by the German government this week reveal that far-right crimes were up by 16 percent last year, with violent crimes up 5.6 percent. Far-right crimes made up two thirds of all politically motivated crimes in 2008. Left-wing, politically motivated crimes also rose 14.6 percent. Increased reports of racism in Europe and more far-right crimes in Germany indicate that, on the whole, Europeans are becoming less tolerant of minorities. This trend presages a violent clash with a Middle Eastern power, prophesied in the Bible.

Asia

In the wake of the latest North Korean missile test, former Japanese Finance Minister Shoichi Nakagawa said that his nation should discuss building a nuclear arsenal. “It is common sense worldwide that in a purely military sense it is nuclear that can counteract nuclear,” said the conservative politician in a speech given to his constituency last Sunday. “North Korea has taken a step toward a system whereby it could shoot without prior notice. We have to discuss countermeasures.” This is not the first time Nakagawa has broached the controversial subject of Japan acquiring nuclear weapons. In 2006, he proclaimed that a nuclear arsenal built for defensive purposes would not violate Japan’s pacifist constitution. Nor is Nakagawa the only politician in Japan who has discussed nuclear weapons. Japanese opposition leader and chancellor candidate Ichiro Ozawa said in 2003: “We have plenty of plutonium in our nuclear power plants, so it is possible for us to produce 3,000 to 4,000 nuclear warheads. If we get serious, we will never be beaten in terms of military power.” Japan has the potential to quickly become a major nuclear power.

China’s People’s Liberation Army kicked off four days of pomp, ceremony and parading Thursday to commemorate the 60th anniversary of the Chinese Navy. China has been building a world-class navy as a means to further accommodate its desire for superpower status. Chinese Adm. Wu Shengli marked the anniversary by telling reporters about China’s intention to build large combat warships, next-generation aircraft and sophisticated torpedoes. While the Chinese Navy is not yet as big as the American Navy, it is still a force to be reckoned with—especially in light of China’s forming alliances with Russia and Japan.

Latin America, Africa

President Obama visited Latin America for the fifth Summit of the Americas, which ran April 17-19. Before the meeting, he published an op-ed in 15 Latin American newspapers that offered a relationship “freed from the posturing of the past.” While there, he shook hands with Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and accepted the book The Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent by Eduardo Galeano. Just the fact that Chavez publicly handed the book to President Obama has taken it from relative obscurity to number two on the bestseller list. Daniel Henninger observed in the Wall Street Journal that those who oppose regimes like that in Venezuela are harmed when despots are allowed to use the president for the promotion of propaganda: “Other than physically controlling their populations, the biggest problem for autocrats—most of them narcissistic monomaniacs—is maintaining the legitimacy of their authority, which by definition is always on thin ice. To Mr. Obama and his handlers perhaps it was just a photo-op. For Mr. Chavez it was priceless. Merely being seen or photographed in the presence of civilized society—at summits, negotiations, in state visits—empowers the autocrat and discourages his opposition. Within days of the Summit of the Americas, former Venezuelan presidential candidate Manuel Rosales formally applied for asylum in Peru, fearing a corruption trial at home” (April 23). This is why it’s a bad idea for the president of the U.S. to meet with enemies; they provide little or nothing for the U.S. and receive something invaluable in return: legitimacy.

The African National Congress (anc) is significantly ahead in South Africa’s elections; with 67 percent of the vote cast for the anc as of Thursday night, it may even receive the two-thirds majority necessary to enact constitutional changes—and Jacob Zuma will be the next president. Read Joel Hilliker’s March 2008 Trumpet article to see why we don’t expect President Zuma to fix South Africa.

Anglo-America

Markets are absorbing the aftershocks of a major bankruptcy this week. The second-largest mall-owner in the country, General Growth Properties Inc., declared the biggest bankruptcy in U.S. real-estate history on April 16 after amassing an astounding $27 billion in debt. This proves that financial “green shoots” of hope are exaggerated. General Growth was unable to find new creditors to buy its debts, meaning that 158 malls are now involved in bankruptcy proceedings. The collapse highlights not only the dangers facing a highly indebted corporate landscape, but the pressure that commercial real estate and thus banks will soon be facing. “This is kind of the beginning of the end” for the commercial real-estate market, Dan Fasulo of Real Capital Analytics said. “This bankruptcy will drive down the values of mall assets in the United States. It’s going to put, I believe, more supply on the market than can be absorbed by investors.” The real-estate market recovery is a mirage; expect the financial desert ahead to only get drier.

Forbes magazine just might have to issue a new list next year: the Unfortunate 500. With revenues collapsing and debt shooting upward, the nation’s corporate landscape is transforming, and America’s top companies by revenue, the Fortune 500, just experienced their worst year ever. Overall profits for the companies in 2008 plunged an astounding 84.7 percent from the previous year to $98.9 billion. The figures would have been even more disastrous had the price of oil not soared to $140 per barrel last year. Strip out Exxon Mobile and Chevron’s profits, and total net profit for the rest of America’s top 500 companies would have been $30 billion, down from 2007’s $645 billion. Thirty-eight corporate giants disappeared from the Fortune 500 list altogether due to bankruptcy (Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers), mergers and forced government mergers (Wrigley’s, Wachovia, Merril Lynch) or foreign takeovers (Anheuser Busch).

Across the pond, Britain’s public debt is expected to hit its highest level since World War ii. The figure will soar to $255 billion this year, making it all but impossible for the indebted government to pull its populace out of the recession before next year’s general election, says the New York Times. British public debt will double over the next five years, going from 40 percent to almost 80 percent of gross domestic product, according to budget figures announced by Chancellor of the Exchequer Alistair Darling on Wednesday.

Down Under, the Australian economy will shrink faster than the global average, the International Monetary Fund said Wednesday. It predicted the economy will contract 1.4 percent in 2009 and grow 0.6 percent in 2010. The Sydney Morning Herald reported that Prime Minister Kevin Rudd was setting the scene for the country to go deeper into debt by saying “every responsible government around the world is being forced into greater levels of temporary borrowing.” If the global credit crisis is any indication, the solution is on the other side of the spectrum from more “temporary borrowing.”