Brazilians will return to polls later this month to vote in a presidential run-off election between former president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, known popularly as Lula, and firebrand current president Jair Messias Bolsonaro. Run-offs aren’t usually this closely watched in Brazil, except for the fact that there has already been political violence and Bolsonaro has been campaigning on a steady message of anti-media, anti-institutional trust, and claims that any election he does not win is one that has been stolen from him. That he did significantly better in the first round than many polls had predicted has given him and his supporters a shot in the arm.
Brazil is the second largest economy in the Americas, after the United States. It is a significant exporter of industrial materials and agricultural commodities. Brazil’s constitution dates back to 1988, and the first elections it held after the 1964 military coup were in 1989, meaning Brazilian electoral traditions are only as old as Taylor Swift. We are seeing the greatest challenge to Brazil’s democratic norms and traditions since their implementation, and that is a sobering thought. It’s not so much what Bolsonaro might do, as much as what he has promised.
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Last week (when the following video was recorded) saw the British Pound get pummeled by global markets following the announcement of the Truss’ governments “mini-budget.” The Bank of England intervened to help support the currency while newly-instated Prime Minister Liz Truss appears to have taken a few days to avoid the media spotlight, but the episode has eroded whatever support her weeks-old government had hoped to cobble together.
This is a short term problem, however, that pales in comparison to the larger challenge facing the United Kingdom, its economy, and ultimately its place in the world. London emerged as a financial hub for a vast, global empire. After the World Wars, London survived as a clearing house of sorts for the broader EU–particularly between the EU and external economies, such as the United States and Asia.
Brexit did away with all of that. And the British still haven’t figured out what comes next. Some colour:
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Iran is in the midst of one of the most serious rounds of public unrest since November 2019, when a hike in fuel prices sent potentially hundreds of thousands of Iranians out into the streets. Dozens of structures were burned during those protests, statues of regime figures pulled down, and plenty of calls for death of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei and the Islamic regime itself. Outside observers estimate over a thousand Iranian citizens were killed, and over ten thousand were arrested. Current protests are being met with the same harsh response by regime security forces, even if we have not yet reached the scale of brutality seen in 2019. In January of 2020, Iranian military forces shot down Ukraine International Airlines Flight 752, setting off another wave of intense national protests. Iran has had a series of significant protests movements since then, sparked by everything from the country’s abysmal handling of the COVID-19 epidemic, to runaway inflation, drought and lack of water in places like Khuzestan, etc.
The most recent protests were sparked by the death of Mahsa Amini, a 22 year old Kurdish Iranian woman who was arrested because of improper adherence to hijab laws while visiting Tehran with her brother. While details out of the Iranian regime are sparse, activists say that head injuries sustained at the hands of Iran’s morality police lead to her death in custody. Another round of national protests has erupted since her death on September 16, though what had initially started as a women’s rights protests against hijab rules has quickly escalated to encompass the broad swathe of frustrations and discontent of many Iranian citizens, especially the youth.
I don’t think there is anywhere in the world where protests are watched with as much bated breath as Iran. In part due to history (mass social unrest lead to the collapse of the Shah’s regime in 1979), in part due to international intrigue (since the fall of the Soviet Union, the US has had few feuds that have lasted as long as the one with Iran), and in part due to Iran’s own behavior (Iran is an aggressor state against most of its neighbors and has links to militant groups around the Middle East and world).
And so the gruesome death of a young Kurdish woman, and the subsequent protests around it, have captivated a rapt audience. It would be an almost too delicious irony if the death of a young Kurdish woman who refused the imposition of the hijab was the ultimate downfall of the Iranian regime. Unfortunately, that is unlikely to be the case. And while Iran’s Kurds remain perhaps the most organized, most politically active subgroup of Iran’s multi-ethnic society, Iranian Kurdish desires for autonomy/statehood are largely anathema to most other Iranians. It’s hard to imagine current solidarity would extend much beyond any potential toppling of the regime.
Iran’s constant protests are unlikely to stop anytime soon, and while they do point to an erosion of the regime’s ability to maintain an iron grip over its citizens, current protests are unlikely to lead to a direct exit of the ayatollahs and mullahs at the apex of the regime. Frustration is a powerful motivator, but Iran’s protestors lack a charismatic national leader or unifying ethos beyond discontent. Ayatollah Khomeini famously leaned on a pan-Iranian, Shi’ite identity enforced with a big stick to create his vision of a post-Shah Iran. And that big stick remains in the hands of the regime today, ready to cudgel any opposition back into submission. Until that changes, or pillars of the regime defect, or significant foreign aid and coordination steps in on behalf of the protestors, Iran is destined to continue an unfortunate pattern of everyday citizens yearning for change clashing with a regime determined to crush them to ensure its own survival.
The above was written by our Director of Analysis here at ZoG, Michael Nayebi-Oskoui. The video below is obviously from me.
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When it comes to conventional warfare, Russian leaders have relied upon the same tactic for centuries: throw people at the problem. Russian territory has poor defensibility–so too do the lands of the countries Russia has between its own borders and most overland invasion routes. The solution? Plug the gaps with bodies. Lots of them.
What foreign forces didn’t get mucked up in, well, the mire of the Northern European Plain, usually had to contend with the poor souls Russian leadership was able to place between itself and those forces seeking to invade. The advent of modern warfare has diminished the effectiveness of these tactics, from machine guns to modern artillery and drones, but Russian military leadership has to contend with another wrinkle: the mobility of modern Russian men. Gone are the days when you could corral villagers and locals and send them off to front lines. As we’re seeing along all roads out of Russia, those who can run away from mobilization notices are choosing to do so. In the hundreds of thousands–to say nothing of those who are likely avoiding call up notices within Russia itself.
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Italians have gone to the polls again, with a coalition of right-far right parties winning the most votes. This makes the leader of the largest party of the coalition, the Fratelli d’Italia (or Brothers of Italy), the likely next Prime Minister of Italy. That would be Giorgia Meloni, who in recent months has been labelled a neo-fascist.
Visceral political reactions normally illicit eyerolls, but Meloni’s well-documented comments on immigration and belief in a coordinated racial replacement theory do little to dissuade the appellation. So too has her staunch insistence on including visual iconography of Italy’s fascist party under Mussolini as part of Fratelli d’Italia’s campaign logos–even when encouraged by many members of her party not to do so (including one of former Italian fascist dictator Benito Mussolini’s granddaughters).
Eye raising? Certainly. Concerning? Yes, but this is Italy…
Meloni will be tasked with forming Italy’s 70th or so government since WWII. Italian parliamentary politics are fractious and unforgiving, and Meloni has little real experience serving within a government. Her coalition members also include former prime minster Silvio Berlusconi, about as wily and effective (and corrupt) a politician as post-War Italy has ever seen. Time will tell if she can bring her own coalition, let alone the Italian parliament, to heel long enough to enact whatever social policies she might desire.
Then there is the bigger issue of Italy’s dependence on the broader EU. A series of fractious and ineffective governments have left Italy less independent of EU management, and in recent years a series of cheap loans and financial help with Italy’s growing debt. Meloni will have to walk a fine line between political ambition and reality, lest EU displeasure leaves her joining the long list of former Italian prime ministers who failed to serve out the entirety of their first term.
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Something’s damaged the Nord Stream supply lines that transit through the Baltic Sea. Inconvenient in the best of times, sure, but in the current geopolitical climate there are tons of theories and fingers being pointed all around.
Was it the Americans, wanting to prevent the Europeans from crawling back to an abusive natural gas supplier? The Russians themselves (despite already electing to voluntarily halt gas supplies?) Tough love from Baltic Euro states? Ukrainian Saboteurs? A freak accident?
Frankly, none of the these theories hold up. This is one of those moments where as much as we’d like some immediate clarity, we’re simply going to have to wait and see…
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Every agricultural, industrial and energy commodity has its own story as regards its geography of production, supply chains and use. I try to get to as many of them as possible in the new book, The End of the World is Just the Beginning: Mapping the Collapse of Globalization. Change one thing about the global system and the way we source and use each product evolves. Rice is ridiculously vulnerable to changes in rainfall patterns. Work from home (or stop working from home) and oil markets lose their minds.
But the commodity I’ve always personally found the most fascinating is the saga of cotton. There is far more to cotton than “merely” being the “fabric of our lives”.
Cotton was the original industrial commodity, putting it at the heart of everything from urbanization to mercantilism to the women’s rights movement. Everything about cotton sits at the intersection of human rights, trade wars, climate change, technology, and economic development patterns. Cotton’s story is nowhere near over. In fact, its near-term future will be among the most storied…stories of the deglobalization era.
NB: The following video is one I recorded while on my annual backpacking trip in August; please excuse any potential anachronisms. I did not mention India as a cotton producer because they’re bit of a separate case from the rest of the world’s main producers, despite their size. Monsoon rather than river or aquifer irrigation is the norm, and they have a host of production challenges (and low production yields) and processing limitations that set them apart not just from China, but smaller countries like Vietnam, Bangladesh and Turkey as well.
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A decade ago, Alberta’s oil sands were the home of the most expensive to produce crude oil on the planet. Not only that, but Canada’s mix of intra-provincial competition and weak federal control left the landlocked province with few options to send its oil outside of the US–a country experiencing a rising boom of natural gas and light, sweet shale crude oil.
The outlook for the oil sands was…not good.
Now? Alberta’s oil producers have gotten leaner, and while not meaner (they’re still Canadians, after all) they have slowly-but-steadily become more efficient and cost effective in terms of production. While certain challenges remain (Alberta cannot change its landlocked geography), Canada’s largest oil producing province has suddenly found itself cost competitive with Russian oil, and the world’s energy markets are on the cusp of upheaval.
Suddenly the future of Canada’s oil sands doesn’t seem so bleak after all.
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Russian president Vladimir Putin has called up some 300,000 Russian troops in a “partial mobilization” to assist Russian forces in Moscow’s ongoing invasion of Ukraine. Ukrainian forces have had some recent successes on the battlefield against Russian troops in the roughly 7-month-old conflict. Putin’s move reflects a classic Russian tactic (throwing more bodies at a problem), but is as likely a move to refresh troops on the ground as it is in reaction to recent losses.
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European nations are debating a potential Russian tourist ban, with the general theme being “you shouldn’t be able to visit our beaches and luxury shops while simultaneously supporting a regime declaring war against Ukraine (and potentially the West).”
Europe being Europe, there are a range of attitudes expressed. The Scandinavians, Polish and Baltic states on the frontline with Russia are the most vociferously opposed to allowing any Russian tourism into their respective countries and the EU. France and Germany have been more circumspect.
Given the number of Russian elite who vacation, send their children to live in, and shop in European cities, there are those that argue that such a ban will help further cleave Vladimir Putin from the small but crucial cadre atop Russia society.
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