Young Diplomats

The definition of Neo-Liberalism heavily depends on who you ask, for large sections of population, and politicians, Neo-Liberalism is the cause of all evil in the world.

For Arabs, Neo-Liberalism caused Invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan. For Communists, Neo-Liberalism is the cause for all evil in the world(can’t blame them for this since Reagan spelled the death cast for Communism) and for today’s Populist Right politicians, Neo-Liberalist Establishment is the cause of all misery and for students, Neo-Liberalism is the cause of their college debts.
So Neo-Liberalism must be a really gigantic thing since it powers everything from Robots to Military Invasions, but maybe, Neo-Liberalism just happened to be the scapegoat for each and every evil in the world because people simply don’t understand it
So let’s enlighten ourselves by actually understand what Neo-Liberalism is and it didn’t take me more than 4 minutes for that and that just undid 10 years of Communist Propoganda on me.

Neo-Liberalism is the 20th-century resurgence of 19th-century ideas associated with laissez-faire economic liberalism and free market capitalism. It is generally associated with policies of economic liberalization including privatization, deregulation, globalization, free trade, austerity, and reductions in government spending in order to increase the role of the private sector in the economy and society. Neoliberalism constituted a paradigm shift away from the post-war Keynesian consensus which had lasted from 1945 to 1980.

Do any of you see anything about invading any other parts of the world?or anything about Hillary Clinton? So that is definitely not Neo-Liberalism. Now let’s see what Neo-Libs are all about

Neo-Liberalism is all about Free Trade and Globalisation, and that alone has initiated the biggest poverty eradication drive in human history, so much for being anti-poor, and not just that, now Elon Musk can build his shiny Mars-Car in Shanghai, otherwise, he would have been stuck at his desert factory.
Neo-Liberlalist policies has almost single-handedly brought post-Soviet economies like Poland and Estonia to the First World while economies like Belarus which stayed put are well, still there like ever before.
Neo-Liberal policies has resulted in Billions and Billions of dollard in saved taxpayer money which would have been spent in White Elephant enterprises which lacked innovation and gave way for the Startup age which fuels the tech revolution we see today.
Neo-Liberals stood for Floating Exchange Rates and to move away from Gold Standard which was a major hinderance for Developing Economies at the time and the start of Fiat Money era was also the kickstarter for Globalisation
Quite Paradoxically, Free-Market Dictatorships has a tendency to move into democracy and be prosperous in the long term while Socialist Democracies tend to stay stagnant or move into dictatorships at some point (compare Chile and Venezuela), this doesn’t sound good, but History never fails to surprise

But that doesn’t mean that everything is going good, far from it, Capitalism survives through evolution and same is the case with Neo-Liberlalism.
Capitalism for the Poor, Socialism for the Rich- This is one of the biggest drivers of Populism and Inequality in the Developed World and this has to do with excessive Government Interference in the Economy in the name of Neo-Liberalism. This came into public light when the US Gov’t $700bn to bail out losing Banking Companies after the ’08 crisis instead of letting the Business Cycle running the course. Disrupting the cycle can kill the system from within. In a Neo-Liberal society, Government has no business in business and Businesses don’t have any role in Governance, otherwise, transform to another form of governance where intervention can benefit the people too.
Excessive Reliance on Debt, while cheap and accessible credit is an absolute must to develop an economy, there should be a reconsideration whether liberal lining of credit should be given for people to purchase depreciable assets like Cars, Phones and in case of Homes, loans only help to drive up home prices which eventually bubbles up. When Loans are given, there should be a strong chance that the borrower should be able to pay it back and preferences should be given to loans which has higher multiplier effects like for businesses and commercial buildings.
Taming the Elephant, the Elephant Curve of World Income Distribution is one of the accidental side effects of Neo-Liberalism

While Globalisation has helped the Global Middle Class to prosper, it has also caused the stagnation and relegation of the middle class of the developed economies and this is due to the combination of Automation and Outsourcing and Government Regulations like Minimum Wage and Permanent Labour is responsible for this and this has been the biggest factor causing the rise of Populism today and taming this curve will be the key factor in saving the world from populism.
I’m not the greatest fan of Neo-Liberlalism nor is an active supporter(infact, i would consider myself an ordoliberal, the anti-thesis of Neoliberalism)but this doesn’t imply that Neo-Liberalism is the cause of everything bad in the world and people has to take Neo-Liberalism for what it is and recognise the contributions it has given to the world and try to solve it’s problems instead of falling into Populism.

#BLM Backstory
Recently the news were filled up with reports about protests all over the United States, following a gruesome murder of George Floyd, an afro-american US citizen that was basically strangled to death by a police officer during an arrest in Minneapolis, Minnesota, on May 25, 2020.

This incident, being shot on camera, essentially prompted the population to start a massive protest in Minneapolis, which has eventually expanded into a full-fledged movement of black rights activists not only in other 49 states, but all around the world. Although this movement is still gaining its momentum, it is already considered the greatest movement for black rights since the very March on Washington in 1963 led by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
Meanwhile, the destabilized environment, coupled with an economic crisis that fell on us due to the COVID-19 pandemic, perfectly suited looters, robbers and pickpockets, who almost immediately began to shoplift, stealing expensive electronic devices, jewelry, money etc. Not only did those looters turn the public’s attention away from peaceful protesters, but they also basically compromised the whole goal of the movement, making it look like a distraction created for them to succeed in their criminal activity.
In this article we will try to understand the main reasons for the dispute surrounding those recent events, as well as to learn to take more details into consideration when making conclusions on such topics.

Informing the World Population
As a result, the views of the international community on this particular issue started to differ as much as possible. The populations of other countries, being mostly informed by local news agencies, draw conclusions based on personal opinions of their favorite article authors, correspondents and news anchors. In addition to the fact that such a method of information transmitting creates a so-called “broken telephone effect”, it also reduces a chance that one will hear out facts and arguments of the opposing side, thus creating a narrow information field to work with. In order to widen it a bit, it is important to try to understand first how mass media operate in such situations.
It is obvious that one of the main goals that news agencies pursue, aside from informing the population, is being better than other agencies. The word “better” here includes lots of different factors: from being the first to deliver the news to being the most accurate with numbers, from getting in touch with the most valuable and trustworthy source to being the first to arrive on the field of action. But the global “win” for a news agency is to get a bigger audience that counts on their reports and trusts the opinions of their experts, since this is the only way to objectively point out which agency is superior to everyone else in the news business. There is actually a great cinematic example of this appearance in Aaron Sorkin’s “The Newsroom”, where we observe a utopic news agency trying to forget about numbers and focus on the quality of the material that they deliver. But of course, in real world this dependence is much more visible than in those series.
While this competition serves as a main catalyst for journalists to do their jobs better, it also forms a certain tendency that articles and live reports unconsciously follow, which is essentially an attempt to deliver mostly those news that arouse interest and curiosity in people. This tendency can easily be spotted on the #BLM example, and this is actually one of the reasons why this movement caused so much anger among the international community. Simply put, making a new article about peaceful protests marching in different cities each day would make less sense in terms of marketing profit than writing about shoplifting, arsons, beatings and police forces trying to hold back masses of people. This makes black rights activists look the same as those criminals that turn cities into chaos right now, while actually having nothing in common with them.

Rational Thinking
The second reason is much more complicated than simple marketing conditions. Its core is in human quality that sometimes play a key role in a process of making decisions and conclusions. This quality is a will to rationalize our thinking process and our energy expenditure.
Imagine two people having a dialog about, let’s say, their food preferences. One loves tomatoes whereas the second one hates them for some reason. An average dialog about tomatoes between those two would be simply exchanging these short and concise facts, and that would be the end for this topic. But we can also imagine all kinds of deviation from this basic talk. The one that hates tomatoes could possibly point out that he used to love them, but one day he has almost choked up on a tomato and since then he doesn’t even come close to those vegetables. On the other hand, the one that actually loves tomatoes can mention that there are some kinds of tomatoes, or some dish that includes tomatoes, that he personally hates.
So why wouldn’t they mention all this additional information in the first place? It seems crucial for making a deliberated choice when ordering food delivery. Well, basically what happens is that they subconsciously prefer not to waste their time and energy on thinking about it all. They would mention those extra facts later when this information becomes more relevant to the topic, but until then there is no need in trying to remember the details of the story when a second person almost choked up, like when and where did it happen, as much as there is no need to remember, what was the name of the dish that includes tomatoes but that would be better without them. And that is understandable, but the problem here is that there is a small chance that if they would continue to go into details – they would find some common ground and there wouldn’t be a conflict in opinion.
Without a doubt, when we are talking about racial discrimination, or any other type of xenophobia, the dialog is roughly that simple as if we would be talking about food. But the processes that occur in our head are the same. When the supporters of the #BLM movement discuss it with their opponents, the arguments of both sides are most likely understood to both sides in advance. The supporting side would state that Afro-American community in the US has suffered long enough and that the government has done nothing to prevent this from happening again and again, and would give us lots of examples of injustice for the policemen who practiced violence on people based on the color of their skin. The opposing side would insist that those cases are nothing compared to the cases of those shop owners whose business has turned to ashes because of the looters, even though they might have never treated an Afro-American client worse than any other white client. But the thing is that they are talking about two completely different groups of people. If they would discuss only the peaceful movement, which #BLM literally is – there might have never been an opponent on that particular topic. Similarly, if the side that supports #BLM would focus in such a dialog on the looters, previously pointing out that they do not represent the aforementioned protest – maybe they would get to some agreement.
The problem is that we subconsciously prefer to generalize information instead of going into details each time the topic arises, as well as to round some statistical numbers in order to save time and energy from talking about tenth and hundredth. There is nothing bad in this quality, it’s natural to all the human kind. But each person has his or her acceptable level of inaccuracy. And sometimes the difference between those levels of inaccuracy might cause a serious disagreement between people that are actually very close to some common ground. So, instead of looking for more and more facts that could support a specific point of view, one should be dealing with the difference in opinions itself. Maybe this would open up a lot of eyes on current problems, and thus hopefully solve them.

The Russian constitution has not been changed since its creation in 1994, but on the 20th January 2020, the Kremlin party which is the political party of Vladimir Putin has announced many projects of the constitutional amending.

Many questions have been asked about the real  motivations and intentions of the President Putin, leader of the country since 1999. For a reminder, he is not allowed to stand for other presidential elections. A few hours after this announcement, Dimitri Medvedev and his government announced their resignation.

Why having made this amending decision ? First of all, is done because of the question of succession at the head of the state in order to avoid mistakes which have been done during the Ex-USSR period, during which, after the death of the successor, people had no idea of what was going to happen to their country, leading it to its own loss.

On the first side, these different amendments put a limit of two mandates of 6 years, whereas for the moment the constitution forbids more than two consecutive mandates. Putin also said that under the presidential decisions, judges of the Supreme Court and of the constitutional court have to join the upper chamber. The Russian president also declared that international treaties which do not respect the Russian constitution  would not be applied anymore, which could have so many impacts in the international scene. He also wants to forbid to Russian people having the double nationality to have important status in the high administration. Putin also engaged a minimal wage and add a pension indexation in the constitution.

Changing the constitutional texte has another interpretation because, though the Russian council of state would allow to give to Putin an access to power for a lifetime. These changes have become official on the 20th of January by the Kremlin party at  the Russian Parliament, Douma. It permits to the Parliament to have a more important role in naming the Prime Minister.

The Russian Parliament has published, on the same day what those changes are about. We can also see that, as we said before the Parliament is getting more importance in naming the Prime Minister, but also that the State Council is able to give power to Putin after 2024, year in which his mandate is supposed to be over. But, the other important line is the possibility to reset the mandates made by leaders already in place or in charge of power. The President would be able to lead the country until 2036 if he gets two more mandates of 6 years.

For Putin, making these changes in the constitution  texts is a way to assure itself to keep going on leading the country and to make sure to maintain itself in the power even after 2024 This strategy have been doing progressively to reinforce institutions which guarantee to keep the power.

A popular referendum was planned last month, on April 2020 but because of the pandemic context has been delayed for another time. For now we are not able to know exactly when it’s supposed to be done.

In case you haven’t been following up on the past year of political turmoil in Israel, here is a brief review:

On April 9, 2019, elections were held to determine who would be Israel’s next prime Minister. Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party gained 5 seats, bringing his total to 32. However, the Blue and White Party led by Benny Gantz, gained 24 seats, also bringing their total to 35. This meant that Israel had a hung Knesset, with neither side gaining a breakthrough, and a second round of elections were held on September 17.

There, something unexpected happened. While Blue and White lost 2 seats, bring their total down to 33, Likud lost 6 seats, bringing their total down to 32. This was in large attributed to Benny Gantz’s highlighting Netanyahu’s corruption investigations and the fact that he did not seem to respond to Hamas terrorist attacks in the South, as well as running on a platform of cracking down on corruption and calling for electoral and political reforms. For the first time since becoming PM for a Second time in 2009, Netanyahu had lost an election.

Soon after, the indictment came, and it almost looked like the end for Benjamin Netanyahu. But he bounced back. His opponent Benny Gantz was unable to form a coalition, Netanyahu defeated a primary challenger, Gideon Saar, without breaking a sweat, and after a third election on March 2, 2020, the Likud was once again the largest bloc in the Knesset after gaining 4 seats, bringing their total to 36, Blue and White remaining at 33.

However, Netanyahu still could not form a coalition to get the 61-seat majority needed to form a government. With a trial looming, Benny Gantz was given that opportunity by Israeli President Reuven Rivlin. It almost looked like he was going to do it, and Netanyahu the seemingly invincible, the seemingly untouchable, might finally be ousted.

But then, corona-virus happened. Benny Gantz agreed to a unity government, and became speaker of the Knesset. This caused by of Benny Gantz’s supporters to wave black flags in protest, and for the Blue and White Party to Collapse, with Yair Lapid of the Yesh Atid Party and Moshe Yalon of the Telem Party, forming the Yesh Atid Telem Party led by Yair Lapid.

As of now, the talks have hit a stalemate, with all indications looking like it heads to a fourth election, and possibly even a fifth before Israel’s political deadlock is settled.

All the meanwhile, something else is happening that no one seems to be picking up on. The Arab parties have all united into the Arab Joint List under the Leadership of the left-wing Ayman Odeh, and, during this entire political deadlock, the Arabs have been steadily gaining and gaining seats in the Knesset, and in the near-future, may be a part of an Israeli Government for the first-time ever.

This deadlock can only mean one thing: Israeli society is a powder-keg ready to ignite. From the Religious Right who hope that West Bank annexation will bring about the coming of the Messiah, to the Secularists who want Zionism to return to its secular roots and expel all religious influence from the country, to the Arabs who are grasping at this opportunity to finally achieve political representation, to the Ethiopians who want to end police brutality, to the realists who, although may not support total Palestinian independence, think that the West Bank will never be subdued and so Israel should leave it.

Ultimately one has to ask this question about the rise of the Centrist Parties, and of Benny Gantz and Yair Lapid: Were they a backlash against the status quo if Israeli Politics? Are Israelis looking for anti-establishment outsiders, like military man Benny Gantz or Journalist Yair Lapid? With the rise of populist movements all over the word, sooner or later it would come to Israel. Which this election deadlock has proven.

No one knows exactly when this powder-keg will ignite, or what will be the event that ignites it. Nor can anyone be certain how it will go, although total descent into anarchy is unlikely. It is more plausible that a series of protests and riots will occur.

At the current look, the fourth election will probably end up with the Blue and White Party loosing a considerable amount of seats to Yesh-Atid/Telem, and Likud still having the Largest Bloc, although it still would not be enough to break the deadlock. And while COVID-19 may have delayed Netanyahu’s trial, his opinion of how he has handled it among Israelis has remained poor, which many saying he is using it to divert attention away from his corruption trial.

It is also possible that the Ultra-Orthodox resisting of quarantine orders may ause the religious parties to loose seats in any future elections.

Whoever the next Israeli PM will be, he/she will have to deal with a very fractured society, and ultimately may have to make some sort of concessions to the Arabs.

There are a lot of nations which went from being Poor to Rich and even nations that went from Rich to Poor.
But there is a nation which went from literal nothing to the most developed economy in West Asia within 60 or so years, and that too despite all odds being stacked against. If you haven’t guessed it, it is Israel.

It was only a concept before 1948 and it’s birth was a through a bloody partition which led to a full-scale war between the new nation and almost all of Arab states which it survived but it also led to a boycott from almost all nations in West Asia and almost all states around it declared elimination of Isreal as a goal and was actively working towards it.
In a situation like this where stability is to be fought for, it will be almost impossible to achieve a functioning economy, let alone a developed economy, and looking at neighboring nations like Syria and Jordan, where even basic centralisation is still contested, Israel is almost at another league.
Note:- I would like to hereby say that i have tried to keep Politics out of it and try to solely focus on how the Economy of Israel works and i have to further clarify that i am a firm believer in International Law and this is my official stand on the issue.

David Ben-Gurion, the first PM of Israel and a Polish Migrant with Golda Meir, the first Female PM of Israel and an Ukranian Migrant
The first and best thing Israel got perfectly right was their immigration policy. The upside of Immigration is that their descendants are more likely to succeed in any fields than natives, and the downside of immigration is integrating their culture and customs with the the culture of the host nation.
For purely non-economic reasons, they managed to find the fine-line between this through “The Law of Return” which stupulated that anyone with Jewish Lineage is eligible for Israeli Citizenship, so what this meant is that Israel has a steady flow of enthusiastic migrants from all over the world but also shares some fundamental characteristics with the host population, As a result, 33% of Israel’s current population is born abroad and 90% of the Population is of Immigrant Descent.

Current PM of Israel Benjamin Netanyahu(R) serving on Israeli Special Forces, he later went to MIT for studies.
Another Non-Economic reason that contributed to Israel’s stipulation that almost all citizens of Israel, Male or Female, are required to serve in the military for 2 years, and Isreal is the only nation in the world to have compulsory Military Service for women.
The primary reason for this was to equip all the citizens to be reserve troops in case a conflict comes and was aimed to increase National Security and instill Patriotism. But a side effect of this was that the population learned many valuable life skills like Discipline, Management, Organisation, Survival Skills which will a huge help when someone is in R&D or is running a business.
Most Asian civilisations tend to have a rather ambivalent attitude towards risk taking and and on a sadder note, tends to cherish mediocrity.

But traditionally Jews have been a community who have been involved with money and finance and also highly educated (thank Catholic Church for that!) and when Israel came into being, this trait was inherited by higher spending on education which is something that is absent in other West Asian nations, this along with the attitude of Chutzpah, which resents mediocrity, made Israel a breeding ground for entrepreneurs.
This is not to say that Israel had a great smooth ride to development, most of Israel’s early economic policy was Socialist-Leaning in nature and this coupled with intermittent conflicts with neighbors and rampant instability made the functioning of the economy a messy affair.
However this changed after hyperinflation hit nearly a 100% in 1986 which forced the government to launch a new stable currency and this incident forced the government to rethink their strategies.They were forced to adopt pro-entrepreneur policies after nearly 800,000 people emigrated from the erstwhile Soviet Union and they needed jobs. For this, The Government was forced to encourage young Israelis to start businesses an employ as much as possible and used their global diaspora to attract Investment from all over the world.
All this was helped by the Peace Treaty signed by Fateh and Israel which brought relative stability to the otherwise volatile area. The Government instead of following laissez-faire attitude to businesses, continued their socialist legacy by investing in young companies until they became profitable, thereby acting as a de facto VC Fund and the ancient Jewish tradition of running Farming Communities called kibbutz was metamorphed into IT Parks and Industries. Maybe India can learn a thing or two here
Coincidentally, most of Israel’s tech industry is focused around the ancient community of Tel Aviv-Yafo, which is one of the leading areas for R&D in the world right up with Silicon Valley and also forms the Silicon Triad with Bengaluru the Silicon Plateau with the moniker of Silicon ‘Wadi‘ meaning valley in Hebrew

A kibbutz turned into Tech Incubator
Israel’s budget allocation for Research and Development per capita ranks #2 in the world just below South Korea and as a result top universities in Israel ranks highly in World Rankings despite being young and many tech giants like Intel, Microsoft and Google run a significant portion of R&D from Israel.
Another area where Israel pioneered is Agricultural Technology and their technology is now wanted in all parts of the world and they are perhaps the only nation which has managed to Greenify a desert and are behind innovations like Greenhouses
An influence of Geopolitics in Israeli R&D is seen in the field of Military Technology Espionage which was widely used by agencies like MOSSAD to advance their objectives and their tech is now wanted by many World Governments, mostly authoritarian and their nee clients now include old foes like Saudi Arabia

Israel’s GDP/Capita Growth, compared to their old oil rich rival Saudi Arabia
Israel’s GDP has risen ten-fold from 34 Billion to 370 Billion between 1986 and today and Israel has the highest living standards and the highest HDI score at anywhere in Middle East at 0.906 and Israel is considered as the only stable democracy in the area and Arabs in Israel, rather counterintuitively, enjoys more Political Rights and Opportunities than anywhere in West Asia which tells a lot.
Israel’s path to development is one of the most unique stories in the field of Development Economics where development happened not by following Economic Principles, but through a convergence of several outside unrelated factors, which when put into optimum usage, converted  Israel into the behemoth it is today

NidanBasheer

Tax evasion, is one the most important problem in the international scene. In a globalised world as ours, borders are getting more blurred than ever and the advantages for big companies such as GAFAs are more and more important. Since the beginning, those big companies are getting more and more important because of their benefits but also of data they got from users. This question, is at the center of different policies and projects linked to the tax system, since a decade. Now, the question is about to know how to quantify and tax something which is immaterial ? GAFAs represent billions and billion of dollars, since its market capitalisation apple represent by its own about 1000 billion dollars.

Interests and relations between each state are linked by economic policies. Effectively, China and the United States are acting by embargo’s threat and by closing markets for products from both countries. Specialised organisation struggle to find any fair agreements responding to the general wills.During the summer 2019, because of the lack of international means to get a solution, France took lead in getting any answers to this question and make its own tax system toward GAFA. Because of the reaction of the president of the United States, Donald Trump we can see how straight the link between taxes and relations between counties gets stronger.

This French initiative had for consequences to relaunch tensions between France and the United States which point of view is different about that point. The French will to tax those big groups (GAFA) get harder because of the lack of international agreements (OECD main roles) and the need to handle these big companies which have a lot of advantages in the European Field such as in Ireland. The French tax targets companies having an annula turnover upper to 750 millions of euros worldly, and 25 millions of euros at the French level. The tax would be applied at the rate of 3% of the turnover realised in France.

The Unites States considers that there are Americans companies targeted and perceive this tax as being discriminatory. This unilateral aspect led to France to be in the line of sight of the United States which threat to tax about 100% of product from France which would represent 2,4 billion of dollars, including luxury, wine etc. In order to avoid any probability to get in a commercial war with the United States, the French president Emmanuel Macron interviewed with Donal Trump for stabilising the situation.

This problem highlights that because of this strong multilateralism, the international boded have few chances to get into any agreements or establishing regulations form the power and influence of the different actors. Agreements obtained during the meeting of the G20 in Japan and G7 in Biarritz have permitted to find a middle ground which would permit to the OECD to make cornet project and give substance to consumer countries but also by introducing a minimum tax rate in global scale.

Europe shows its solidarity to France, if American reprisals would be applied, France has to get the huge majority of the 26 member countries of the European Union, especially the one from Germany which will see American custom duties to its car exportations. However, this solidarity comes to address this threat to the European Market and European exportations, and echoes to the small steps principles at the origin of the European Union. These questions are relative to taxes and the banking sector are always done with the participation of the USA , the question is to know if this in this case of GAFA, the European Union and the OECD are able to take any decisions.

This case, shows a lot about the straight link between taxation and international relations, reprisals are given as soon as taxes could be announced by countries. The goal is also not to put on a taxation system, but also to keep good commercial relations with all partners, and respecting all interests, at all costs.

In the past few weeks, China has been assertive in its actions. Sinking Vietnamese fishing boat by a Chinese vessel, border skirmishes with India, National-Security law for Hong Kong and plans to deploy two aircraft carriers in waters near Taiwan portray that China is being assertive while the world is busy combating COVID-19 pandemic.

Sinking Vietnamese fishing boat

In March, Chinese vessel sank a Vietnamese fishing boat in the South China Sea’s contested Paracel Islands. According to some media reports, a Chinese vessel rammed the Vietnamese fishing boat and capsized it which then sank. However, China claims that the Chinese vessel went to the fishing boat after the crew sought help when the boat started sinking. The incident took place at a time when the Vietnamese boat was fishing near the Discovery Reef. The Discovery Reef is part of the Paracel Islands which is claimed by China, Vietnam and Taiwan but is occupied or controlled de facto by China since 1974 after the Battle of the Paracel Islands which attempted by South Vietnamese Navy to expel Chinese Navy from the Island.

Border skirmishes with India

During the first week of May, a scuffle broke out between Chinese and Indian troops in the Himalayan region of Ladakh at the Pangong Tso Lake located 4270 meters above the sea level. The soldiers from both sides engaged in stone-pelting and fist fighting which resulted in 11 soldiers being injured from both nations. India and China share a border of approximately 3500 km. China claims the Indian state of Arunachal Pradesh as its territory while India makes similar claims for China’s Aksai Chin. In 1962 both went into a war over border dispute but border issues have never been resolved. However, not a single bullet has been fired since 1975 from both sides. The borders relative remained calm since the late 1980s after the ties were reset between the two when the talks were held between China’s Deng Xiaoping and Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi. Both countries signed an agreement to maintain peace at the border in 1993 which was followed by the signing of significant confidence-building measures on border issues in 1996 and 2006 respectively. The recent Wuhan Summit was thought to reset the relations and would avoid future issues between the two. Despite these confidence-building measures, the relations are likely to get to a new low after the recent scuffle which the experts fear could trigger a military conflict between China and India.

National Security Law for Hong Kong

Since its return to China from Britain, Hong Kong maintains a high degree of autonomy and falls under “one country, two systems”. China ceded Hong Kong to the British during the First Opium War in 1841. Hong Kong was turned over to China in 1997 in exchange for the commitment by China to preserve the capitalist system of Hong Kong. Last week, the ruling Communist Party of China has proposed a National Security Law for Hong Kong that could ban treason, secession and sedition which can result in much severe punishment for the protesters. This move by the National People’s Congress which it deems necessary to safeguard Hong Kong’s national security is considered to be an attempt to erode judicial independence and other freedoms from Hong Kong which mainland China does not enjoy. According to the US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, the law is the latest in a series of China’s actions that fundamentally weaken the freedoms and autonomy of Hong Kong. He further said that Hong Kong was no longer autonomous from China and it no longer merits special treatment from the US. Such a move from the US could have grave repercussions for Hong Kong as well as from China. Things will be clearer in the near future in this context. However, the law deemed necessary by China to combat violent protests in Hong Kong will further fuel anti-China sentiments in Hong Kong.

Plans to deploy aircraft carriers in waters near Taiwan

As part of its war games later this year, China reportedly plans to deploy two aircraft carriers in waters near Taiwan in Dongsha Islands. In order to conduct combat readiness drills, the Liaoning and Shandong aircraft carriers are being deployed by China in Bohai Bay in the Yellow Sea to conduct drills that will later extend to the South China Sea. China’s state-run media is said to have cited experts as claiming that the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) is capable of turning any exercise into action if the secessionists from Taiwan insists on secession. Taiwanese Ministry of Defense Chief of Joint Operations assured the Taiwanese public that the contingency plans are in place by the military in case of an attack from China and the combat readiness on Taiwan’s outer islands including Dongsha Islands will be strengthened. China considers Taiwan as a breakaway province which will again be its part. Taiwan, however, wants to maintain its independence which China defies diplomatically leaving Taiwan with maintaining diplomatic relations only with 15 states in the world.

No one can really understand what China is up to. However, these aforementioned recent developments in the past few weeks indicate that China seeks to be assertive possibly aggressive in the region at a time when the risk of military the confrontation between China and the US is growing in the South China Sea and the world’s attention is focused on combating COVID-19.

Why is propaganda so powerful? It’s a weapon that has an enormous influence on individuals and groups of people who are the receivers of the propaganda messages. Why enormous? Because propaganda relies on FEELINGS. When a group or an individual is under the influence of feelings, they will do things they would never do when they are guided by reason.

 

Maybe the best example in history is totalitarian regimes of the twentieth century, nazism, and later communism. Propaganda from these regimes made people actually support crimes against humanity. They were actually the soldiers who helped maintain these systems as long as possible. They worked for the system, for something they believed in. It wasn’t the opposite. The system wasn’t in their service.

 

How did this psychological weapon evolve? To find an answer to this question, it’s best to go back to Ancient Greece where there were groups of citizens who discussed public matters and exchanged their opinions. In the Ancient world, art was a favorite area for propaganda. Literature often had an “educational” purpose.

 

Later in history, propaganda develops in parallel with the development of science and technology. So, there were printed materials that helped to spread the propaganda message more quickly. At the end of the 18th and the beginning of the 19th century, there is a great example. Napoleon Bonaparte used publications to write about his battles. People loved to read them and he became very popular. His move helped a lot in forming his cult of personality.

 

But, the real revolution of propaganda happened in the twentieth century, especially with the development of radio and television. That development helped spread the message quicker than in any prior historical period. During World War II, people would often hear words such as “We”, “Together”, “Rely” and similar, but also many metaphors. Nazi politicians presented them in their messages in a very aggressive way, yelling and often creating drama. That was a perfect way to create a perfect society, according to their criteria.

 

After the war, during the Cold War era, it’s interesting to look at popular culture, especially because the cinema and TV were very popular. So, there was a cultural war. Both the West and the East had their brave and handsome good guys and bad guys. The latter were usually from the side of the real enemy.

 

During the 1990s, with the development of the World Wide Web, another revolution occurred in the development of propaganda. People started to send their messages through websites and these messages spread even faster than 40 or 50 years before. So, propaganda, as a weapon, became stronger, faster, and more efficient.

 

Today there are social networks. It’s enough to become a member of the group, like the page, or follow someone’s profile and an individual or a group of individuals becomes an active participant in spreading the message because it can be shared very easily. False and misleading information filled with words like  “We”, “Together”, “You” and others have much faster and greater effect than fierce political speeches seventy years ago. Lately, there is also an interesting trend. These messages are spread via messaging applications that are more private and can be sent only to a selected group of people. Any individual from these groups can share them with another group and in that same way, very privately, in order to fulfill the intention of the original sender.

 

 

 

 

 

There are a lot of nations which went from being Poor to Rich and even nations that went from Rich to Poor
But there is a nation which went from literal nothing to the most developed economy in West Asia within 60 or so years, and that too despite all odds being stacked against. If you haven’t guessed it, it is Israel.
It was only a concept before 1948 and it’s birth was a through a bloody partition which led to a full-scale war between the new nation and almost all of Arab states which it survived but it also led to a boycott from almost all nations in West Asia and almost all states around it declared elimination of Isreal as a goal and was actively working towards it.
In a situation like this where stability is to be fought for, it will be almost impossible to achieve a functioning economy, let alone a developed economy, and looking at neighboring nations like Syria and Jordan, where even basic centralisation is still contested, Israel is almost at another league.
Note:- I would like to hereby say that i have tried to keep Politics out of it and try to solely focus on how the Economy of Israel works and i have to further clarify that i am a firm believer in International Law and this is my official stand on the issue.

David Ben-Gurion, the first PM of Israel and a Polish Migrant with Golda Meir, the first Female PM of Israel and an Ukranian Migrant
The first and best thing Israel got perfectly right was their immigration policy. The upside of Immigration is that their descendants are more likely to succeed in any fields than natives, and the downside of immigration is integrating their culture and customs with the the culture of the host nation.
For purely non-economic reasons, they managed to find the fine-line between this through “The Law of Return” which stupulated that anyone with Jewish Lineage is eligible for Israeli Citizenship, so what this meant is that Israel has a steady flow of enthusiastic migrants from all over the world but also shares some fundamental characteristics with the host population, As a result, 33% of Israel’s current population is born abroad and 90% of the Population is of Immigrant Descent.

Current PM of Israel Benjamin Netanyahu(R) serving on Israeli Special Forces, he later went to MIT for studies
Another Non-Economic reason that contributed to Israel’s stipulation that almost all citizens of Israel, Male or Female, are required to serve in the military for 2 years, and Isreal is the only nation in the world to have compulsory Military Service for women.
The primary reason for this was to equip all the citizens to be reserve troops in case a conflict comes and was aimed to increase National Security and instill Patriotism. But a side effect of this was that the population learned many valuable life skills like Discipline, Management, Organisation, Survival Skills which will a huge help when someone is in R&D or is running a business.
Most Asian civilisations tend to have a rather ambivalent attitude towards risk taking and and on a sadder note, tends to cherish mediocrity. But traditionally Jews have been a community who have been involved with money and finance and also highly educated (thank Catholic Church for that!) and when Israel came into being, this trait was inherited by higher spending on education which is something that is absent in other West Asian nations, this along with the attitude of Chutzpah, which resents mediocrity, made Israel a breeding ground for entrepreneurs.
This is not to say that Israel had a great smooth ride to development, most of Israel’s early economic policy was Socialist-Leaning in nature and this coupled with intermittent conflicts with neighbors and rampant instability made the functioning of the economy a messy affair.
However this changed after hyperinflation hit nearly a 100% in 1986 which forced the government to launch a new stable currency and this incident forced the government to rethink their strategies.They were forced to adopt pro-entrepreneur policies after nearly 800,000 people emigrated from the erstwhile Soviet Union and they needed jobs. For this, The Government was forced to encourage young Israelis to start businesses an employ as much as possible and used their global diaspora to attract Investment from all over the world.
All this was helped by the Peace Treaty signed by Fateh and Israel which brought relative stability to the otherwise volatile area. The Government instead of following laissez-faire attitude to businesses, continued their socialist legacy by investing in young companies until they became profitable, thereby acting as a de facto VC Fund and the ancient Jewish tradition of running Farming Communities called kibbutz was metamorphed into IT Parks and Industries. Maybe India can learn a thing or two here
Coincidentally, most of Israel’s tech industry is focused around the ancient community of Tel Aviv-Yafo, which is one of the leading areas for R&D in the world right up with Silicon Valley and also forms the Silicon Triad with Bengaluru the Silicon Plateau with the moniker of Silicon ‘Wadi‘ meaning valley in Hebrew

A kibbutz turned into Tech Incubator
Israel’s budget allocation for Research and Development per capita ranks #2 in the world just below South Korea and as a result top universities in Israel ranks highly in World Rankings despite being young and many tech giants like Intel, Microsoft and Google run a significant portion of R&D from Israel.
Another area where Israel pioneered is Agricultural Technology and their technology is now wanted in all parts of the world and they are perhaps the only nation which has managed to Greenify a desert and are behind innovations like Greenhouses
An influence of Geopolitics in Israeli R&D is seen in the field of Military Technology Espionage which was widely used by agencies like MOSSAD to advance their objectives and their tech is now wanted by many World Governments, mostly authoritarian and their nee clients now include old foes like Saudi Arabia

Israel’s GDP/Capita Growth, compared to their old oil rich rival Saudi Arabia
Israel’s GDP has risen ten-fold from 34 Billion to 370 Billion between 1986 and today and Israel has the highest living standards and the highest HDI score at anywhere in Middle East at 0.906 and Israel is considered as the only stable democracy in the area and Arabs in Israel, rather counterintuitively, enjoys more Political Rights and Opportunities than anywhere in West Asia which tells a lot.
Israel’s path to development is one of the most unique stories in the field of Development Economics where development happened not by following Economic Principles, but through a convergence of several outside unrelated factors, which when put into optimum usage, converted Israel into the behemoth it is today

The world’s focus is clearly quite preoccupied just now. But just as life in North Korea has always been unique, so too has its coronavirus experience. We have no daily figures or reputable statistics – just a missing leader.

 

A media source in Seoul, South Korea, said that the Supreme Leader had been taken for cardiovascular surgery on April 12. North Korean state media revealed that Kim Jong-Un had attended a government meeting on April 11. These dates are important because they occur very close to April 15 – the DPRK’s most senior national celebration. It marks the birthday of Kim Il-Sung, the country’s ultimate supreme and founder (and Kim Jong-Un’s grandfather). As soon as Jong-un’s absence was noted, alarms began to ring around the world. By comparison, if Queen Elizabeth missed her annual Christmas speech or the Pope missed Easter events, concern would arise. In the most secretive country in the world, where is the man who has shown intention to liberalise North Korea?

 

Naturally, it was assumed by some that Jong-Un was dead. A failed surgery could account for his whereabouts, as too could a lethal Covid-19 attack. In these early days, it was deemed unlikely and media from the Korean peninsula reported that the Leader was expected to make an appearance sometime soon. Thirteen days later, the ambiguity of that promise has come to the fore and a more sinister explanation has become much more plausible. Conflicting reports include the communist ruler being in “a vegetative state” and “gravely ill” yet some other reports have downplayed these claims. US President Donald Trump, and confidant of Jong-Un, has admitted that the US is monitoring the situation. China yesterday (25/04/20) sent a special team to investigate and ascertain a definitive answer on the Supreme Leader’s health. Trump’s comments are predictable insofar as towing the line of successive US presidents in wanting to solve the North Korea problem. However, Trump’s approach turned the geopolitical etiquette on its head in 2018 when he met the North Korean leader face-to-face. No other Western leader has ever taken such a step.

 

The potential severity of this situation is lessened by the global focus on tackling coronavirus, and understandably so. But when the pandemic eventually calls a halt, international relations will not. Decades of diplomacy with North Korea and the West have resulted in greater openness and official talks – something that seemed impossible under Kim Il-Sung’s tenure. This progress for nuclear disarmament – and with it, global security – risks being undone with a leadership crisis.

 

A crisis because it is not clear who would immediately succeed Kim Jong-Un in the event that he has died or his health requires him to abdicate his position as Supreme Leader. Despite rumours of other children, he and his wife Ru Sol-ju have only one child – a daughter, aged seven. In the event that she would be too young to take power, one of the more credible ideas is that his sister, Kim Jong-yo, would assume the mantle. As with many within the North Korean regime, little is known about her. She has influenced much of the DPRK’s propaganda machine and has not spoken out against any of the questionable acts taken under Kim Jong-Un’s leadership since 2011 (such as the assassination of his half-brother Kim Jong-nam using a nerve-agent in 2017).

 

As the world’s powers wait for a definitive response, the speculation continues to grow. ‘#KimJongUnDEAD’ has already begun trending on Twitter and rumours of a succession battle are well underway. The West must continue its efforts to break down the barriers on the other side of the DMZ and show Pyongyang that embracing openness, democracy and free trade holds mutual benefits. That, in addition to denuclearising the Korean peninsula entirely, carry enough motivation to keep North Korea towards the top of the global agenda. Whatever the state of Kim Jong-Un, the spotlight on Pyongyang mustn’t fade.