The World Today for April 05, 2023

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The Revolution Playbook

FRANCE

French authorities last week closed the Eiffel Tower, the Louvre and other popular tourist sites as more than 740,000 workers staged strikes and demonstrations over President Emmanuel Macron’s plan to raise the legal retirement age by two years to 64 and require higher payments into pensions.

As garbage piled high on the streets of Paris – with some calling the waste heaps a symbol of the protests – France’s European neighbors looked on in bafflement and alarm at the careening situation next door. King Charles III of the United Kingdom, meanwhile, canceled his trip to France, in what would have been his first official visit as head of state, Le Monde wrote.

Meanwhile, as Macron absorbed the diplomatic and political fallout of his plan, he also deployed more than 13,000 security officers to control or quell the demonstrations.

“They come to destroy, to injure and to kill police officers and gendarmes,” said Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin, according to National Public Radio, referring to the demonstrators. “Their goals have nothing to do with the pension reform. Their goals are to destabilize our republican institutions and bring blood and fire down on France.”

Macron’s tactic of using a “special constitutional power” to enact the age change without a vote in parliament has helped galvanize the violent reaction to the plan, which the president says will help the French government balance its books and keep the country’s economy competitive as its population ages, the Associated Press reported.

France now spends almost 14 percent of its gross domestic product on retirement pensions, more than Spain and Germany, comparable countries that devote 11 and 10 percent to retirees, respectively, wrote the Washington Post. If France keeps its retirement age at 62, only 1.2 taxpayers will be working for every retiree in the country by 2070 – an unsustainable situation.

Macron, 45, won two terms in office on pro-business promises to boost the French economy and create new jobs, Bloomberg noted. But he’s moving forward with painful pension reforms amid post-pandemic, and Russia-Ukraine war induced economic conditions that include high energy and food prices. Many of his constituents think he’s placing undue burdens on them during tough times in order to help wealthy French plutocrats.

“Macron doesn’t listen to us, we are fed up with it,” a protester in Paris told Euronews. “He is not alone, and he is not the king. France no longer has kings.”

Bypassing parliament also demonstrates how weak and isolated Macron currently is in French politics, argued New York Times columnist Roger Cohen. Macron’s political party, Renaissance, doesn’t have sufficient votes in parliament to pass the reform bill, and party leaders couldn’t convince pro-free market conservative parties to line up with the beleaguered president.

Macron might believe he needs to sacrifice his legacy in order to preserve France’s future.

THE WORLD, BRIEFLY

Welcome to the Club

FINLAND

Finland became NATO’s 31st member Tuesday, a historic move that comes amid the ongoing war in Ukraine that revitalized the relevance of the defense alliance, the Washington Post reported.

Finnish membership will now double NATO’s land border with Russia, adding more than 800 miles and boosting the alliance’s presence in the Baltic Sea, as well as the Arctic.

The addition also underscores a notable shift in Finnish policy, which previously insisted during the Cold War that it was safer to remain outside of NATO amid concerns over the looming presence of the then-Soviet Union.

That belief changed following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine last year – a conflict that some argue sourced from the Kremlin’s fears of NATO expansion.

Soon after the start of the invasion, Finland and Sweden applied for NATO membership as both countries assessed that joining the alliance would be the best way of shielding themselves from potential Russian aggression.

But all current members must approve membership applications, and while Finland succeeded, Sweden’s membership is still facing resistance from NATO members Turkey and Hungary.

Following Finland’s newly acquired membership, Russian officials warned that Moscow will closely monitor NATO’s new activity in Finland, adding that “measures will be taken.”

Finland’s membership follows Finnish elections on Sunday, which saw the center-left Social Democratic party of Prime Minister Sanna Marin win 19.9 percent of the vote, narrowly losing its bid to stay in power, NPR wrote.

The center-right National Coalition Party (NCP) of former Finance Minister Petteri Orpo won 20.8 percent of the vote, while the right-wing populist party, the Finns, secured 20.1 percent, with the NCP now haggling to form a coalition.

All three parties however supported the move to join NATO.

Quiet, Please

MADAGASCAR

Madagascar’s government ordered a ban on public protests this week, a move critics described as the latest effort by authorities to stifle dissent ahead of the presidential elections this coming November, Al Jazeera reported.

Officials announced that no political protests would be allowed in public but they can take place in “an enclosed place” to maintain public order.

The announcement came a day after authorities raided the offices of a local newspaper and arrested its owner, Lola Rasoamaharo, on charges of defamation and extortion.

Government critics denounced the ban on demonstrations and Rasoamaharo’s arrest, and said they serve as examples of recent crackdowns on dissent on the island nation of 29 million people ahead of the presidential vote.

President Andry Rajoelina is expected to seek re-election.

Last year, Reporters Without Borders ranked Madagascar 98th out of 180 countries on its press freedom index.

That summer, police arrested two opposition leaders as hundreds of people protested on the streets of the capital against rising living costs and economic problems.

The African country’s plight has been further exacerbated by two devastating cyclones in recent months: More than two dozen died and tens of thousands were left homeless when Cyclone Cheneso hit the island in January. Later in March, Cyclone Freddy ripped through Malawi, Mozambique and Madagascar, killing more than 220 people and displacing almost 60,000.

Elsewhere in Africa, Sierra Leone imposed a similar ban on political street protests ahead of the general elections in June, citing security concerns, according to Africanews.

Prima l’Italia

ITALY

Italian lawmakers are creating a bill that would ban the sale of lab-grown meat and other synthetic foods in the country, a proposal that supporters say aims to protect Italy’s culinary heritage, Forbes reported.

The proposed legislation came after farming lobby groups collected half a million signatures calling for the protection of “natural food vs. synthetic food.” Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni – who also signed the petition – voiced support for the ban.

Minister of Agriculture Francesco Lollobrigida noted that products made in laboratories “do not guarantee quality, well-being and the protection of the Italian food and wine culture and tradition, to which part of our tradition is linked.”

If the bill is passed, violators could face fines topping $65,000.

While the farming lobby welcomed the move, animal welfare groups countered that lab-grown meat is a viable solution to issues such as carbon emissions and food safety. Others criticized the proposal as “reckless,” saying that such a law could hinder scientific development and climate-change mitigation efforts around meat alternatives.

The proposal is one of the latest efforts by Meloni’s right-wing coalition to preserve Italian culture and tradition.

Earlier this week, Meloni’s Brothers of Italy party pushed for legislation that would penalize the use of English and other foreign words in official communications, according to Euronews.

The ban would apply to government entities, schools and universities, with fines of up to $110,000.

Officials said the goal of the planned law is “to defend and promote the Italian language” and protect the national identity. But language scholars at Italy’s prestigious Accademia della Crusca fiercely condemned it.

DISCOVERIES

A Star’s Garbage

In 2017, astronomers in Hawaii spotted the first interstellar object entering the Solar System.

Dubbed ‘Oumuamua – Hawaiian for “messenger from afar arriving first” – there has been much speculation over the “cigar- or pancake-shaped” object that was traveling so fast, it could not be bound to the Sun.

Theories abounded about the ‘Oumuamua, including whether it was a comet, an asteroid or even an alien space probe.

But to the dismay of fans of aliens-are-among-us theories, a new study has found that the 1,300-foot object is in fact just a comet, Science Magazine reported.

Researchers Jennifer Bergner and Darryl Seligman explained that the ‘Oumuamua was peculiar because it looked like an asteroid, but behaved like a comet.

Unlike asteroids, comets have comas – the bright light tails formed when the space rock emits jets of gases and dust, according to the New York Times. However, the alien ‘Oumuamua did not have a coma, or dust and gas around it.

Instead, the research team suggested that what caused the ‘Oumuamua to travel at about 54 miles per second was trapped hydrogen inside the comet.

Their findings suggest that ‘Oumuamua started as a water-rich comet that was ejected from a nearby star. The team noted that cosmic rays in the galaxy could have transformed up to 30 percent of the comet’s water-based ice into hydrogen, which could have been trapped in ‘Oumuamua’s ice during its journey through interstellar space.

Then the ice melted as it neared the Sun, and the released hydrogen boosted the comet’s speed.

“We don’t need to invoke anything super-exotic to explain this behavior,” Bergner told Science Magazine.

Unfortunately, no telescope can study ‘Oumuamua anymore because it is now past Neptune’s orbit on its way out of the Solar System.

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