The World Today for August 19, 2024

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Ganamos

VENEZUELA

Tens of thousands of Venezuelans took to the streets around the world over the weekend, demanding that authoritarian President Nicolás Maduro recognize the results of last month’s election they say he lost.

In the capital Caracas and other cities across Venezuela, in the United States, Australia, South Korea, Madagascar and elsewhere, Venezuelans carried flags that featured their candidate, Edmundo González, who reportedly won twice as many votes as Maduro, flags that read, “Ganamos” (we win), NBC News reported.

The protests were organized by the opposition, calling on Maduro to step down and the world to recognize its historic election win on July 28. Some like the US have already answered that call, saying González won the election, while the European Union is withholding its recognition of Maduro until he releases the election results in full.

But so far, Maduro, and the election commission he controls, insist that he won the election with 51 percent of the vote, while refusing to release the full results. Instead, he has cracked down on the protests – 24 people have already been killed and more than 2,400 people have been arrested since the election, added National Public Radio. Social media and communication apps such as WhatsApp have been monitored and tampered with.

Doesn’t matter, say protesters. On Saturday in Caracas, demonstrators shouted, “We are not afraid.”

“Today the world knows what we Venezuelans are made of … we awakened a country,” opposition leader María Corina Machado, said in a video message Saturday morning. “They try to scare us, to divide us, to paralyze us, but they cannot.”

Maduro, who deployed police against the demonstrators on Saturday, has held office since 2013 after the death of his mentor, socialist Hugo Chávez. He has undermined the country’s economy while destroying its democracy, explained the Council on Foreign Relations. Chávez, who was enormously popular, leveraged his country’s wealth to help the poor. The bloated state that he created bred corruption and mismanagement, however. Maduro expanded the system rather than used Venezuela’s oil wealth to grow sustainable economic development, while staying in power through repression, his hold on the police and military, and rigged elections.

As a result, almost 8 million people have fled the country, with more saying they are planning to leave if the political and economic situations don’t improve.

Analysts told the Guardian that Venezuela under Maduro now has two paths forward. The country could become like Nicaragua, where President Daniel Ortega has seized total control of society through violence and repression, or Romania, where frustrated citizens started a revolution that ended the harsh and failing communist regime of Nicolae Ceaușescu.

Nicaragua appears to be Maduro’s preferred model. He has called for security forces to use an “iron fist” against protesters who took to the streets to call for fair elections, wrote Agence France-Presse. And the repression after this election has been worse than anything people have seen in decades, according to the New York Times.

Western leaders have condemned Maduro but have offered few changes to sanctions they have already slapped on the South American country, Reuters reported. His allies – China, Iran, and Russia – are key to his survival, but they haven’t been as forthcoming with aid or business opportunities as they were in the past, argued World Politics Review.

Maduro might have nobody else to rely on but the men with guns around him. That’s because, the protesters say, he doesn’t seem to have the people anymore.

“We are here reminding those who have confiscated power that they have to release it – the people have chosen, and we won,” Maria Vallera, a retired 80-year-old in the crowd, told the Washington Post. “It’s a dictatorship, what we have here. He refuses to recognize what the people want. He knows he has lost the people.”

THE WORLD, BRIEFLY

Dynasty’s Restart

THAILAND

Thailand’s king on Sunday formally endorsed 37-year-old Paetongtarn Shinawatra as the new prime minister less than a week after the ousting of her predecessor, an appointment that underscores the possible comeback of the famed but controversial Shinawatra political dynasty, Al Jazeera reported.

King Maha Vajiralongkorn’s endorsement came after Thailand’s lower house of parliament voted in favor of appointing Paetongtarn as prime minister Friday.

The vote came a few days after Thailand’s constitutional court removed Srettha Thavisin from office over ethics violations.

As the leader of the ruling Pheu Thai Party, Paetongtarn is the country’s youngest prime minister and the second female to hold the office after her aunt, Yingluck Shinawatra.

Paetongtarn is the daughter of former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, a highly influential but divisive politician. The Shinawatra family has been at the center of Thai politics for more than two decades, known for their populist policies that have garnered strong support from rural and working-class voters, but have clashed with Thailand’s military and royalist establishment.

The new administration is expected to follow the policy direction set by Srettha, including major economic stimulus efforts, healthcare reform and a crackdown on illegal drugs.

The country has faced economic difficulties, particularly under military and semi-military rule over the past decade. Thailand’s economic growth has lagged behind neighboring countries and public debt has risen significantly.

The young prime minister will also navigate a fractured political landscape, especially between Pheu Thai and the newly formed People’s Party, which emerged from the Move Forward Party, after it was dissolved by the constitutional court.

Move Forward – which received most of the votes in last year’s parliamentary elections – was dissolved because of its effort to amend the country’s royal defamation laws.

Paetongtarn’s government is expected to avoid challenging the royal defamation law, mainly to appease the military and royalist factions and avoid further political turmoil.

Meanwhile, her appointment comes as her father, Thaksin, received a royal pardon, Reuters wrote.

Thaksin had been living in a self-imposed exile for 17 years following his ousting by the military in a 2006 coup. He returned to Thailand last year, but was sentenced to eight years in prison for abuse of power and conflicts of interest during his time in office from 2001 to 2006.

In September, the Thai king commuted his eight-year sentence to one year. The former prime minister only served six months of this sentence in hospital detention due to health issues before being granted parole in February.

Observers suggested that the pardon hints at a possible easing of tensions between the Shinawatra dynasty and the royalist establishment, and may likely stabilize Thailand’s political environment as Paetongtarn takes office.

Moderating Freedom

BRAZIL

The social media platform X will close its offices in Brazil, its owner Elon Musk announced over the weekend, a move that comes amid escalating tensions between Musk and Brazilian authorities over content regulation and the spread of misinformation, Agence France-Presse reported.

Musk and the company said they are shutting operations in the South American nation, alleging that Brazilian Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes “threatened our legal representative in Brazil with arrest if we do not comply with his censorship orders.”

X representatives added that the closure was necessary “to protect the safety of our staff,” but said the service will remain available to Brazilian users.

The announcement marks the culmination of an ongoing legal and political battle between the firm and de Moraes, who has been pursuing the regulation of online content in Brazil.

In April, the judge ordered X to remove accounts spreading disinformation and hate speech, including those of supporters of former populist President Jair Bolsonaro.

Analysts told the Wall Street Journal that the orders were linked to a Supreme Court investigation into right-wing individuals involved in the January 2023 attack on Congress, which President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has called a coup attempt.

Musk has refused to comply with the court’s order, calling them an attack on free speech.

His defiance prompted de Moraes to also order a probe into Musk for possible obstruction of justice and other charges related to online disinformation campaigns.

Musk, who describes himself as a “free speech absolutist,” has been at odds with governments around the world over his hands-off approach to content moderation since acquiring X in October 2022.

Musk dismantled much of the platform’s content moderation infrastructure, which has led to clashes with officials in multiple countries, including Brazil and those in the European Union.

Despite X’s exit, Musk remains a popular figure in Brazil, partly because of his Starlink satellite service that has expanded Internet access in rural and remote areas. But this popularity contrasts with the growing concerns among Brazilian authorities about his influence.

The Starlink service has come under scrutiny from Brazilian regulators, including investigations that its rapid growth and dominance as Brazil’s satellite internet provider could crowd out the competition.

Reporting For Duty

CROATIA

Croatia will reintroduce compulsory military service starting next year, the country’s defense minister announced this week, a decision that comes amid concerns of escalating regional tensions in Europe since the Ukraine war began in February 2022, the Associated Press reported.

The move will mark a return to conscription which was suspended in 2008, a year before the country joined the NATO military alliance.

Conscription is expected to start on Jan. 1 and the new scheme will enlist around 18,000 young men for a two-month period.

It comes a month after more than 5,000 Croatians signed a petition in opposition to the military draft, Agence-France Presse added. The petition called for the government to scrap the plan and “present alternative policies that would enable the armed forces to fulfill their defense tasks.”

However, government officials have cited growing geopolitical tensions around the world, as well as an arms race and military buildup in the Balkans, which went through a bloody war in the 1990s.

Other European countries are considering or have already reinstated mandatory military service due to rising regional tensions.

Last year, Latvia reintroduced military conscription in response to its perceived threat from Russia after its invasion of Ukraine.

Serbia, Croatia’s main rival in the Balkans, is also contemplating the reactivation of mandatory military service.

DISCOVERIES

Nature’s Housecleaners

Vultures are taken for granted.

Or at least they were – until India’s vulture population experienced a dramatic collapse in the 1990s.

Then, their numbers dropped from tens of millions to just a few thousand because of the use of a veterinary drug diclofenac, which was given to cattle and other livestock to treat inflammation and fever. But this drug caused kidney failures in the birds feeding on the carcasses of animals that had been treated.

Meanwhile, this near-extinction event seems to have contributed to around half a million additional human deaths between 2000 and 2005, according to a new paper measuring the consequences of the bird’s decline.

Researchers Anant Sudarshan and Eyal Frank analyzed human mortality rates in regions with and without significant vulture populations before and after the decline.

Their calculations pointed to a link between the two: The absence of vultures led to increased carcass accumulation, consequently resulting in more feral dogs and rats that contributed to the spread of diseases, such as rabies and anthrax.

More carcasses in fields and waterways also contributed to water contamination – further exacerbating health issues. The avian’s mass disappearance also had economic consequences, costing India an estimated $69 billion annually.

“I would not have guessed the effect would be so large,” Sudarshan told Vox. “The extinction was the largest sanitation shock you could imagine, where you have 50 million carcasses every year not being disposed of.”

Vultures don’t really get a lot of appreciation, although they are considered keystone species – meaning they are integral to biodiversity and balancing the ecosystem.

“They perform this really important function in the environment that benefits us as society, as people,” Frank explained to Canada’s CBC Radio. “They get rid of a lot of dead animals and sanitize and clean up the space for us.”

The research team hopes their findings could help shift the vulture’s reputation and their pivotal role in nature.

The case study in India also serves as a wake-up call for conservationist efforts elsewhere, as the bird species continues to face threats from hunting, poisoning, and habitat destruction worldwide.

“Vultures may not be glamorous or cute, but we need them,” conservationist Corinne Kendall, who was not involved in the study, told CBC Radio.

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