The news warns us of many things and it is a true triumph in our society that unlike our ancestors we have an ability to see major threats in far more detailed ways than ever before. Historically our knowledge and awareness and understanding of the international community has always been limited and as a result, we have always been left with misguided views on issues. The news attempts to fill in gaps in our knowledge so that we may fix our views to form conclusions from data. But the news can only provide as much information as the human brain can take and as a result, we only get a handful of stories every week.
But what lurks outside of the newspapers, what are important issues that our mainstream media doesn’t report on. One major story that is growing is the epic struggle between Rodrigo Duterte who came to power vowing to the people of the Phillipenes that he would break criminal groups. A promise that he has attempted to fulfill with an excess of energy and a lack of empathy. Mr. Duterte has even gone so far as to promise that his son will be executed if he is convicted of drug-related crimes. But what’s so important about this for those of us in the west? I mean obviously, Mr. Duterte is a brutal man who believes that a firm hand is the solution to fixing the crime problem in the Phillipenes but what is particularly important to note is that Mr. Duterte does not feel the same level of love and admiration for the West (and in particular the United States) that his fellow countrymen do. In 2015 in a survey 92% of people in the Philippines had a favorable outlook on the United States. Mr. Duterte has instead decided to move his countries foreign policy from favoring the west to now courting with China. Some might argue that there is little evidence of this but in fact, the Phillipenes has suddenly begun granting rights to China to search and drill for oil in the South China Sea. The fact that the Philippines is willing to work with China on matters relating to resources in the South China Sea is very interesting and suggests a willingness to negotiate with China. But again why does this affect us? Well, the Phillipenes hosts a number of US military facilities and if they were to lose access to the Philippines then it could significantly weaken the US presence in the South China Sea and this could embolden China to become more aggressive in its attempts to increase its territorial claims in the region.
The Philippines is an example of a nation that although it has had troubles in its modern history it has made great achievements and has managed to become the nation with the fifth biggest economy in South East Asia. However, there are some major issues beginning to arise and these suggest that the economy may be starting to experience some major issues in their ability to grow. Having boasted very steady growth for the past few years. The country had created a ‘build, build, build’ spending policy that the World Bank has estimated hasn’t boosted the economy of The Philippines and this has meant that they have been forced to continue to cut expected growth in the economy has gone from 6.9% to 6.6%.
The Philippines is on the brink of falling out of favor with the West, leaders like Duterte are keen to ally themselves with nations that are willing to support or at the very least turn a blind eye to their actions. China is more than happy to allow Duterte to continue because they have an interest in his willingness to co-operate with them over matters in the South China Sea. At the same time, Mr. Duterte raises an excellent point and the crime problem in The Philippines is out of control but employing excessive state violence against it might not be the best way to solve the problem. It has been reported that in many cases no distinction is being made with drug dealers and drug addicts, meaning that people who are suffering from addiction are being shot when in reality the more ethical and economically beneficial approach would be to offer them support.
The best way to reach out to Duterte would be to offer something. He’s a leader who prefers to use the stick over the carrot but he is unlikely to respond to bullying and would, in fact, be more likely to push further away from the West if it made attempts to influence him through threats. Mr. Duterte is running a country which produces large quantities of goods and is a heavy exporter, therefore it would be highly lucrative for himself if the West was to offer assistance in adapting their security policy regarding tackling crime, in exchange for this the US government could encourage all the nations that fall under it’s ‘umbrella of protection’ to loosen restrictions on The Philippines’ goods, which would potentially stop China being their major trade partner (currently accounting for 12.9% of all trade).
New article on Brexit
Hey everyone, with the recent press conference from Jean-Claude Junker I’ve written an article about Brexit and the possibilities and motivation behind Junker. I hope you find it interesting. You can access the article here:
http://theoptimisticfuture.com/the-wrath-of-junker
The End of Faith?
Recently the news announced that the UK has lost it’s faith. Just under 3% of under 24’s describe themselves as Anglican and under 5% of under 24’s identity as Catholic. Under 50% of the UK claim to have any form of religion, so what does this suggest? Well the obvious implication is that people do not feel religious. But is this a trend that seems to occur with richer nations?
There doesn’t seem to be anything obvious about religion that would suggest it would disappear when times are good and would appear when times are bad. In China there is a growing number of Christians despite the fact that Christian groups are heavily persecuted in that country. So what does this mean?
It could be argued that the main reason is that when things are tough people need a more sacred form of hope, something that isn’t grounded on a person’s character but something ‘incorruptible’. Or perhaps it could be a bit less abstract and could be to do with resource allocation and exposure.
The Catholic Church is a good example. In Africa they run over 1371 hospitals, that’s a lot of hospitals which means that they are assisting a huge amount of people, it’s no wonder that the number of Catholics in Africa has risen from 55 million to 146 million people. They are having a major impact on the lives of people suffering poverty in Africa. It’s no wonder that this has led to people joining the faith. But why then do people in richer countries seem to abandon religion.
Another reason is the classic tale of people viewing faith as a means to an end. It would be fair to say that much of the progress that has been made in the West historically has in many cases been motivated by religious belief. Issac Newton after all was a heavy believer in Christianity. J.R.R Tolkein who in many ways has defined the fantasy genre was a committed Christian and yet the days of Christian’s in the west seems to be numbered with a general decline over the past few years.
It seems unlikely the trend will change, even if the church tried to up it’s involvement in Britain it would struggle because Britain (despite the lack of funding) has a very effective welfare system so constructing hospitals might not have as much of an effect as it does in very low income parts of Africa. The church unfortunately has no real material incentives for people in developed economies. It only has the ability to provide spiritual comfort and promises of salvation, but people don’t tend to be interested in working towards something that would only count after death. Another reason might also be that the old format of church seems to have become outdated. People seem to no longer enjoy going to church and this is pushing them away from religion.
Ultimately the number of religious people in the west is likely to continue fall unless the church can find a better way to interact with people. Without a meaningful impact on the daily lives of people the fate of religion is to increasingly become a minority group in society.
The Forgotten Rohingya
Over the last several months the strife of the Rohingya people of North West Burma (Myanmar) has been a forté of the western news media. While this has clearly done much good in bringing attention to the ethnic cleansing going on in Rakhine state too often many of Rohingya in the worst situation are ignored with the violence in Burma (Myanmar) portrayed as simply Rakhine Buddhists persecuting Muslim Rohingya.
The Rohingya are a people who migrated into the region that is now Rakhine state in Burma (Myanmar) from what is now Bangladesh and the western Indian states from the 15th to the 18th century. There has been a long history of ethnic violence between the Rohingya and other people living in Burma (Myanmar) particularly the Rakhine and Bamar peoples. This started as early as the time of the Burmese Konbaung Dynasty in the 18th century and has been continuing on a low level for over two hundred years and accelerating in 2012 after decades of ethno-religious tension exploded into riots that killed dozens of Rohinga Muslims.
This is where the problem began where the conflict in Rakhine and the plight of the Rohingya has been seen as an exclusively religious matter. In reality the situation is much different, only half of the Muslims in Burma (Myanmar) are Rohingya and yet (while other Muslims groups are still badly treated) the treatment of the Rohingya is distinct and vastly worse than those of other Burmese Muslims. The reason is that the persecution of the Rohingya is as much ethnic as it is religious. Burma (Myanmar) recognises 135 ethnic groups in 8 “races” and bases citizenship on this, the problem is that this leaves many groups such as Burmese Tibetans and Anglo-Burmese without citizenship in Burma (Myanmar) and these disenfranchised groups are often the victims of serious discrimination. The largest group without citizenship are the Rohingya which successive Burmese governments have attempted to portray as Bengali rather than Burmese.
The problem with adressing this as a purely religious conflict is that while the majority of the Rohingya are Muslim there is also a large Hindu minority of Rohingya who are often in the worst possible situation. In Rakhine state there are around 160,000 Hindus, most of which are Rohingya. Due to the news media focusing soley on the Muslims majority of the Rohingya who are Muslims (around 1 million in Rakhine state) the Hindus are ignored meaning they have less access to charitable donations (many of the charities are exclusively Muslims and while these are not necessarily religiously bigoted and are usually well meaning when money is distributed through a religious structure it tends to go to followers of that religion). Furthermore even the Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has played into this by pushing the cause of the Rohingya and distributing aid to exclusively Muslim Rohingya (although some aid may well have ended up with Hindus). The other problems are that the Rohingya Hindus do not just face violence from the Rakine people and the Burmese government but instead also from the Rohingya Muslims. While many Hindus have been accused of participation in the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA) which is an organisation that has been accused of using terrorist tactics (although not officially listed by most western countries as a terrorist organisation) ARSA has also carried out attacks on the Hindu Rohingya.
Over 100,000 mostly Muslim Rohingya have fled into Bangladesh since August 25th (this article being written on the 12th of September) and they have faced fairly substantial bigotry themselves with elements of the Bangladeshi government calling for the expulsion of the nearly 700,000 Rohingya in Bangladesh and many refugees fleeing the Burmese army and Buddhist militias being forcibly turned round at the Bangladeshi border. However the Hindus are again treated worse with Bangladesh already having around 12 million Hindus making up about 9% of the population already facing serious discrimination.
The point of this piece is not to say we should ignore the persecution of Muslims in Rakhine but that understanding it purely as a religious issue and not as an ethnic conflict with a religious aspect will lead to both a misunderstanding of the general situation and potentially greater issues where the plight of a substantial population of the Rohingya is ignored.
Brace for a hefty amount of articles
Hi there thanks everyone who’s visited the website so far. I’m really excited about this and I’m happy to announce that soon I will be joined by another writer on this website who will be occasionally submitting exciting articles. I can announce that by next week 2 articles will have come out, one will be related to the ongoing situation relating to North Korea and another article that will be relating to Brexit and the current situation. I really hope that everyone stops by to take a look at it.
Ben
A continuous stream of material
Hello there and welcome to this website. It is new and I’m still learning the mechanics of having your own website but I have a lot of enthusiasm for this project and I strongly believe that this is going to be the start of something both consistent and interesting. I don’t have a huge amount of expert knowledge on issues but as time goes by I hope my writing will improve and that this website will produce more and more high quality work. I am hoping that people will see this is as a place to read opinions and share their own. I’m also happy to publish articles from other people here.
Regardless the future looks bright for this website and I’m very hopeful that it is going to survive for a while. If there something someone believes that it would be interesting to write about then please contact me. In the meantime enjoy the website and please look out for future updates and upcoming articles.
Ben
The Optimistic Outlook 