State of the World

As usual, a lot has been going on in the world in the past few weeks. The situation in Syria has developed into full scale civil war, even if the government still has a massive advantage in terms of equipment. China and Russia's continued efforts to block stronger measures against Syria in the UN Security Council is a disgrace, if not entirely unexpected from governments who want to be free to crush dissent militarily if the need (from their point of view) arises. Speaking of China, not only are the tragic self-immolations in Tibet in protest against Chinese rule continuing, but people in Hong Kong are showing their unhappiness with efforts by the Chinese government to use education as a tool to instill the same sort of mindless hyper-nationalism that it encourages in the rest of the country. Unfortunately, even here in the independent state of Taiwan, China has been able to use its economic power to influence the local media.

In the US, one of the biggest recent stories was yet another mass shooting. Like the one in Arizona early last year, it briefly focused some attention on the issue of gun control, but not nearly as much as it should have. No one with any sense can possibly think it's a good idea for assault weapons to be as easily available as they are, and yet very few in Congress even have even made an effort to do anything about it. Of course the NRA, one of the most insane organizations on the planet, is largely responsible, given the ridiculous amount of clout it wields among spineless politicians throughout the US. Not only does it defend the right of nutcases to buy assault weapons, it is fighting attempts by groups like Amnesty International to regulate the weapons trade and efforts by environmental groups to ban lead bullets. While there are a number of organizations about which little or nothing good can be said (Focus on the Family and the US Chamber of Commerce are two that come to mind), I'm not sure any of them do more harm than the NRA, at least in the US itself.

Also in the US, election campaigning is heating up. Thanks in part to the absurd Citizens United decision, Mitt Romney might actually become the first challenger to outspend an incumbent US president in an election. But while Barack Obama has been far from perfect, I'd be hard pressed to think of any issue where Romney's (current) position is better (he may claim he'd be tougher on China, but challengers always say that, and they never are if they actually win), and I can think of many where he is much worse. In terms of real long-term issues like the growing gap between rich and poor in America or, most important for humanity as a whole, climate change, Romney would clearly be a disaster. The world will just have to hope he doesn't succeed in buying his way into office (with help from mysterious right-wing billionaires) or in having his fellow Republicans disenfranchise enough voters in their supposed fight against virtually non-existent voter fraud to tip the balance in his favor.