WPR Blog | Commentary Week In Review

March 12, 2010

Browse by Regions and/or Topics Browse Regions & Issues

Commentary Week In Review

Guy Taylor | Bio | 17 Aug 2007

The Commentary Week in Review is posted on the blog every Friday. Drawing from more than two dozen English-language news outlets worldwide, the column highlights a handful of the week's notable op-eds.

Sarkozy Helps France's Wealthy

The first law passed by Nicolas Sarkozy's government was a tax cut, which, according to Jordan Stancil's assessment in an article posted on the Web site of The Nation on August 15, was "massive and unnecessary," will go "mostly to the wealthy, [will] further degrade France's public finances and probably lead to cuts in programs the majority of people rely on."

Stancil asserted:

The centerpiece of the new law sets a cap on each household's overall tax bill at 50 percent of income. This includes income taxes, property taxes, local taxes, the wealth tax and two taxes that were levied to shore up the social security systems. (This cap already existed, but it had been set at 60 percent.) This might sound reasonable, but according to the French government's own estimates, very few people will benefit. In a total population of 62 million, there are only 234,397 households whose tax bill exceeds 50 percent of income. And 201,864 of these households will receive an average tax break of only 649 euros (or less than $900 at the current exchange rate of $1.37 to one euro).

Comparing the tax cut to cuts backed by the Bush administration in the United States, Stancil argued that "as with the Bush administration's tax cuts, the big winners in France will be at the very top."

South Africa's Future Should Be Bright

John Hughes wrote in the August 17 Christian Science Monitor that he saw the following during his recent time in South Africa:

At [a public market]...white stall-holders wait upon blacks and whites alike. Black stall-holders wait upon blacks and whites alike as they dispose of the interracial detritus of South African commerce -- old silver, used DVDs, painted ostrich eggs, beaded gourds, fake leopard-skin rugs. In a little cafe, blacks and whites share tables as they sip tea and coffee. The mood is relaxed, jovial.

"Welcome to the new South Africa. None of these interracial scenes could have taken place in the old South Africa with its strict policies of segregation," wrote Hughes. "Today a black government rules a multi-racial country where white privilege is officially a thing of the past."

"But," he added, "if the words of Nelson Mandela, the extraordinary black leader who played the key role in bringing this about, are to hold sway, the white minority and the black majority will live in harmony and collaboration for the common good."

Hughes explained:

The harmony for which Mandela yearned is not yet universally manifest. Says one Afrikaans-speaking editor: "There is still a lot of anger on both sides." There are tensions and crime. But after an emotionally painful period of public confession and reconciliation, the cruelty and horrors of the apartheid years, which included the torture and murder of blacks targeted by white police executioners, has been succeeded at least by accommodation between the country's different groups -- the black majority, the English-speaking and Afrikaans-speaking white minority, as well as the Indian minority, and the mixed-race people referred to as "Cape coloreds."

Mugabe Regime May Continue

In Zimbabwe, meanwhile, things might be getting worse, not better, according to Alec Russell, who asserted in the August 14 Financial Times (subscription required), that those who dare to believe the regime of Robert Mugabe has reached its tipping point "may yet be disappointed."

Russell explained:

What is increasingly clear...is that the implosion of the economy may not in itself be enough to bring Mr. Mugabe down. A recent study by Professor Stephen Hanke of Washington's Cato Institute highlights how the former Yugoslavia in the mid-1990s suffered from far worse hyperinflation. Mr. Milosevic still survived, in part by doing just what Mr. Mugabe has been doing: blaming his economic woes on the outside world. There are plenty of countries in Africa where the economy and infrastructure have been far more systematically destroyed than in Zimbabwe without causing regime change.

Apart from dying," concluded Russell, "one of three things has to happen to Mr. Mugabe to bring his departure: a popular uprising, the application of irresistible international pressure, or a palace coup."

Democracy Again Under Threat in Ukraine

Nina Khrushcheva argued in the August 14 Daily Star that while the campaign for Ukraine's Sept. 30 parliamentary election is scarcely under way, Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovich is "already trying to steal it."

"Yanukovich was the man who sought to falsify the result of the presidential election of 2004, inciting the Orange Revolution," according to Khrushcheva, who explained that "a peaceful and honest result was reached in the end because Ukraine's President Leonid Kuchma refused to heed Yanukovich's call to use violence to defend his rigged election."

"This time," she wrote, "it appears that Yanukovich is prepared to do anything to remain in power."

Pondering whether it may be necessary for Ukrainians to stage a second Orange Revolution to "shame Yanukovich (a twice convicted violent felon before he entered politics) to change course," Khrushcheva maintained that "there is a person who might compel Yanukovich to retreat to democratic norms and thus hold off such protests: Russia's President Vladimir Putin."

According to Khrushcheva:

It is certainly in Russia's national interest to prevent chaos in the country's big next door neighbor. But Putin's idea of what constitutes Russia's national interest makes that type of intervention unlikely. Weak neighbors are states that the Kremlin can control, so why not expand Russian power by letting Ukraine slide into protest and anarchy if by doing so it brings that country back under Putin's thumb? ...As is usual with this ex-KGB man, Putin is being cunning about Ukraine, but he is deluding himself if he thinks that siding with Yanukovich will bring back effective Russian overlordship of Ukraine.

Tyranny and Corruption or Climate Change?

In an August article posted on the Web site of Foreign Policy magazine Idean Salehyan wrote that it will be corrupt, tyrannical governments that are to blame for the coming era of resources wars -- not changes in the Earth's climate.

"According to one emerging 'conventional wisdom,' climate change will lead to international and civil wars, a rise in the number of failed states, terrorism, crime, and a stampede of migration toward developed countries," wrote Salehyan. "United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, for instance, has pointed to climate change as the root cause of the conflict in Darfur. A group of high-ranking retired U.S. military officers recently published a report that calls climate change 'a threat multiplier for instability.'"

Many dire scenarios being predicted "may sound convincing, but they are misleading" and "irresponsible, for they shift liability for wars and human rights abuses away from oppressive, corrupt governments," wrote Salehyan.

"Arguing that climate change is a root cause of conflict lets tyrannical governments off the hook. ...That's why Ban Ki-moon's case about Darfur was music to Khartoum's ears. The Sudanese government would love to blame the West for creating the climate change problem in the first place."

The Commentary Week In Review draws from links aggregated every weekday morning in WPR's Media Roundup, which you can receive by email for free by registering now .