Politics

The war in Ukraine has had a vast impact on the whole world. In addition to the humanitarian catastrophe, it has also caused increased rates of inflation all over the globe. 

This rise is mostly linked to increases in food, energy prices and disrupted supply chains. The impact is affecting the poorest countries the most. 

Look at the graph below describing the projected inflation rates for several countries, and discuss it with your teacher.

Worldwide, democracy and global freedom have been declining since 2006. The COVID-19 pandemic made things worse, with many leaders choosing to use authoritarian measures to contain the virus. It was difficult for the opposition to protest the measures because they weren't allowed to gather in groups.

But the trend towards dictatorship began long before the pandemic. The decline is not just happening in nations with authoritarian governments, but even long-standing democracies have suffered. In 2020, nearly 75% of the world’s population lived in a country where democracy deteriorated. The United States, which has long stood as an icon of democratic values, is becoming so divided that the government can barely function. The 2020 election results were challenged, ending up in an attack on the Capitol building itself.

Look at this graph from Freedom House showing the democracy gap since 2005. Interpret and discuss it with your teacher.

The idea of universal basic income (UBI) has been gaining steam around the world. A Japanese billionaire and an American presidential candidate, among others, have both thrown their weight behind it.

The concept is simple: the government provides unconditional money to their citizens. The theory is that in order to provide basic services for all citizens and to stimulate the economy, a small amount of money can be given to each person, equally. 

In the United States, presidential candidate Andrew Yang has even given away $12,000 to a random Twitter follower. In his plan, each adult would receive that amount of money every year. Yang argues people will continue working, even with UBI. $12,000 a year is barely enough to live on in many places and certainly not enough to afford much in the way of experiences or advancement. To get ahead meaningfully, people will still need to get out there and work.

A lot of people thought the internet would help democratize the world.

More people and groups would have access to information, and the ability to mobilize from the ground up would gradually undermine concentrations of power—that was the idea, at least.

But the reality has been quite different: Instead of democratizing the world, the internet has destabilized it, creating new cleavages and reinforcing the power structure at the same time.

This is the story sociologist Jen Schradie tells in her new book The Revolution That Wasn’t. Schradie argues that technology is not only failing to level the playing field for activists, it’s actually making things worse by “creating a digital activism gap.” The differences in power and organization, she says, have undercut working-class movements and bolstered authoritarian groups.

The European Union and Japan signed a monumental trade deal in, July 2018, eliminating nearly all tariffs between the entities in one of the world’s largest free-trade deals. The pact, signed in Tokyo, covers a third of the global economy.

The agreement is in stark contrast to President Donald Trump’s trade war and alignment with Russian President Vladimir Putin. Although the leaders didn’t mention him by name, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and EU leaders Donald Tusk and Jean-Claude Juncker distanced themselves from Trump’s tactics in a press conference following the deal.

“Politically, it’s a light in the increasing darkness of international politics,” European Council President Tusk said of the deal. “We are sending a clear message that you can count on us. We are predictable – both Japan and [the] EU – predictable and responsible and will come to the defense of a world order based on rules, freedom and transparency and common sense.”

Twitter has sharply escalated its battle against fake and suspicious accounts, suspending more than 1 million a day. The rate of account suspensions has more than doubled since October 2017, when the company revealed under congressional pressure how Russia used fake accounts to interfere in the U.S. presidential election. Twitter suspended more than 70 million accounts in May and June, and the pace has continued in July, according to the data.

The Japanese government wants women to work more and have more children, but it lacks concrete plans of how to do so. To begin with, there is a drastic need to increase government-funded care for children of all ages. In Japanese elementary schools, a lot of the activities and meetings fall in the middle of a weekday, and while public afterschool care does exist, in many places it is only for children up through third grade.

To truly support families and encourage people to have kids in the first place, both women and men should be encouraged to leave work earlier and take paid leave. As long as this issue is not properly addressed, then nothing is really going to change.

The number of asylum seekers to Japan grew 80 percent to a record 19,628 in 2017--but only 20 were accepted.

Immigration is a controversial subject in Japan, even as the population ages and its workforce shrinks. The government in mid-January 2018 limited the right to work only to those Japan regards as bona fide refugees. As a result, the average daily number of applicants for asylum fell by 50 percent in January as compared to December 2017.

"Twenty people is way too few. Judging from our experience in refugee support, I believe more people should be accepted," said Eri Ishikawa, of the Japan Association for Refugees.

Japan accepted 28 people as refugees in 2016.

Big Question: From Vladimir Putin's expansionist aims to the advances of Islamic State, the news is full of threats to global stability - but what do specialists in war studies think we should fear most?

Is Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Isil), close to Europe via its growth in Libya, the greatest threat to global stability? Or is China's rise more to be feared than Vladimir Putin's involvement in the Ukraine crisis?