Peter L. Berger's Blog, page 620

China Steps Up the War on the Cross

China’s ongoing war on Christianity is intensifying, as officials continue to pull down crosses and other religious iconography and Christians respond with protests. The Times has the details on the latest signs that things are heating up:

Chinese officials have pulled down a cross from a church near Shanghai, ending a sit-in by 22 protesters who had camped on the roof of the building for the past month. The action is, the Christians believe, further evidence of a systematic campaign by the Communist party to curb the religion.

The Ya Village church, in the city of Huzhou, Zhejiang province, is one of more than 1,200 in the region to have lost its cross to demolition teams sent in by party bosses. Zhang Zhaoxia, a member of the congregation, presented video footage to the Reuters news agency showing a crane removing the cross.

The campaign appears to be a reaction to the rapid spread of both Protestantism and Catholicism, and may only be the early stages of a tough nationwide crackdown:

President Xi is accused of overseeing a relentless crackdown on the 4,000 churches in Zhejiang. Xia Baolong, the party chief in the province, is a close ally of the president, and many believe that the area is being used as a testing ground for a wider clampdown on religion in China.

When WRM has talked to Chinese officials about this campaign, they have cited Pope John Paul II’s role in ending Communism in Poland and the role of church-based democracy movements in forcing the end of dictatorship in South Korea. There is a fear in Beijing that religion, especially Christianity and Islam, could undermine the stability of the Chinese regime. Moreover, and this factor shouldn’t be underestimated, there is a whole bureaucracy of Chinese officials in the business of controlling religion. Those officials want to keep their jobs, and liberalizing the country’s treatment of religion would threaten that.

And, if all that wasn’t enough, the increasing signs of an economic slowdown in China have clearly made the government nervous. Cracking down on “threats to the regime”, including human rights lawyers, academics, and religious believers, appears to be part of a wider strategy to batten down the hatches in China. How far will Xi take it?

Glenn Loury Talks to WRM

In case you missed it over the weekend, Walter Russell Mead was a guest of Glenn Loury’s on bloggingheads.tv. Using WRM’s recent essay on Charleston as a jumping off point, they discussed, among other things, the enduring cultural and political significance that the African-American church has had in the course of U.S. history. Give it a watch!

Tap Runs Dry in Venezuela

A rash of looting has broken out in Venezuela as citizens frustrated with the country’s ongoing shortages of basic commodities are turning to violence and protest. Last summer, the oil-rich nation, led by the socialist regime of Nicolas Maduro, began imposing rations on necessities ranging from toilet paper to drinking water. Now the country is running out of another highly desired if less essential beverage: beer. From The Guardian:

Cervecería Polar, which distributes 80% of the beer in the socialist South American country, began shutting down breweries this week because of a lack of barley, hops and other raw materials, and has halted deliveries to Caracas liquor stores.

“This is never-never land,” said Yefferson Ramirez, who navigated a rush of disgruntled customers Thursday behind the counter at a liquor store in posh eastern Caracas. The store has been out of milk and bottled water for months, but the beer shortfall is causing a new wave of irritation.

Venezuela’s financial woes have worsened this year as the end of a decade-long oil boom has accentuated the economic incompetence of Maduro’s regime, which uses currency manipulation and price controls to (unsuccessfully) combat rampant inflation. As a result, the price of importing goods is too high for local businesses to bear, and therefore production in many cases has halted. As often happens in such a case, black markets have emerged for the reselling of hard-to-obtain goods at significant markups.

Maduro’s approval ratings have fallen steadily in recent months while his opposition has gained momentum, culminating in a successful call for elections this fall. If he hopes to remain in power, the president may want to pay mind to these ultimately human problems. As one local put it, “[t]ake away beer and things get risky.”

A Deal Iran’s Hardliners Can Love

Major General Hassan Firouzabadi is a close ally of Supreme Leader Khamenei, and the head of Iran’s armed forces. He is also an intelligent man. He went public this weekend with the news that he is advising the Supreme Leader to accept the nuclear agreement negotiated between Iran and the P5+1 group of world powers. In his shoes I would do exactly the same thing.

Unreflecting hardline Iranians might oppose the deal, thinking that something even better could have been achieved. Look, the knee-jerk hardliner crowd might argue, Iran should have pushed harder. Given the desperate eagerness to reach an agreement so publicly and repeatedly advertised by the American side, the evident lust of the American politicians for Noble prizes and ‘legacy accomplishments’, and the palpable thirst for Iranian trade informing the negotiating postures of some of the other countries at the table, Iran could have gotten an even better deal.So why would the smarter, more far-seeing leaders of the IRG see the deal as a good one? Certainly there are some attractive features from an Iranian perspective. There is the good news about the progressive dismantling of limits on Iran’s nuclear program. here are the cumbersome and weak inspection procedures that allow Iranian negotiators plenty of wiggle room for incremental cheats. There is the delicious reality that the drive to negotiate the deal has weakened the core alliances that are the heart of America’s strategic position in the Middle East. And there’s more:  the prospect of an end to the conventional weapons embargo, the windfall gains from unfreezing assets and the boost to Iran’s economy that will come with the end of the sanctions.But the real reason the deal is a gift to Iran isn’t in the language of the deal itself; it’s the path the deal opens up for Iran in the region. At a time of unprecedented crisis among Iran’s Sunni Arab rivals, the nuclear deal offers Iran a historic opportunity to aim for the hegemony of the Persian Gulf and to achieve the kind of world power that Shi’a religious enthusiasts and Persian nationalists believe is their due. God Himself, Iranian hardliners can tell the Supreme Leader, has opened this door for Iran; it is his duty and his destiny to walk through it.So what’s Iran’s path? Simple, unfortunately. If Iran ratifies the deal, confines its cheating initially to the margins and then opportunistically pursues an agenda of regional expansion it can move towards the glittering prize that has dazzled Iranian nationalists since the time of the Shah: effective control over the oil resources of the Persian Gulf. To both the religious and nationalist hardliners in the Iranian establishment, this is a golden hour. For centuries Iran, a proud and ancient civilization which ruled the Middle East when Europe was a wasteland of primitive tribes, has been pushed around by stronger powers. But that is all changing now. Europe is too weak, too distracted and too pacifistic to matter in the region. China and India are still too weak and too remote to challenge Iran in the Gulf. Russia is a shadow of its Soviet self, and Putin is so worried by Sunni militance that he’s willing to ally with Shi’a Iran as the lesser of two evils. As for the United States, the one country with the motive and the means to block Iran’s path to regional supremacy, the last thing the Obama administration wants to do is to confront Iran.The Sunni world has never been this weak, this incoherent, this radicalized and this divided. Turkey, the successor state of Iran’s great historical antagonist and rival the Ottoman Empire, remains divided and uncertain. Its increasingly isolated and delusional President has squandered his political capital at home and abroad. Egypt is preoccupied with jihadism in Sinai and the suppression of the Muslim Brotherhood. The Saudis are floundering; the Qataris are blundering amateurs. Meanwhile Sunni jihadism is being driven into a nihilistic frenzy—in part by the consequences of 100 years of Arab political ineptitude, in part by the spectacle of rising Iranian power—that has terrified and appalled the world.To Shi’a Iran, this looks like divine confirmation that the Sunnis have got Islam wrong. Contrast the spectacle of failure, division, and anarchy in the Sunni Middle East with Iran’s political stability and technological progress. What could be more obvious: at long last, the Ayatollah Khomeini and the Revolution 0f 1979 gave Shi’a Iran the proper form of government and theological framework. Since then, enemies like Saddam, America and Israel have struck heavy blows against Iran—but they have failed to block the Revolution. One by one, Iran’s enemies have failed, fallen victim to their own arrogance and incoherence: God’s providence is shining through, and Iran’s hour of victory is near.So here’s what Iran needs to do now, a smart hardliner would tell the Supreme Leader: first, accept the deal, grumbling all the while about how hard this is to do and how painful the sacrifice is. Next, open the door to European, Chinese and Russian companies. Build powerful pro-Iranian economic coalitions in key countries that make it progressively harder for the Security Council to unite against you. This helps you economically as well as politically; you will reduce unemployment and raise living standards across Iran even as you build up your conventional forces and help your clients across the region. Third step, use ISIS as a weapon against the West. This pathetic ‘caliphate’ is not a threat to Iran or to Shi’a Iraq, but the specter of ISIS can be used to hoodwink the stupid Americans and panicky Europeans into accepting Iranian predominance in Syria and Iraq. Indeed, President Obama already seems ready to sign on to the program. As the President told CNN’s Fareed Zakaria in an interview broadcast Sunday,

“Is there the possibility that having begun conversations around this narrow issue that you start getting some broader discussions about Syria, for example, and the ability of all the parties involved to try to arrive at a political transition that keeps the country intact and does not further fuel the growth of ISIL and other terrorist organizations. I think that’s possible,” Obama said, referring to the Islamic State group by one of its acronyms. “But I don’t think it happens immediately.”

It all makes sense. Cement the “Shi’a Crescent” from Basra to Beirut with the acquiescence of the West, then step up the pressure in the Arabian Peninsula. Stir the pot in Bahrain, Yemen, the Shi’a majority Eastern Province of Saudi Arabia, and, once the current Sultan is out of the way, Oman. Keep the Americans off balance with hints of detente and hopes of peace. They fell for Putin’s switch with Medvedev, and they fell for Erdogan’s “Islamic democracy” in Turkey; offer them a ‘reset’ and they will be fawning all over you.

Sooner or later, the corrupt, weak and ultimately cowardly Gulf monarchies will be eager to cut deals with you. The yoke should be light at first; your immediate goal is to control oil output as you move toward common defense arrangements and policy coordination. The key to Iran’s future stature as a world power is to control the size of the region’s energy production. “Coordinate” oil production, and the Europeans, the Chinese, the Japanese and most others will look to you for their economic wellbeing; the Security Council will never vote against you again. Meanwhile, as you gradually develop your conventional weapons and build your regional power, you can, when the time is right, move from quiet cheating on the nuclear deal towards an open drive for nuclear weapons. The Americans, as divided and confused as ever, will almost certainly fail to intervene in time; you will then be a nuclear weapons state in firm command of the world’s fuel supply. Seeing the writing on the wall the Jews will begin to leave Palestine of their own accord. As the Sunnis see the divine favor being poured out on Iran, they will give up their religious errors and embrace the true faith. The community of the faithful, so tragically divided since the murder of Hussein, will be united once again under the true faith, and Iran will once again be a superpower to the glory of God and the despair of His enemies.This is why sensible Iranian hardliners would advise the Supreme Leader to take the nuclear deal. He will almost certainly take their advice. Not in 1000 years, hardliners will argue, has Iran had an opportunity this grand; if thrown away now it will not come again. The real debate in Iran won’t be over whether to take the deal; the debate will be whether to use it, as Obama hopes, as a first step toward detente with the United States, or to use it as a steppingstone to world power. To give the moderates a chance to win that debate, President Obama will have to reverse his policy of disengagement in the Middle East and start pushing back against Iranian policy in Syria, Lebanon and Iraq. If he fails to do that, and he probably will, it will be hard for moderates to argue for a cautious regional policy in Tehran.Hardliners and religious zealots are often misguided; just ask Phillip II about the fate of the Spanish Armada. The obstacles blocking Iran’s path toward the global stature it seeks are more formidable than they may look from Tehran; while there is a danger that the Iranians could achieve these objectives, there is an equal or greater danger that Iran’s efforts to achieve these goals could lead to exactly the kind of war that President Obama hopes the nuclear deal will prevent.Making peace is harder than it looks.

China Bemoans Collusion Between Manila and Tokyo

This weeks meeting of ASEAN meeting in Kuala Lumpur has not gone according to China’s plan. For one, as we wrote about earlier, John Kerry dropped by to chastise Beijing’s territorial aggression and to forcefully restate America’s current policy of ignoring China’s claims to exclusion zones around the islands it just finished building north of the Philippines. But even within East Asia, things aren’t going China’s way. Tokyo and Manila, old enemies, have come together to oppose China, and Beijing is loudly decrying them, as Reuters reports:

In a statement released just before midnight on Thursday, China’s Foreign Ministry said the Philippines foreign minister “attacked” China’s South China Sea policy, and received support from his Japanese counterpart. […]

China is the real victim in the South China Sea, [Foreign Minister Wang Yi] told the forum, pointing to what he said was the “occupation” of some of its islands there, including by the Philippines.“But to maintain and protect the peace and stability of the South China Sea, we have maintained huge restraint,” he added. […]Turning to Japan, Wang said Japan had built up a remote island in the Pacific called Okinotori to enforce Japanese territorial claims. […]“Before criticizing others, Japan must first take a good look at its own words and behavior,” Wang said.Chinese reclamation and building work on its islands in the South China Sea are to improve living conditions and provide facilities like light houses and weather stations, he added.

Minister Wang is not wrong (except on the claim that the installations are non-military; that’s complete bunk). Japanese-Filipino relations have been warming lately, and Tokyo just this week extended a $2 billion loan for rail and infrastructure development in the Philippines. That may sound like a pittance to some Western ears, but it’s a record-breaker for Manila, whose public transport systems are straining under the weight of a growing, increasingly urban population.

What China is complaining about here is essentially what we’ve been covering as it unfolds: coalitions of China’s neighbors pushed together by the common threat Beijing’s expansionism represents. And arguably, Tokyo and Manila are the countries that stand to lose the most if Beijing gets its way, and to the best of their abilities they’re acting like it. But will solidarity with Japan be enough of a boon to the Philippines’s regional clout? Maybe, maybe not. But one thing is certain: China is still on the march, and as the months and years go by the countries in its way look less and less like they plan on taking it lying down.

The Pension Vise Tightens

It’s been apparent for years that America’s underfunded public employee pension system, one of the backbones of blue model governance, will have to face a brutal reckoning at some time or another, but new data suggest that the date of that reckoning may be sooner than anticipated. Newsmax reports on sluggish growth in pension funds:

U.S. state and local-government pensions are coming off their weakest investment performance in three years, weighed down by losses in international stocks and weak bond returns, according to data from Wilshire Associates Inc.

The pensions logged median increases of about 3.4 percent for the 12 months ended June 30, according to data to be released Tuesday by the Santa Monica, California-based consulting firm…For the public pensions, which typically target returns of 7 percent or greater, it was the slimmest gain since they earned about 1.5 percent in fiscal 2012.

This past year, in other words, pensions earned less than half the returns they would need to stay solvent over the long term. This will likely force program cuts on many state and local governments, shifting the burden of policymakers’ poor judgment onto the young and vulnerable. It is also likely to lead to escalating political battles between state and local officials and public employees, as even some Democratic politicians come to acknowledge that the existing pension regime is unaffordable.

The lackluster returns will also unfortunately lead many pension funds into riskier investments in the hope of bigger gains. But teacher and police pension funds don’t belong in the casino. Policymakers would be better suited to reform the pension system around the assumption that 7 percent growth is probably unsustainable, rather than trying to achieve it temporarily and ending up with an even bigger crisis on their hands.

Why Did So Many People Watch the GOP Debate?

Thursday night’s GOP primary debate in Cleveland was not only the most watched presidential primary debate ever, it was “the most watched cable news program” in history, with 24 million viewers tuning in, according to AdWeek. This compares to 3.3 million viewers for the first Republican debate in 2012, and 2.1 million for the first Republican debate of 2008.

The obvious explanation for this extraordinary number of viewers is of course the red-haired celebrity who stood at the center of stage. But the Donald alone probably cannot account for the huge audience—after all, 6.1 million people watched the minor league GOP debate, featuring the lower-rated contenders, at 5 p.m. To repeat: almost three times as many people watched an event featuring candidates like Jim Gilmore and George Pataki in 2015 than watched an event featuring John McCain and Mitt Romney in 2007.One reason for the tremendous interest was probably that Fox News put on a different kind of event from anything we have seen before. This was “the first 21st century Presidential debate“—more than its predecessors, it favored sharp questions and pithy answers, and emphasized style as well as policy substance. Candidates had to be savvy as well as theatrical, and embrace the reality television format. This is the direction our politics is heading, like it or not—and it may in fact be quite successful at boosting political engagement.Indeed, given the magnitude of the increase in audience size, it is also hard to avoid the conclusion that people are simply more excited about politics, and the young, diverse, and unpredictable Republican field in particular—perhaps partly as a result of the stylistic change described above. We have been treated to countless stories over the years about how young people are politically disengaged, and contaminating the rest of the country with their apathy. But according to data from CNN, the debate audience hardly resembled the retirement community that is Fox News’ staple—”of the 24 million viewers, 7.9 million were in the key advertising demographic of 25 to 54 year olds.”The debate numbers are a good signal for political engagement. It will be interesting to see if the candidates can keep them up.

Discrediting the Blue Model One Crisis at a Time

Last February, an investigation revealed that Chicago had a detention facility that lawyers claimed was “the domestic equivalent of a CIA black site”; those in the Homan Square site experienced a number of abuses, including being held without access to an attorney and suffering beatings by police. In a followup to its February investigation, the Guardian has released more information on the scandal. Some of the key findings from the new report:

Between September 2004 and June 2015, around 3,540 people were eventually charged, mostly with forms of drug possession – primarily heroin, as well as marijuana and cocaine – but also for minor infractions such as traffic violations, public urination and driving without a seatbelt.
More than 82% of the Homan Square arrests thus far disclosed – or 2,974 arrests – are of black people, while 8.5% are of white people. Chicago, according to the 2010 US census, is 33% black and 32% white.
Over two-thirds of the arrests at Homan Square thus far revealed – at least 2,522 – occurred under the tenure of Mayor Rahm Emanuel, the former top aide to Barack Obama who has said of Homan Square that the police working under him “follow all the rules”.

These abuses occurred in a deep blue city in one of the bluest states in the country. That shouldn’t surprise us. Blue modelers, of course, have seemingly endless faith in the power of big government to do well by the people it governs, especially the most vulnerable. Their rhetoric turns on the claim that blue policies alone can help the poor, and they brand those who disagree as racists who hate the poor. And when it turns out that no one was guarding the guardsmen, and that institutions have abused the power they’ve been given, blue modelers are surprised and disappointed, but somehow still earnestly convinced that the solution is…yet more big blue government.

Chicago, with its metastasizing pension crisis, its poorly functioning school system, and, as we now know, this detention site abuse, is one giant, city-sized argument to the contrary. Long hailed as the “city that works” in contrast to obviously failing places like Detroit and New Orleans, Chicago, too, is coming under pressure as the accumulating failures of an obsolescent social model reduce its economic viability and degrade its institutions. Handing over more power to blue institutions isn’t the way to help the poor; often, it is precisely that concentrated power that is turned against the most vulnerable.

Mutiny Spells Trouble for Rousseff

Just when it looked like Brazil’s economic woes couldn’t get any worse, the country’s unpopular president Dilma Rousseff now faces a mutinous Congress. Bloomberg reports that the lower house is pushing spending increases even as Rousseff’s government is trying to stave off economic crisis by keeping spending down:

The lower house approved in a first round vote a constitutional amendment by 445 against 16 votes granting salary increases to police chiefs, prosecutors and government attorneys. The bill still needs to pass a second round vote before going to the Senate.

Earlier, leaders of the Brazilian Labor Party and the Democratic Labor Party, or PTB and PDT, said they would act independently and no longer participate in meetings of the ruling coalition. The parties together have 44 out of 513 seats in the Chamber.This Thursday a Datafolha poll showed Rousseff’s popularity fell to the lowest on record for a Brazilian president. Support for the start of impeachment proceedings increased, the poll published by Folha de S. Paulo shows.

The initiative comes as the real drops to a 12-year and local bond yields soar, and that economic context us what makes the political fragmentation, exacerbated by the vote, so dangerous. The Brazilian political establishment is enraged by the spreading corruption investigation linked to the Petrobras debacle, and, out of a mix of fury and fear, leading politicians are now blocking efforts to stop their country’s economic nosedive. At a time when the ship is heading for the rocks, a riot has broken out on the poop deck. This does not bode well for Brazil.

NC Insurer Seeks 34.6 Percent Rate Hike

This is not the rate revision Obamacare supporters are hoping for: Blue Cross and Blue Shield of North Carolina, the state’s largest insurer, has modified the request it made to raise its 2016 premiums by an average of 26 percent—but it’s modified it upwards, to an eye-watering 34.6 percent.

Insurers across the country are currently going through the process of setting the premiums they will charge customers in 2016. They are supposed to estimate how much they need to charge based on how expensive (read: sick) their customer base is, and then they submit their estimate to state regulators, who have the power to approve it or, if they think the insurer math doesn’t add up, lower it. So far things haven’t looked great for the Obama Administration, as several insurers have requested quite hefty increases. In Oregon, not only were requests approved, but the regulator even told plans that did not ask for a hike to raise their premiums. But supporters of the ACA hope that regulators will overall deny the worst hikes, and it’s too soon to tell exactly how it will all shake out.

The news coming out of North Carolina, however, won’t help the Administration’s case. The NYT:

Blue Cross vice president Patrick Getzen says the program has not met expectations that healthier customers would enroll in the second year and that costs would level out after people who avoided doctors for years got treatment.

“Based on our data, neither expectation is proving true. Our claims and expenses are higher than our premiums and we need to take steps now to protect the sustainability of plans for our customer over the long-term,” Getzen said.

How badly you think this process will end depends on whether you think insurers really need the increases they’re asking for. The Obama Administration hopes state regulators will decide that the companies are overplaying their hands, but in at least one case a local commissioner rebuffed federal involvement in the process. When a federal official sent a letter to regulators outlining the reasons why requests should be scaled back, Montana’s Democratic commissioner “said the letter…was interesting, but ‘did not point to any new information that would impact how state insurance departments regulate their health insurance markets.'”

Time will tell, but regardless of how this process works out, we shouldn’t forget that U.S. health care is and remains broken—large ACA rate hikes or not.