THE BIGGEST NEWS OF THE PAST TWO WEEKS!

The biggest news of the past two weeks probably isn’t the ongoing Covid crisis. It is, let’s be honest, barely news at this point: we all know who’s fucking it up and we all know who has it under control, and we have done for months, and there’s no special formula to it unless you count “being an Asian-Pacific nation” as part of a special formula because you think the Pacific Ocean somehow makes people be magically less likely to catch Covid-19, and you don’t because you know what the numbers in British Columbia, Washington, Oregon, California and Mexico all look like (hint: they are bad).

The biggest news of the past two weeks probably isn’t the post-election America shenanigans either. I mean, don’t get me wrong, it’s kind of awful that America now has to deal with the fact that approximately one-third of the country thinks the rest of the country are traitors who cannot be allowed to lead, and that one entire political party is entirely fine with this. That’s a real problem! But on the other hand, once again this is not really news per se, because it’s not like we didn’t all see this coming a while back.

No, the biggest news of the past two weeks is probably the RCEP (Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership) free-trade agreement that China put together, because that treaty is going to define the economic shape of a good chunk of the world (and therefore affect the rest of the world) for the foreseeable future. Free-trade agreements, more than just about any other type of international treaty, shape the world and its politics around themselves: they solidify and intensify alliances that were already economic but which in turn usually become political and cultural as a result. So this sort of thing is a big deal.

The RCEP - which basically includes every Asia-Pacific nation that isn’t a tiny Tonga-sized wee island except for Taiwan and North Korea - exists mostly because of the collapse of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) agreement in 2017, which was mostly the same as the RCEP except that instead of being built around China, it was built around the United States and its North American allies in order to purposely contain Chinese trade. I am not going to suggest that the TPP was a particularly good trade agreement, because it was flawed on multiple levels (as your favorite leftist blog can no doubt explain in much more detail that I won’t get into now).

But it was definitely designed to weaken Chinese trade power, and now as a result of the RCEP coming to fruition, we basically have the exact opposite thing happening. I mean, this is a free-trade agreement that includes China and Japan and South Korea and Australia and Indonesia: all combined, the countries that make up the RCEP are a little less than a third of the world’s entire economic output.

The various international trade analysts I follow all think this is going to further diminish American overseas power. Granted, the USA could just join the RCEP itself later on (certainly the treaty allows for future membership applications). But this treaty was designed on China’s terms first and foremost and needs to be considered in that light, and China looks at the USA as its chief economic rival on the world stage.

SCOOBY-DOOBY-COUP, IN PERU

So the past two weeks in Peru have definitely been interesting.

A bit of background first. Up until November 9th, the president of Peru was Martin Vizcarra, a political independent with no real party allegiances who has a reputation for being an anti-corruption crusader. Because he’s an anti-corruption crusader with no real party allegiances, the rest of the government sort of hates him, but he’s been able to maintain his popularity with the people of Peru well enough that voting him out hasn’t been an option (but not so well that he’s been able to get a Congress more sympathetic to him).

Accordingly, the Peruvian Congress tried to impeach Vizcarra back in September about a bribery scandal (with evidence that was at least somewhat questionable). However, Manuel Merino, the leader of Congress and Vizcarra’s primary political opponent, severely overplayed his hand and started checking with his allies about who would like which role in a new presidential cabinet, and public opinion (which wasn’t really in their favour to begin with) got very sour, so Congress ultimately voted against that impeachment.

However, Congress then decided to impeach Vizcarra a second time, this time for mishandling the response to Covid-19 (arguable) and for another alleged corruption scandal (again, more questionable). This time around, Congress voted to impeach. Vizcarra accepted the impeachment - although he made his disagreement with the impeachment quite clear - and Merino became President on November 10th, the day after Vizcarra was impeached.

That lasted all of five days, because Peruvians turned out in massive numbers to protest the new government. Congress started getting spooked about supporting Merino (who is, not that you couldn’t guess this, a hard right-wing politician who during both impeachments reached out to the military for “support”), and Merino demanded that authorities crack down on protestors. When the authorities did that in Lima on the 14th, two protestors were killed, and then almost all of Merino’s cabinet resigned within hours, with Merino himself resigning the next day.

Francisco Sagasti, a fairly elderly (76) moderate, has since been sworn in as President. Some articles are describing him as “socially liberal” since he favours marriage equality, but he’s also relatively pro-life and tends to be less enthusiastic about public education than any liberal should be, so centrist is probably about right.

Young protestors haven’t stopped protesting, however: they want to remake the Constitution, which is itself an artifact from the days of Alberto Fujimori so it’s not like there’s a particularly good argument for it. Plus, Chile is right next door and they just revamped their constitution in response to protests, so the protestors think the time is right, and Sagasti has at least made some noise about the constitution possibly needing some amendment, so we may see some serious structural change in Peru.

THAI ANOTHER ONE ON

Also in protest news: Thailand, where the protests have primarily been newsworthy because the protestors are using giant rubber duckie floats and giant teddy bears as anti-police-projectile shields. (And effectively, too. Gas canisters and rubber bullets can be deflected by the duckies, and the duckies are light and easy to carry and can be deflated if need be. The bears are good rubber bullet shields, and also you can throw them at cops in order to try and get away.)

But beyond the enjoyable visual of the protest duckies, these are actually extremely serious protests. Thailand is still technically a monarchy and supposedly a constitutional one modeled after the British system of government, but realistically it’s been a military dictatorship for most of its recent history, since the leaders of the Thai government have almost always come directly from the military (the entire Senate is literally appointed by the military) and a whole lot of its elections have been shams. (This, incidentally, is a large part of why Thailand has gotten such a reputation for sex tourism: when you don’t actually have a government that cares about people, they’ll let all sorts of things slide.)

The protests are - like many protests the world over - student protests, although in this case there are truly enormous numbers of high school students protesting as well in addition to the usual university students. The protests are about as anti-monarchical and anti-military as any protests in Thai history have been, and the Thai government has been teasing a crackdown, threatening protestors with lese-majeste charges (which still exist in Thailand! What the fuck?) and arresting some of them for sedition. Most of the protestors are far too young to personally remember the 1970s Thai democracy protests, which ended up becoming the 1970s Thai protestor massacres, but word has seemingly spread throughout their ranks about that bit of history and they’re still coming out.

THE ENTERTAINMENT SECTION

I’ve started playing KARDS, which is a Hearthstone-style freemium online collectible card game with a WW2 theme. It is fine - the mechanics are mostly like all of these online CCGs are, since Hearthstone provided a mold which works for everybody, but there are a couple of tactical twists which make it a little more engaging for me. Also I have not spent any money on it as of yet and I plan to continue not spending money on it.

Also, I’m rewatching Veep with my wife - well, technically only she is rewatching it, since I only ever saw part of the first season and never got back into it despite it being exactly the sort of comedy I enjoy. It’s good!

See you soon.