Insights, analysis and must reads from CNN's Fareed Zakaria and the Global Public Square team, compiled by Global Briefing editor Chris Good May 23, 2021 On GPS, at 10 a.m. and 1 p.m. ET: First, Fareed gives his take on the intractability of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict—and the one thing that might fix it.
"Ultimately," Fareed argues, "this is not a problem that can be resolved through power, whether political or military. It can only be resolved through moral persuasion."
Given Israel's economic and military might, it has little reason to reach a deal with Palestinians on their longstanding demands for statehood and equal treatment. "But the country remains a liberal democracy," Fareed says. "It was founded by people who believed deeply that their new country should embody not just nationalism but also justice and morality. There are many in Israel who argue passionately that it can find a way for Israel to have security and Palestinians to have dignity. The only hope—and right now it looks remote—is that those forces will gain strength and one day lead the country to give the Palestinians a state of their own. That would finally fulfill Israel's historical mission to be, in the words of Isaiah, 'a light unto the nations.'"
Next: After 11 days of rockets and airstrikes, a fragile ceasefire has taken hold in Israel. As the pieces are picked up, Fareed asks US Secretary of State Antony Blinken what comes next.
After that, Fareed continues the Middle East conversation with a panel of Jewish Currents Editor-at-Large Peter Beinart, human-rights attorney and author Noura Erakat, and author and former GOP political adviser Dan Senor.
Fareed then asks Zachary Karabell, author of "Inside Money: Brown Brothers Harriman and the American Way of Power," about Wall Street's raging bull market and whether the US government is spending too much, too quickly.
Finally, Fareed examines why the Arctic could become the next venue for great-power competition. What Has Changed About the Israeli–Palestinian Conflict? Throughout the recent spate of fighting, analysts observed noteworthy shifts in the decades-long conflict between Israel and Palestinians: At The New York Times, Yousef Munayyer argued that "the two-state solution is dead" and that Palestinians would be better served seeking equal rights rather than statehood, while Khalil Shikaki wrote for Foreign Affairs that things are moving back to an existential, "zero-sum" enmity of decades past.
Writing before Thursday's ceasefire, Tareq Baconi noted similar trends in a London Review of Books essay, writing: "However the current situation ends, two lessons have emerged. First, the quiescence of the Palestinian people—accused, often most forcefully from within their own communities, of apathy and indifference—never amounted to acceptance of defeat. They have shown that Israel cannot persist in its policies without paying a price. Second, regardless of whether a broader movement emerges out of the current moment, the collective eruption across historical Palestine shows that the Palestinians remain a people, despite the false hope of partition, the all-too-real separation of their territories, and the deep fragmentation of their political and social life. They may argue about Hamas's armed resistance or peaceful protest in Sheikh Jarrah. But tactical disagreements ought not to obscure their clear understanding that they are fighting for their freedom against a single regime of domination." Maricá: The Leftist Brazilian Town Where UBI Is Being Tested As the Global Briefing has noted before, the Rio de Janeiro suburb of Maricá has been experimenting with universal basic income, doling out its own digital currency—Mumbuca, named after the river that flows through the town—which businesses there widely accept. At Der Spiegel, Jens Glüsing follows up on the experiment and writes that it's part of a broad, leftist agenda undertaken by the town's previous and current mayor—one that has seen bus service taken over by the state government and buses painted red, evidently in a leftist homage; red bikes offered freely for borrowing; and improvements including a new hospital, renovations to the town square, and a new movie theater (the latter also bright red). Citizens get the equivalent of $171 per month and can apply for interest-free loans for things like home renovation.
It all seems to be going swimmingly, and the leftist overhaul has won support even from staunch backers of far-right populist President Jair Bolsonaro, Glüsing writes. Crucially, enabling all this is a "vast" offshore oil field that the town's previous mayor "calls … a 'gift of nature.' It was discovered during [former President Luiz Inácio] Lula [da Silva]'s term in office, and the license fees that Petrobras, the partially state-owned oil company, pays to coastal communities are Maricá's most important revenue source. The mayor forecasts that the city will receive additional revenues of a billion reals (157 million euros) from those fees in the next three years." Are Slow-Burning 'Zombie Fires' the Future for Arctic Countries? They could be, according to a new paper in Nature, which Matt Simon outlines at Wired. "Each winter, as snow blankets Alaska and northern Canada, the wildfires of the summer extinguish, and calm prevails—at least on the surface. Beneath all that white serenity, some of those fires actually continue smoldering underground, chewing through carbon-rich peat, biding their time. When spring arrives and the chilly landscape defrosts, these 'overwintering' fires pop up from below—that's why scientists call them zombie fires." The new research links them to warmer summers, indicating they could become more common as the planet heats up.
Since larger wildfires are more likely to keep burning below the surface in winter, Simon writes, firefighters could use satellite imagery to watch the edges of "scars" from larger, evidently extinguished fires to monitor for reemergence. |
