Signal: Politics and Pilgrimage – Greece’s Bitter Exit – Prague Spring Crushed and Remembered

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POLITICS AND PILGRIMAGE: THE HAJJ BEGINS

In principle, the hajj – the pilgrimage to Mecca that all Muslims must make once in their lives if they are able – ought to be above the petty clashes of worldly politics. The Koran explicitly forbids the faithful from “disputing” during their journey. But when the holiest sites of a world religion are located in a country that is asserting itself regionally and transforming itself domestically, you can expect the political and the pious to mingle. As this year’s hajj unfolds over the next several days, here are a few areas in which that’s already happened:

First, the bitter regional rivalry between Iran and Saudi Arabia invariably spills into the hajj. In 2016, no Iranians went at all as tensions soared between Riyadh and Tehran over a stampede at Mecca that killed hundreds of pilgrims from the Islamic Republic the previous year, and over the deepening proxy conflict between the two countries in Yemen. This year more than 80,000 Iranians are in Mecca, but Supreme Leader Khamenei has still blasted Saudi control over the holy sites. Meanwhile, officials in Qatar – currently under a Saudi-led economic blockade because of its close ties to Tehran – have complained that Saudi authorities made it harder than usual to get visas to make the pilgrimage.

Second, further afield, the recent clash between Saudi Arabia and Canadaover Ottawa’s criticism of the kingdom’s human rights record has fast gone from the political to the personal for many of Canada’s Muslims. After Riyadh abruptly cut air links between the two countries, many Canadian Muslims have sought to cancel their hajj plans altogether.

Lastly, the complexities of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s ongoing bid to liberalize areas of the kingdom’s deeply conservative society without provoking a backlash from traditionalists are in full view this week.

On the one hand, a hackathon competition to develop apps meant to make the hajj safer and “smarter” was won by team of Saudi female programmers, highlighting the increased realms of possibility for women in the kingdom (they’ve been allowed to drive since earlier this summer). But on the other, the government’s crackdown on women’s rights activists continues, with more than a dozen jailed since May, including two earlier this month. Meanwhile, a new, clandestine online radio station has begun broadcasting programs that advocate for further expansion of women’s still-meager rights in the kingdom.

World Historic Thought Interlude: For centuries, the hajj was basically the internet of the Islamic world: an event in which people from all corners of the world regularly came together and could exchange information, technology, arts, and ideas that helped spur innovation throughout the Islamic world. So what’s more politicized now, the new internet or the old one?

GRAPHIC TRUTH: TERRORISM ON THE DECLINE

The number of deaths caused by terrorist attacks worldwide has declined in recent years, according to reports meticulously compiled by the University of Maryland’s Global Terrorism Database. In 2017, terrorism-related deaths fell nearly 25 percent compared with the previous year. And since 2014, the global numbers have fallen a full 64 percent. Here’s a region-by-region look at the recent trend.

EXIT AND ANGUISH: THE END OF GREECE’S BAILOUT

Over the past eight years, crisis-wracked Greece has received around $360 billion from other European countries and the IMF in a bid to stave off economic collapse. In exchange, the country promised to drastically cut spending, in particular by slashing pensions and public-sector salaries.

Well, as of yesterday, Greece has received its final loan payment from its European creditors, meaning that its nearly decade-long “bailout” is complete. But there are a number of reasons why Greeks aren’t smashing plates just yet—after all, the economy is still 25 percent smaller than when the crisis began, and household incomes have plummeted by more than 30 percent during that time.

Here to explain a few more key caveats is fellow Signalista Leon Levy, just back from a visit to his Balkan motherland:

First, Greece’s gargantuan debts haven’t disappeared. In fact, this year Greece’s debt burden will top out at nearly 190 percent of GDP. The hope, among optimists, is that this will fall to 150 percent of GDP by 2023. Overall, Greece will be saddled with the bailout debts until well beyond the middle of this century.

Second, although growth is expected to hit 2 percent this year, the governing Syriza party has done little to inspire investor confidence beyond the bare minimum required by the bailouts. In fact, the government, still fearful of a bank run by disillusioned Greeks, continues to restrict ATM withdrawals for its own citizens. It’s hard to muster foreign confidence in an economy under conditions like these.

Lastly, as Greece looks to move ahead, it faces a critical challenge: over the last ten years, more than half a million Greeks, among them many of the country’s best-educated people, have fled in search of better opportunities abroad. Given the precarious situation at home, most of them are unlikely to return. That means fewer innovative businesses that can help repair Greece’s economy, a smaller tax take for the Greek state, and a longer-run demographic crunch in which there are too many elderly Greeks and not enough young workers to fund the pension system.

So yes, Greece successfully exiting the bailout phase of its economic recovery is better than the alternative—Greece going back hat-in-hand to request another financial lifeline—but it’s more a stepping stone than a milestone. Greece’s odyssey from financial wreckage to return is far from over.

PUPPET REGIME: ANGIE AND VOVA’S MISSED CONNECTION

Over the weekend, Russian President Vladimir Putin and German Chancellor Angela Merkel met for their second tete-a-tete since May. As German-Russian relations continue a cautious rebound – driven in part by a growing divergencebetween the EU and the US – we recall the episode of Puppet Regime in which Ms. Merkel wistfully describes a missed connection from her youth…

THIS IS (BANNED IN) NIGERIA

In the months since American rapper, actor, and general polymath Childish Gambino released his chart-topping track This is America – a withering critique of gun violence and racism in the US that went viral as a music video – dozens of local variants have sprung up around the world.

They range from comic parodies (“Eh, This is Canada, snow got us slippin’ up” and “This is Korea, kimchi got us slippin’ up”) to deadly serious remixes about Iraq, which takes aim at the US invasion’s devastating consequences, or This is South Africa, which addresses violence against women in the country.

The more hard-edged adaptations have doubtless rankled local authorities, but earlier this month Nigeria’s state broadcaster became the first – to our knowledge – to ban one of them, ruling that Nigerian rapper Falz’s bold critique of corruption, violence, and abuse of authority in Africa’s most populous country was “vulgar” and risked inflaming social and religious tensions. “This is Nigeria, everybody be criminal,” runs the refrain. Here’s a line-by-line, shot-by-shot breakdown of the video, from Quartz’s Africa team.

Why the ban matters: Early next year, President Muhammadu Buhari will seek re-election, despite concerns about his health, his mediocre stewardship of the economy, and his failure to stem rising sectarian and tribal violence. As the ruling All Progressives Congress struggles with defections to the opposition, Falz’s song addresses precisely the systemic issues that the authorities would rather avoid ahead of the vote.

Why it doesn’t: As of this writing, the video had garnered 13.5 million views on YouTube. How many of those views are domestic as opposed to foreign is impossible to say. But in a country that now boasts more than 100 million internet connections it’s hard to hide the picture of Nigeria that Falz paints.

SPRING’S END: 50 YEARS SINCE THE SOVIET INVASION OF CZECHOSLOVAKIA

Throughout much of 1968, the government of Czechoslovakia, led by Communist Party chief Alexander Dub?ek, carried out an extraordinary and fateful experiment.

Believing that more economic, political, and cultural openness would reinvigorate the communist project, Dub?ek set about constructing what he, and the intellectuals who backed him, called “socialism with a human face.” Censorship eased, more competitive elections were proposed, economic decisions would be cautiously decentralized.

Moscow was incensed. The Kremlin saw Dub?ek’s idealistic tinkerings with Soviet orthodoxy as an existential threat to the Kremlin’s hold over the Eastern Bloc. And so fifty years ago last night, Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev sent half a million troops into Czechoslovakia to snuff out what had become known as “the Prague Spring.” Dub?ek was arrested and deposed. The Soviets would stick around, heavily resented, for two decades.

Why did it matter back then? The invasion made it clear that no reform of socialism was possible, marking a turning point at which many of intellectuals behind the Iron Curtain made the perilous leap into outright opposition. One of those intellectuals was a young Czech playwright named Václav Havel. It would take nearly a quarter of a century for the work of those dissidents to bear fruit, but the seeds were sown in August of 1968.

Why does it matter now? For years the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia confirmed for many in Central Europe that a chronically imperial Russia would never fully respect their sovereignty. After communism fell in 1989, that fear drove them to seek EU and NATO membership. But today, amid growing friction between the region and Brussels over European values and rules, polls show that close to 40 percent of Czechs and Slovaks, along with more than 20 percent of Hungarians and Poles, say Russia can be a valuable partner in pushing back against an overbearing EU.

HARD NUMBERS

800,000: Flooding in the southern Indian state of Kerala, the worst in a century, has displaced some 800,000 people and killed more than 350. Officials have put estimates of storm damage at nearly $3 billion.

700,000: South Korean President Moon Jae-in wants to set up rail links with the North, a project that could create more than 700,000 jobs in South Korea over the next five years, according to the IBK institute. Moon, whose approval rating has hit its lowest level since he took office in 2017, is eyeing the economic dividends from détente with Kim Jong-un. 

90: More than 90 percent of Ethiopians hold a favorable view of the newly installed Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, according to local research firm WAAS International. That may well make Mr. Abiy – who has pledged broad reforms and pulled off a historic peace overture with neighboring Eritrea – the most popular leader in the world.

37.3: Since being thrown behind bars, Brazil’s former President Luiz Inacio “Lula” da Silva has only seen his popular support grow. Recent polls give him 37.3 percent of voter intentions – a 5 percentage point bump from the previous month – ahead of October’s pivotal election. The closest contender is far-right candidate Jair Bolsonaro with 18.3 percent of voter intentions.  

5: The Venezuelan government moved this week to create a new currency, the “Sovereign Bolívar,” by simply wiping away five zeros from its existing legal tender. Not bad if you compare it with Hungary, which shed 29 zeros from its currency between 1945 and 1946, and Yugoslavia, whose currency dropped 27 zeros from 1990 to 1994.

This edition of Signal was written by Alex Kliment (@saosasha) and prepared with editorial support from Leon Levy (@leonmlevy) and Gabe Lipton (@gflipton). Spiritual counsel from Willis Sparks.