Globalaffairs

Issue 4/August-September 2007
By Naiara Cáliz Fernández

For several years the Mexican market has risen due to an important economic growth, political and economic stability for around 6 years. The controversial arrival of the conservative Felipe Calderon and after controversial elections, trade relations had an inflection point regarding the Vicente Fox Government.

With the continuity of the National Action Party (PAN) in the Government, the main priority is still infrastructures to modernize the country as Fox established. In order to implement such stabilization and modernization plan it is necessary foreign investment for both implementation and financing. In line with this emergent desire, Mexico signed in 2000 a free trade agreement with the EU by means of it 48% of industrial products are duty free and in 2007 it will be a total tax relief except in ceramic products.

The USA are the main investor – 60% of investment in Mexico -, followed by Spain 10.8%, Holland 10.5 % and the UK 3.3%. It is not strange that with these investment indexes Mexico is developing an economy at dizzy pace where everything is allowed. Aztec market is a communication mean between different countries. In a strategic enclave that is a bridge for North-America and a joint link to Centre and South-American countries, many multinationals have the eye on an economically emergent Mexico.

Continue reading »

Issue 4/August-September 2007
By Mbuyi Kabunda

The biggest humanitarian crisis in the world is happening in Darfur since February 2003 in the Fur’s House, the Western and most populated region of Sudan bordering Chad (and the most discriminated and poorest area, it is the country granary). According to Mukesh Kapila, the former UN coordinator in Sudan, nowadays the only difference between Rwanda and Darfur is the number of conflict victims.

Inequality and power

This conflict started in the British policy of separate development that benefited Arabs in Sudan- a country in the crossroads of Africa horn, Central Africa and Northern Africa – against black Africans, together with an Arabization and Islamization policy of Jartum governments. Therefore it is an unequal development problem and power-sharing that dates from British colonization times.

Ethnic cleansing

The main victims of such conflict are black ethnic groups of farmers in the Eastern province of Sudan (fur, massalit, Medob, zaghawa and a ten of smaller groups). It is a real ethnic cleansing by governmental forces and nomadic militias yanyawids (they are from nomadic Arab tribes or Arabic background) supported by the governmental ones. The result is 300,000 deaths, 2,400,000 people moved and 200,000 refugees in Chad.

Continue reading »

Issue 4/August-September 2007
by Virginia Caballero

Conquering the US Hispanic market, in all its different segments and sectors, is the dream of every marketing team in the country.With its high brand loyalty (5 %) and its strong buying power, this distinct group of 4 .5 million people from 22 different countries makes up the fastest growing consumer market in the United States and the obvious target of marketers. The multilingual diversity in this demographic group makes this a complex target. Preference and proficiency in language (some only speak Spanish, others only English while others speak both languages) are among the many issues that contribute to the complexity of this target group. When a company starts to define a media plan and decides which linguistic strategy will be used to grab this target’s attention, the debate begins. Is it better to use English, Spanish, or perhaps “Spanglish”?

“LATIN-USA” Territory The second largest Spanish-speaking economy in the world

“If we were to imagine for a moment that the U.S. Hispanic population was an independent nation, it would be the second largest economy in the Spanish-speaking world”, according to Aida Levitán and Javier Pérez- Palencia, co-founders of the marketing agency in Miami, Levitán & Palencia. This is what Dallas McDonald Marketing defines as a “nation within the US nation.”

Continue reading »

Issue 4/August-September 2007
by Armen Baibourtian, Vahe Gevorgyan, Mnatsakan Safaryan

In 1991 Barry Buzan, British political scientist, questioned the pure model of nation contemplating existence of state. His point was exemplified by the Armenians, a nation without state. Ironically, his sample did not last long, since the very same year Armenia became independent. However, the potential of the “Armenian case” to contradict pure models seems to be indefatigable. Yet to make things more clear, let us glance at Armenia in the mainstream of the political processes which occurred in the world at the last decade of the 20th century. Aside from the end of the Cold war, the disestablishment of the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia manifested the conclusion of centuries long evolution of different forms of governances and polities to a single surviving model: the nation state.

In 1992, when Armenia and other former Soviet republics gained their seats in the United Nations, nearly the whole world was a family of various nation states. That is to say that the international system took its final shape towards which it was moving since the Treaty of Westphalia. Now - after fifteen years from those landmark changes of the early 1990s - we can assess how much exactly that shape was “final”. Not surprisingly, and as it is the case with many notions and processes, the end of one cycle in international relations brings to the start of another one. Charles Tilly nicely captured this phenomenon while stating that “…states may be following the old routine by which an institution falls into ruin just as it becomes complete”. Once gained long battled independence, Armenia had to build its state institutions without having an undisputed model of a nation state in the changing world.

Continue reading »

Issue 4/August-September 2007
By Charles Krauthammer

Just end the occupation of the West Bank, say the Arabs, and we will guarantee Israel peace. Lebanon proves otherwise.

If you want to know where the Israeli-Palestinian war is going, watch Lebanon. If the war goes — literally — ballistic, the fuse will have been lit by the Iran-backed Hezbollah guerrillas now firing rockets into Israel from Lebanon. But did Israel not withdraw from Lebanon almost two years ago? Why is there still a problem with Lebanon?

Indeed, Israel had been in Lebanon for about 20 years. It was a classic defensive occupation. Israel laid claim to not an inch of Lebanese soil. It diverted not a drop of water. It had no interest in staying. It was in there for one reason: to protect Israel’s northern frontier from various guerrillas — first Yasser Arafat’s PLO, then the Lebanese Shiite Party of God (Hezbollah) — using south Lebanon to attack Israel.

Yet for two decades, Israel was hectored to comply with U.N. resolutions demanding Israel’s withdrawal. In May 2000, it complied. To ensure that there could be no possible residual territorial dispute, Israel asked the United Nations to draw the line demarcating the true Israeli-Lebanese border — the so-called Blue Line — then pulled back behind it.

Continue reading »

Issue 4/ August-September 2007
By Roger Casas

Nearly six years have passed since the attacks against the Twin Towers in New York and it is clearly seen a declared crusader against Islamic fundamentalism by the USA president, George Bush and his European minions. Usually it is useful as a pretext for any state to justify actions justified with difficulty in the name of “the war against terror”. Some examples are the Afghanistan and Iraq invasions, the Indonesian military intervention in Aceh region in May 2003, or the recent attack to the Red Mosque in Islamabad.

People’s Republic of China (PRC) is not an exception in this leaning. Uses and abuses that these states seem to be doing from the called “war against terrorism” have generally passed unnoticed out of the country. Maybe, because it is just about “domestic matters” as Beijing constantly said. It is about the private crusader form the Chinese authorities against the Islamic extremism centred in the North Western region of Xinjiang, the so-called “Eastern Turkistan” o “Chinese Turkistan”. It is one of the five autonomous Regions in the country, and inhabited by 14 different ethnic groups at least. The most numerous is the one formed by the Uyghur people (around 42% of the population in the region) in spite of the massive arrive of Han immigrants coming from the eastern regions of the country.

Continue reading »

Issue 4/August-September 2007
By Fatima Romano Quintana

It is not new that China-Japan relations have been very conflictive for several centuries. But the most relevant issue of such bilateral relations was the events of the second China-Japan war between 1937 and 1945 and the Second World War. The Nanking massacre in 1937 (300 thousand Chinese causalities), Japanese revisionism (controversial history books) and ex-Prime Minister Koizumi visits to Yasukuni shrine (to honour dead Japanese soldiers in Japanese expansionist wars) are some of the events that have damaged such relations. This article aims at analysing factors that have influenced the conflict between both countries with the background of the recent visit of the Chinese Prime Minister Wen Jiabao to Tokyo.

The speech of Wen in the Japanese Parliament is important because it is the first visit of a Chinese President for more than 22 years: ‘the target of this visit is to increase joint political trust and to go deeply into relations of mutual interest. China and Japan are two important countries not only in Asia but also in the world and their bilateral relations are very important for both.’ (1)

This event is influenced by the new geostrategic realities in Eastern Asia and the increase in importance of China in the international system. China has tried to improve gradually relations at international level joining the WTO and political and macroeconomic reforms. Thus, China and Japan could be at the same time increasing powers not only in Asia but also in the world (2).

Continue reading »

Issue 4/August-September 2007
By Juan Luis Dorado Merchan

Hugo Chavez is the surprises man. There are few doubts at international level that Venezuela is becoming a destabilizing agent in international relations due to some President’s aggressive statements.

The closure of Radio Caracas Television is the last move of the Hugo Chavez’s game of chess in his political and ideological game. Just a few congratulations of the International Community have taken place after the electoral victory of Hugo Chavez last year whose elections have been assessed as clean by international observers.

Since then the Chavez’s strategy - a ‘revenge’ against people opposite to his ideology and who supported the coup in 2002 - could become the first step towards the establishment of only one thought in Venezuela. A return to a dark time when few Latin America people could raise their voices.

A political analysis of the Venezuela future is not easy because no one knows the way that the President will take. Perhaps the true move of Hugo Chavez would have been the opposite: increasing the expression freedom so as to show to the world and political adversaries a fervent commitment to democracy and Bolivarian ideas that he defends.

Challenging democracy

In 2006, in Latin America ten electoral processes took place that showed the increase of democracy culture in the region. Among these countries it was Venezuela where Hugo Chavez - 61,35% of the vote- won his adversary Manuel Rosales.

Continue reading »

Issue 4/ August-September 2007
By Roger Casas

Maybe one of the prejudices beeper-rooted of the “orientalist” attitude -so beatyful and implacably described years ago by Edward Said- would be the consideration of “east” as the last stronghold of a “sprirituality” understood as an opposite to the prevailing materialism in our “west”. The interest for the Chinese Tai chi, the Hindu Yoga, or the Japanese Zen Buddhism and other cultural practices, contributes to perpetuate the image of “Eastern wisdom” as one of the essencial and unchanging attributes of Asian people.

This idealization also affects Buddhis, considered in the West as an ethic system or a life philosophy which practice is beneficial for individual and also for his environment. This reductionist point of view is away from the negative connotations that terms like “religion” or “worship” had acquired in different western cultures. It is also partly influenced by the brilliant image campain carried out in the last decades by the Dalai Lama and his court in the exile. It ignores the important role that any Buddhist tradition has historically played in the power legitimation in different Asian atates and not just in Tibet. It also ignores the folk nature of religion that Buddhism still has in Tibet and in the wide areas in Asian Southeast. In these cultures, aspects in Buddhis like meditation or philosophical speculation enhanced by the western folk imagination are a marginal phenomenon. The aim of most Buddhists in Southeast Asia is not extingish the desire to get to the Nirvana but only improve the material conditions of their sensitive existence, if not possible in this life maybe in a near revival.

For example, it is proved the importance that Southeast Asia Buddhist societies give in keeping the use of rituals, prayers or lucky amulets for having a good health, a numerous descendants or causing a big change in their luck in favour to the person who asks for it. Nowadays,as this big importance proves and as consequence, Thailand has a temperature. In this country, Jatukam amulet has turn into the centre of a bussiness which is reaching excessive importance, as such, that the Treasury of the country is thinking about charging a tax for the enterprises involved in the production and marketing of this valued object.

Continue reading »

Issue 4/August-September 2007
By Adrien Mayourel

Presidential elections in France were characterized by the highest participation since 1965 (68.7% in the first round or more than 37 million voters, 85% in the second round) and a high increase in registration in electoral lists (3.3 million supplementary electors or 7.5% more in comparison to 2002), it was a renewal of political interest in France. This revival has two explanations. First, fear of the left to be eliminated by the extreme right leader Jean Marie Le Pen in the first round as it happened the 21st of April 2002. Moreover, two candidates extremely present in mass media with opposite personalities and embodying change kept all attention. For 6 months France was living at the pace of the elections.

Elections and Internet

These elections have been influenced by the role of Internet. Besides traditional mass media – TV, radio, newspapers – with a supplementary online advantage, Internet was a sound box for each citizen. Blogs written by candidates or any citizen have had a media coverage never seen before. Mistakes of candidates, speeches, supports and critics were spread instantaneously and at large scale. Thus, for several months, the video ‘the true Sarkozy’ was part of the five French videos most seen in you tube and Daily motion, and the video of Ségolène Royal rebuking professors as for the 35 hours issue was also successful.

Continue reading »