2019
September
16
Monday

Monitor Daily Podcast

September 16, 2019
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Noelle Swan
Weekly Editor

Welcome to your Daily. Today’s stories explore the viability of centrism in U.S. politics, Israel’s fractious divide over religion and state, the use of subterfuge in state politics, the role of immigrants in the food industry, and the dearth of political satire in American culture.

What would you say is the most pressing challenge facing the world today?

Migration? Economic instability? Global conflict? Hunger?

Depending on your politics and worldview, any of these issues might be a top concern. But these challenges are all being stoked by a common fuel: climate change.

For years, discussion of climate change was relegated to scientific and environmental circles. As politicians, particularly in the United States, have bickered over whether the science can be trusted, it has become undeniably clear that climate change is already upon us. And it is affecting nearly every aspect of modern life.

Extreme weather events that used to strike once every 100 years are now becoming increasingly frequent. Entire communities are being displaced by encroaching seas. Famine and drought are adding fuel to the ongoing global refugee crisis.

But that’s not the whole story. This unprecedented global crisis has sparked an equally unprecedented global effort to do something about it. While some may be tempted to throw up their hands and give up, forward-thinking scientists, engineers, politicians, even students have seized the challenge of a lifetime: saving the planet.

The Monitor has long focused on efforts to mitigate and adapt to climate change. This week, we are joining Columbia Journalism Review, The Nation, and more than 250 news outlets around the world in the Covering Climate Now initiative to amplify coverage of this crisis.


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Today’s stories

And why we wrote them

In an increasingly polarized political environment driven by tweets and outrage, can moderates still find a place to stand? In Maine, centrist Sen. Susan Collins is finding herself on unstable ground.

Religion and state – it’s an issue mostly sorted out in the U.S. Constitution. Not so in Israel. Now a hard-right politico’s rebirth as a secularist champion is drawing support, and could swing an election.

Robert Willett/The News & Observer/AP
Rep. David Lewis huddles with fellow House members and House Speaker Tim Moore prior to the afternoon session of the House, Sept. 11, 2019, in Raleigh, North Carolina.

North Carolina is locked in a battle over its political heart and soul. “It’s not just Democrats versus Republicans. It’s small ‘d’ democrats versus nondemocrats,” says a political scientist. “It’s bigger than party labels. It’s about the rules of the game.”

Recent immigration raids highlighted how an industry taps society’s least powerful workers ​– immigrants ​– for some of America’s riskiest low-paid jobs.

On Film

Kimberley French/Twentieth Century Fox Film
In “Jojo Rabbit,” Jojo (Roman Griffin Davis) has dinner with his imaginary friend Adolf Hitler (writer-director Taika Waititi) and his mother, Rosie (Scarlett Johansson). The film is billed as “an anti-hate satire.”

Political satire offers more than comic relief; it cuts to the bone in order to right wrongs. But is there room for satire in a world where outlandish headlines already border on the absurd?


The Monitor's View

Reuters
Ethiopia's Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed

Anger is such an accepted part of modern politics and statecraft that its opposite, patience, is too little noticed. Case in point: Who is grateful for the European Union’s forbearance toward Britain as it sorts out Brexit? Or who notes Mexico’s quiet restraint in the face of difficult demands on migration and trade from the United States?

One place where patience is now on full display is Africa’s second most populous country, Ethiopia. In 2018 a new leader, Abiy Ahmed, took over as prime minister from authoritarian rulers and immediately set free political dissidents and revived democracy. There was just one problem. The new freedoms also unleashed deep tensions among the country’s 80-some ethnic groups that had been suppressed by previous governments and could now easily complain of being marginalized.

Last year, Ethiopia had the world’s highest level of violence-related internal displacement – almost 2.9 million people out of 105 million citizens. Mr. Abiy, who is Africa’s youngest leader, is now touring the country asking for patience from ethnic groups demanding referendums on whether they can set up their own regional entity, a right allowed under the constitution. At least 11 groups have submitted such bids. Ethiopia already has nine ethnic-based regional states.

In July, violence broke out in one minority community, the Sidama ethnic group. On Sunday, Mr. Abiy visited the Kafficho group, which is also demanding a federal state. “If you think that statehood will solve your problems, that’s a shortcut,” he said, asking it instead to help build “a great Ethiopia.”

Mr. Abiy sees patience as just one part of his strategy to rely on love and forgiveness to revive Ethiopia and unite its diverse people. His Ministry of Peace has organized the return of most displaced people to their areas of origin. He is eager to hold elections next May that will be free and fair enough to help shape a stronger Ethiopian identity. The country will be a model of peace and development, he said, “by loving each other and casting away the spirit of hatred and revenge.”

His task – creating a citizen-based nationalism to replace ethnic-based nationalism – is a long one. It requires him to keep reminding Ethiopians to be grateful for reforms already underway. No wonder he asks for patience. The virtue is built on an appreciation of steady if ofttimes slow progress.


A Christian Science Perspective

About this feature

Each weekday, the Monitor includes one clearly labeled religious article offering spiritual insight on contemporary issues, including the news. The publication – in its various forms – is produced for anyone who cares about the progress of the human endeavor around the world and seeks news reported with compassion, intelligence, and an essentially constructive lens. For many, that caring has religious roots. For many, it does not. The Monitor has always embraced both audiences. The Monitor is owned by a church – The First Church of Christ, Scientist, in Boston – whose founder was concerned with both the state of the world and the quality of available news.

With war drums beating in the Middle East, it’s easy to wonder, can cycles of violence and revenge ever be broken? Here’s an article that considers the idea that God’s children are made to feel and express peace, not conflict.


A message of love

Luis Cortes/Reuters
Supporters wait for Mexico's President Andrés Manuel López Obrador to shout the “Cry of Independence” as Mexico marks its independence from Spain at the National Palace in Mexico City Sept. 15, 2019. “Me canso ganso” is a popular phrase with AMLO that means “I’m as good as my word.” Ganso is goose in Spanish.
( The illustrations in today’s Monitor Daily are by Karen Norris and Jacob Turcotte. )

A look ahead

Thanks for joining us today. Come back tomorrow when our week of Covering Climate Now continues with a collaboration between me and Honolulu Civil Beat’s Nathan Eagle exploring Hawaii’s pioneering quest to wean itself off fossil fuels.

More issues

2019
September
16
Monday

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