D-Day for international politics

President Macron of France doesn't have to worry about inviting Russians to D-Day. He's a strong-presidency president with time left on his term. That said, any continued talk about getting French troops involved in the Russia-Ukraine War might be a different story!

And, with that, let's jump into a brief roundup of non-US elections.

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In India, Narendra Modi appears to have won a third term, but, with India in a parliamentary system, he'll have to do that as part of a coalition, as the BJP fell short of an outright majority. It wound up about 35 seats, or 7 percentage points, short of a Lok Sabha majority. Dalits and lower-caste Hindus turned against him; the result was bad enough he lost the key state of Uttar Pradesh.

That second link has other takeaways, the biggie being that Thomas Piketty and other economists note that income inequality in Modi's India is worse than in the British Raj! Second-biggest being that Dalits worried that a Modi landslide would mean amending the constitution to eliminating affirmative action for them, and Muslims worrying that the constitution would be amended to eliminate references to India as a secular state.

For me, the question is, will this trim his Hindutva sails, or will it drive him to become even more of what he already is? 

Second question? Has America's own Hindutva-fascist Tulsi Gabbard thrown herself off a bridge in despair?

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With Mexico's election just conducted, a retrospective on AMLO from The Nation. The Texas Observer reprints a piece by a consortium of Hispanic journalists that doesn't dive that deep. It's a shame, but not a surprise. 

There's plenty else to dissect about both AMLO and successor Claudia Sheinbaum. One is that — and this gets to the issue of HOW the Observer missed the mark — they're not always what NorteAmericano leftists have cracked them up as being. For example, per this piece, neither is a good environmentalist. And, while neither is an American neoliberal, overall, neither is as leftist as the above cracking up. Or, another way, the actual President Lopez Obrador is not that close to the previous 2006 presidential candidate Lopez Obrador.

Unless you're the National Endowment for Democracy, which decided to salute Sheinbaum's election by doing a hack job hit piece on AMLO.

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Written last week, before all votes were counted, this Counterpunch piece sums up the clusterfuck of the South African elections. The ANC losing its majority, but still able to govern with coalition partners will likely further destabilize that country. Unfortunately, two of the most likely partners to coalition with are run by blatant ethnopopulists with their own problems.

As for the actual counting? The ANC barely hit 40 percent nationwise, down from 57 percent. The MK Party, run by one of those ethnopopulists, former president and former ANC head Jacob Zuma, soared to 15 percent. ANC leadership insisted Cyril Ramphosa will remain president, as if there's much of a choice inside the ANC or from the partners. But, that may be just whistling in the dark. Per the first link, Zuma thinks Ramphosa is behind his previous corruption conviction and ongoing woes, and says MK will not coalition with the ANC if Ramphosa is still in power.

That said, per that "barely hit" link? Yes, it's good that the ANC has lost its absolute majority. It might be forced to look at itself.

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In all three countries, with two of them members of the "BRICS" acronym group, the income inequality growth will be a lead anchor on their economic short-term futures. China's also dealing with that, but a population on the decline will produce some pressures and alleviate others. It's hard to imagine Modi, with the world's largest population and a hate for Dalits as well as Muslims, really adjusting much.

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Update, June 9: The AfD was CRUSHING IT in Germany in EU-wide elections for the European Parliament, with Chancellor Sgt. Scholz and his Social Democrats being the chief crushees.

The problem in Zimbabwe connected to South Africa

This waggish post at A Fistful of Euros (a great Euro blog) about the future of Zimbabwe, President Robert Mugabe and one-time challenger Morgan Tsvangirai says it all, in talking about the non-role that South African President Thabo Mbeki played:

Second, the regional approach to crisis resolution has failed i.e. leaving it to the Southern African Development Community. And it has failed because of Thabo Mbeki [Incidentally, I once heard a South African political comedian observe that you can't spell Thabo without Botha].

From a scientific point of view, that pair of sentences is carrying a boatload of baggage.

So much for China supporting African rights and democracy

Chinese troops have been seen on the streets of Mutare, Zimbabwe’s third-largest city. Zimbabwe’s democratically-ousted, but refusing-to-leave-office President Robert Mugabe signed trade pacts with China earlier this decade after Western ostracism. However, I don’t believe military forces are usually “traded” items.

Unfortunately, arms and munitions all too often are, and China has been caught trying to send a boatload of them to Zimbabwe:

China's support for President Mugabe’s regime has been highlighted by the arrival in South Africa of a ship carrying a large cache of weapons destined for Zimbabwe's armed forces. Dock workers in Durban refused to unload it.

The 300,000-strong South African Transport and Allied Workers Union (Satawu) said it would be “grossly irresponsible” to touch the cargo of ammunition, grenades and mortar rounds on board the Chinese ship An Yue Jiang anchored outside the port.

Three million rounds of AK-47 ammunition, 1,500 rocket-propelled grenades and more than 3,000 mortar rounds and mortar tubes are among the cargo on the Chinese ship, according to copies of the inventory published by a South African newspaper

According to Beeld, the documentation for the shipment was completed on 1 April, three days after the presidential vote.

That’s enough to start a war — or a civil war.

Robert Mugabe is not going to leave peacefully.

And he’s sure as hell not going to leave peacefully with blank-check support from his southern neighbor:

A South African government spokesman, Themba Maseko, said it would be difficult to stop the shipment.

Well, of course it will be difficult to stop as long as South African President Thabo Mbeki treats Mugabe with kid gloves. Which he has given no signs of stopping. What if his government reaches a deal with Beijing to take a “cut” while remaining a conduit to landlocked Zimbabwe?