The Destructive Force of Mother Nature

The horrors of Mother Nature were very clear this year as many places were blasted by the weather.

The US was hit with a number of destructive storms. Oklahoma was hit on the 31^st of May by a massive tornado. Named the Moore Tornado after the small city it had obliterated. The storm unfortunately claimed 24 lives. What made the Moore Tornado so horrifying was its sheer size, at a width of 4.2km (2.6 miles) it is the widest tornado ever recorded.

Source: Guardian

Unfortunately for America the Moore, Oklahoma tornado wasn’t the only natural disaster to hit the country. California was hit by particularly bad wildfires this year, several people died as a result. Yet it was Australia that received the most damage thanks to wildfires. Unseasonably high temperatures resulted in much of Australia being consumed by fire in October. Although fires raged only 70km west of Sydney, the highly populated city was spared any damage. The Australian wildfires did produce this photo of a family sheltering under a jetty. The image went viral as soon as it was released to the press.

India was hit unfortunately, by the largest Cyclone in over a decade. Cyclone Pailan struck India in October 2013 and affected the lives of over 13 million people. Considering how populated the area is, it is lucky that ‘only’ 45 people died.

The biggest loser in 2013 was the Philippines. On the 15^th of October (what is it with October?) an earthquake struck the middle of the Philippines and resulted in 222 people being reported dead. To make matters worse, the most destructive Typhoon in the history of the Philippines made landfall. It had one-minute sustained winds at 315km/h (196mph), which would make it the strongest typhoon ever recorded. With that in mind it is easy to see how it could claim the lives of 6,155 and cost $1.5 billion in damage.

The destructive force of Typhoon Haiyan
source: BBC

Now let’s talk about global warming. The planet is getting warmer and storms are becoming more destructive. Humans are the primary cause of it. This is not my opinion. I am not a global warming scientist and I am by no means an expert. So I defer to the scientific community to evaluate the situation. 99.9% of scientists who have studied the facts have come to the conclusion that there is man-made climate change.

Yet despite the scientific community’s so certain that global warming is real, the world has been slow to react. In the short run making your country greener is very expensive. Countries that are in the process of industrialising think that it is hypocritical of already industrialised countries to ask them to stop polluting. Especially after the industrialised countries have been doing it for up to 250 years!

We need to tackle global warming now. 2013 did not go well, let’s make 2014 the greenest year ever! 

Gay Rights - The Bad News

Unfortunately the news surrounding gay rights has not been entirely rosy. The West did appear to move forward together, the same cannot be said of other countries. The biggest anti-gay news came out of Russia and India which seriously disappointed gay rights activists. Africa and the Middle East continued their terrible reputation with gay rights.

Gay Rights – Russia

When the Soviet Union finally collapsed in 1991 the new Russia seemed eager to show its progressive side on social issues. In 1993 gay sex was legalised, four years later transgender people could legally change their gender and in 1999 homosexuality was declassified as a mental illness. Then came Vladimir Putin, he rose to Prime Minister in 1999 and after only a few months became President following Boris Yeltsin’s resignation. Originally he did nothing to gay rights, but as the years progressed he began to ally himself with the homophobic Russian Orthodox Church. To help cement the support of the religious right, he (and his United Russia party) began hacking away at gay rights. Although homosexuality is still legal in Russia, a law was passed last year that made ‘homosexual propaganda’ illegal.

The law itself is truly terrible and stops any sort of gay pride event or meeting in which homosexuality is discussed positively. In Russia if you break the law as an ordinary citizen you are fined 5,000 Russian roubles (£93/$153/€110). For public officials the fine is 50,000 roubles (£932/$1,525/€1,102), the maximum fine for organisations is 1 million roubles (£18,631/$30,500/€22,037) and they must halt activity for up to 90 days. If you try and ‘promote homosexuality’ over the internet you can get fined 100,000 roubles (£1,863/$3,050/€2,204)! If you are a foreigner you can expect to get detained for 15 days before being deported, after paying your 100,000 rouble fine of course.

The disgraceful treatment of gays has resulted in people calling for a boycott of the Winter Olympics, which are to be held in Sochi, Russia later this year. Particularly vocal have been George Takei, an American actor, and Stephen Fry, a veteran British broadcaster. Both are openly gay and have drawn on their substantial fan base to call for a boycott of the games. In Fry’s letter to Prime Minister David Cameron he compared Putin’s treatment of gays to Hitler’s treatment of Jews in 1936, when the Olympic Games were held in Berlin. It is worth noting that Fry is of Jewish descent and had relatives die in the Holocaust.

 

Russian gay rights supporters being beaten by police
source: the Guardian

Gay Rights Elsewhere

India was the only other country to produce major anti-gay news. In 2009 the Delhi High Court ruled that Section 377 was unconstitutional and that all prohibitions on consenting sexual activities between adults that did not involve a commercial transaction were also unconstitutional. Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code was passed in 1860 by the ruling British government. Unfortunately the Supreme Court of India decided in December that the colonial era law was actually constitutional. This meant that gay sex was once again illegal in India.

It is a bit ironic when you think about it: When this law was passed in 1860, Britain was highly homophobic whereas India was not. Fast forward 160 years and you find a homophobic India and Britain leading the pro-gay rights charge!

Uganda has been at the centre of attention for several years now in relation to gay rights. Homosexuality is already illegal in Uganda, being found guilty of it could result in up to seven years of imprisonment. Yet for some that is not enough! In 2009 MP David Bahati introduced a bill that would call for the death penalty for people who had gay sex on multiple occasions. It was dubbed the ‘kill the gays bill’ and got immediate international attention, which resulted in it failing. Then last year the Speaker of Parliament, Rebecca Kadaga, introduced a new bill that was not quite as harsh as the original bill, but still demanded the death penalty for ‘aggravated’ homosexuality. That bill passed Parliament last month and new awaits President Yoweri Museveni’s signature.

More minor bad news for gay rights came out of Croatia, Zimbabwe and Australia. In Zimbabwe a referendum was held at the same time as other elections that banned same-sex marriage constitutionally. Considering Zimbabwe was never going to legalise same-sex marriage, this has little affect. Similarly Croatia had a referendum in which marriage was defined as being between one man and one woman. The result was 66% against marriage equality. It wasn’t entirely bad news though as the government immediately announced that it would try and pass a civil union bill this year. In Australia the Australian Capital Territory (Canberra) became the first Australian jurisdiction to legalise same-sex marriage! Hurray! Not so fast, unfortunately the federal government challenged the constitutionality of the same-sex marriage law, the court unfortunately ruled in the government’s favour. This means that gay marriage will not be becoming legal any time soon in Australia.  

New World Order - India

Population: 1.2 billion

Area:  3.2 million km²

GDP: $ 1.7 trillion

GDP (per capita): $ 1,400

Economic Growth: 6.5%

Democracy? Yes

The booming country is the world’s largest democracy, with a population of 1.2 billion and rising. Some projections believe that the consequences of China’s one child policy and India’s rapid population growth will mean that India will have the world’s largest population. Yet despite a similar population, India has a long way to go before it catches up with China in terms of India’s economy. The Indian economy is one seventh the size of the Chinese economy. Indian growth is also smaller than China. Yet India does have one big advantage over China, it is a democracy. The importance of this is that it makes India more stable, as people do not need to turn to violent protest to change their government. Rather they simply try to elect leaders that reflect their opinions.

India does have many challenges to face, one of the most prominent is the huge amount of poverty, 42% of Indians live on less than $1.25 a day and unemployment stands at 9.8%. Indian industry is also not as good as it could be, agriculture still makes up 52% of the economy with industry and services making up 14% and 34% respectively.

Literacy also poses a serious threat to Indian growth, currently the literacy rate is only 74%, significantly below the world average of 84%. The Indian government knows that it will need to tackle this issue soon, how can India expect to grow if it has the largest population of illiterate people. At the current, poor, rate of growth India will only eliminate illiteracy in 2060, 48 years away! This is simply not good enough, the graph below compares India’s literacy rate to other countries. Note just how high China is.

Although India has massive problems in the areas of poverty, education, infrastructure and industry, this can and will be remedied. India has a lot of potential, there are many opportunities for it to grow, but the government must be prepared to take risks if the country is to achieve greatness. 

The extreme poverty people experience in the slums must be rectified soon

The New World Order

Between the Age of Discovery in the 15^th century and World War Two, European nations ruled the world, both directly and indirectly. The colonial Empires of Spain and Portugal dominating in the early years of Empire, but they were eventually leapfrogged by the French and British Empires, and to a lesser extent the Dutch Empire. Russia, Germany, Austria and Italy also played an important role, especially in the later years. By the time the 20^th century dawned the world was changing, Japan and the US were emerging powers and Germany was threatening the balance of power within Europe itself. The two World Wars that followed devastated Europe, both economically and politically, immediately after WWII the empires of France and Britain fell apart and the UK handed superpower status to the USSR and USA. Yet Europe was far from unimportant, the USSR was a European country after all, and Germany, France and Britain still commanded significant influence. But with the fall of the USSR in the early 1990s, for the first time in modern history, the most powerful and important nation was not a European one, rather the USA.

So I think I’ve made my point, countries rise and fall and everyone has to adapt to the new world order brought about every century or so. Although Europe is still far from unimportant, of the top 20 economies, nine are European and of the five countries with a veto on the UN Security Council, three are European.

The Question is where is the world heading? Who will be the new countries on the scene, which nations will challenge western power?

The truth is nobody really knows, but there are certainly contenders. Over the next few days I will write about countries I believe could take the mantle of power from the West. The big debate surrounds whether China will eventually best the USA or will another country be the one to overtake America?

The following are the countries I believe have a chance of besting the west:

1.       China – the favourite to become the next superpower

2.       India – A rising nation with a population set to become bigger than China

3.       Brazil – the big boy of the South American economies

4.       Mexico – the rising star that may not be if drug lords have their way

5.       Indonesia – the island nation could be a surprise winner

6.       Africa – as a continent it will not take power any time soon – but its day will surely come 

New World Order Countries in red