WHETHER one takes it as a warning or just the effect of a natural course of events, the fact remains that social ferment is going on all over that could undermine global equanimity.
In the US, there is the worrisome report that a tea party group “compares President Barack Obama to Adolf Hitler and Vladimir Lenin.” The North Iowa Tea Party said that in displaying the bill board on Obama, it intends to send an anti-socialist message to the Americans.
The anti-socialist moves began when Obama announced earlier his opposition to the efforts of Arizona to pass an immigration law that requires police, while enforcing other laws, to question a person’s immigration status if there’s reasonable suspicion that the person is in the country illegally.
It also requires immigrants to carry their immigration documents. Other states indicate they would take similar move.
Eventually, the matter of President Obama’s citizenship came into focus with the rumor that he had refused to show a valid birth certificate.
And then early this week, in the State of Utah, a list of “1,300 illegals” was mailed around, complete with personal information, social security numbers, birth dates, workplaces, addresses and phone numbers, with the demand that those on the list be deported immediately.
Veils
In France, after days of debate in the Lower House, a bill banning the wearing of a face veil was approved.
Henceforth women are no longer to wear “burqa-style Islamic veils” as part of an effort to define and protect French values,
a move that has disconcerted “many in the country’s large Muslim community.”
While the bill is said to be controversial abroad, it is popular in France, and is being debated across Europe.
Twisted parliament
In Japan, report had it that the emergence of a “twisted parliament” does not bode well for the Japanese economy.
Twisted Parliament is used to refer to a split leadership in Japan’s parliament, where the Democratic Party coalition holds
overwhelming control of the Lower House, while it has lost dominance in the Upper House during last week’s elections.
This may result in policy gridlock since both Houses must pass legislations.
Japan being the globe’s second largest economy faces the challenge of a bloated budget deficit, actually in a similar situation as the Philippines where the budgetary deficit has gone beyond acceptable limits.
Faced with President Noynoy Aquino’s vow to declare war against poverty, and a possible split leadership between the House and the Senate, poverty alleviation becomes political fodder for the generation, indeed, of likely social ferment.