Tuesday, March 17, 2015

France, Germany join Chinese-led Asia bank; Oil glut pulls prices to six-year low; The danger of erasing history

1 France, Germany join Chinese-led Asia bank (BBC) France and Germany are to join the UK in becoming members of a Chinese-led Asian development bank. The finance ministries of both countries confirmed that they would be applying for membership of the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB).

Last week, the US issued a rare rebuke to the UK over its decision to become a member of the AIIB. The US considers the AIIB a rival to the Western-dominated World Bank. The UK was the first Western economy to apply for membership of the bank. The US has questioned the governance standards at the new institution, which is seen as spreading Chinese "soft power".

The AIIB, which was created in October by 21 countries, led by China, will fund Asian energy, transport and infrastructure projects. These nations came together last year to sign a memorandum for the bank's establishment, including Singapore, India and Thailand.


2 Oil glut pulls prices to six-year low (Nicole Friedman in The Wall Street Journal) US oil prices slid to a fresh six-year low Tuesday on expectations that domestic crude stockpiles have risen to a record high. Light, sweet oil for April delivery settled down 42 cents, or 1%, at $43.46 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange, the lowest settlement since March 11, 2009.

Stored supplies of crude oil in the US are at the highest level in about 80 years, according to the US Energy Information Administration, and production continues to grow. Demand is typically restrained at this time of year as refiners process less crude while performing seasonal maintenance.

The EIA is set to release inventory data for the week ended March 13 on Wednesday, and traders expect it to show another gain in crude stockpiles. Concerns are mounting that oil inventories could reach maximum storage capacity in some locations, which could push down crude prices by limiting the places that producers could sell their crude. Brent, the global benchmark, settled down 43 cents, or 0.8%, at $53.51 a barrel on ICE Futures Europe.


3 The danger of erasing history (Farish A Noor in Straits Times) It has come to light that the ancient city of Nimrud has been bulldozed into oblivion by the radical militant group calling itself the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS), and with that one act of vandalism, much of the legacy of the Assyrian kingdom of old has been pummelled into extinction.

That vandalism is part of war is as old as war itself, and was something practised by everyone from the Mongols who sacked and burned the libraries of Baghdad to the Nazis who robbed museums across Europe. What is specific about ISIS' brand of vandalism, however, is that it was justified and motivated by a simpler longing for a simpler past, one that is unencumbered by traces of complexity and pluralism which the group so evidently loathes.

ISIS is not the first radical group to claim some sense of moral purpose in its systematic destruction of its own history: The Taleban did the same when it blew up the colossal statues of Bamiyan, despite the appeals by Muslim scholars from other Muslim countries too. Like the Taleban, the adherents of ISIS' ideology believe that the confusion and anxiety that defines their present condition is partly the result of their complex history that gave birth to the complexities of today.

It is a longing for a simple past that drives the likes of ISIS and the Taleban to do what they do. For the adherents of such movements, their simple message with its simple solution can be delivered only in a simplified setting where no alternative world views and thought systems exist. ISIS' longing to create a simpler-than-simple realm, where only one people of one faith community who hold to one culture and abide by one monological worldview, can be realised only once all other alternatives are removed from the equation.

This is a cautionary tale for all of us today, living as we do in a complex world beset by a wide range of challenges: The erasure of history and the denial of our complex past does not, cannot, and will not prepare us for the realities of the complex present.

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