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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