Open Europe worries about whether the critical reformers are being edged out by the “malcontents bloc.”
Paolo Bernardini, interviewed about Venetian secession.
Biden affirms Moldovan independence.
In praise of Abe, from across the Sea of Japan.
Sailer writes earlier this week that the Indian election shows that as “strange as it may seem to consumers of the American press, conservative nationalism is the leading political trend of the 2010s.”
The Dalai Lama congratulates Modi.
It may well be the most vibrant democracy in the emerging world, but India does not believe in promoting democratic values abroad. India guards the sanctity of national sovereignty almost as zealously as China and Russia do, and it abstained on U.N. Security Council votes on intervention in Libya and Syria. In an essay in the volume Shaping the Emerging World: India and the Multilateral Order, David Malone, Canada’s former high commissioner to India and a scholar of the United Nations, along with Rohan Mukherjee, a doctoral student, note a strange paradox: As India has grown stronger, it has become more defensive about sovereignty and less prepared to defend the international order. This inevitably places it at odds with the United States, the chief guarantor of that order.
Southern Yemenis reject unity.
This guy is claiming Maine will have an independence vote in 2018. He’s quoted in Todd Starnes’ book, by Fox News, is in the Maine State Militia, and has apparently threatened abortion clinics.
35-40 Confederate graves discovered outside Lynchburg.
Kevin Taylor from the Wetumpka calls out the Southern nationalists, but it sure doesn’t read like his heart’s in it.
Patrick Samuels for some reason published on an IDF blog making the case for secession in America.
Vice on the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic.
Rory Stewart’s Scottish charm offensive.
Local New Hampshire capo on purging.
*****
Evan Kuross sums things up:
Today, two parallel counterintuitive phenomena are taking place. One is the increasing self-realization of independence for small nations of people, in a world where conventional war between nation-states now rarely takes place and where borders can be protected by international law rather than solely a powerful central government. Secondly, states are binding themselves together in supranational organizations like the EU or Mercosur.
Therein lies the paradox: the demand for self-rule whilst recognizing that, if achieved, sovereignty will quickly be surrendered to supranational or global institutions via globalization and free trade. But culture, religion and history do matter and, as such, sub-nationalization is finally achievable in an age where threats are fewer (externally as well as internally) and these distinct identities are able to flourish, even as economic ties become stronger than ever.
That’s all for now.
“Usually, that’s the way it goes, but every once in awhile, it goes the other way too.” — ‘True Romance’