The League of Extraordinary Autocrats | Cold War! Part Deux | Auf Wiedersehen Merkel

Bolsonaro Won. So Now What?: Now that Jair Bolsonaro has decidedly won Brazil’s presidential election, the likely experiment in return to dictatorship will begin. It remains to be seen whether he will tone down his demagogic rhetoric against minorities, women and the LGBT community, or whether those prejudices will become policy. Or whether he can reduce crime and restore security by relaxing gun laws and advocating for more citizens to self-arm. Bolsonaro claims he will be a “defender of democracy” and uphold the constitution, but that would be a reversal of three decades in which he praised dictatorship and defended the killing of opponents. One thing Bolsonaro has said he definitely would not protect is the Amazon rainforests, or the indigenous tribes living there.

Kyle Pope of the Columbia Journalism Review has studied the parallels between Bolsonaro and President Trump. Pope said: “The things that Donald Trump outlined and the signals that (Trump) gave during the campaign (Bolsonaro) carried through with.” Some have called Bolsonaro the Trump of the Tropics. But others say comparing Bolsonaro with Trump is inaccurate. Instead, they say, Brazil’s president-elect is more like Rodrigo Duterte of the Philippines. On Monday Trump tweeted that he had congratulated Bolsonaro, adding the two had agreed to “work closely together on Trade, Military and everything else!”

Additional Read: The Women Supporting Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro. Despite being known for frequent offensive remarks about women, Bolsonaro received the votes of many who liked his hard-line agenda on crime. (NYT)

Indonesian Plane Crash: A new Indonesian jetliner carrying 189 people crashed into the Java sea Monday shortly after taking off from Jakarta. All on board were presumed dead. A few hours after the crash a team of 30 divers began looking for the plane’s black boxes. The Boeing 737 Max 8 had been delivered to Lion Air in August and had flown just 800 hours; however, it had experienced an unspecified technical problem the day before when flying from Bali to Jakarta. Lion Air’s president said the issue had been resolved “according to procedure.” Indonesia’s aviation sector has been troubled for years by safety concerns. (NYT)

Cold War 2: Colder and More Complicated: Now that President Trump has decided to abandon the 31-year old nuclear arms treaty that ended the Cold War, and appears ready and willing to plunge into a new 1950s-style arms race with not only Russia but China as well, new anxieties are arising in a Europe already mistrustful of Trump’s “America First” foreign and trade policies. The move is bound to create another rift between Washington and its European allies, and it’s exactly the kind of fracture inside NATO that Russian President Putin has been trying to create. (NYT)

Well, Isn’t That Just Not Peachy: Climate change is going to affect the crops we grow and the places where they’re grown. As temperatures rise, certain crops will have to move to higher and cooler latitudes. Other crops will be compromised by increased intensive storms, or lack of water and drought. Most affected crops will be wheat, peaches, corn, coffee and almonds. India’s wheat production will suffer as heat intensifies. California’s peach crop will suffer because trees won’t have enough “chilling hours” in wintertime to set their fruit. Coffee can’t take extreme cold, or extreme heat either. Almonds require lots of water at specific times; weather patterns will change that. And as for all that corn in Iowa? One food expert says: “By 2100, the Corn Belt is going to be in Canada, not the United States.” (NPR)

– “Four times as tall as the Statue of Liberty: India’s new monument to its ‘Iron Man’: …it will give India bragging rights to the world’s tallest statue — a nearly 600-foot creation that says as much about India’s global aspirations as it does about the political ego of its leader.” (WaPo)

– “A new migrant caravan from El Salvador is making its way north:Migrants say they are fleeing violence, corruption and unemployment. Many see the caravan as their best chance of migrating safely to the United States given the dangers of crossing Mexico.” (WaPo)

Auf Wiedersehen Merkel: It will seem strange talking about Germany, and not Angela Merkel, in the same breath. She’s been chair of the ruling Christian Democrats (CDU) party since 2000 and chancellor since 2005. But on Monday, Merkel said she would not be standing as party leader at the CDU conference in December, nor will she seek another term as chancellor at Germany’s next federal elections in 2021. If called up in snap elections before 2021, she will not serve. She’s serious about retiring.

Many have hailed the 64-year old as the world’s most powerful woman and the de facto leader of Europe. She has overseen Germany’s stability and prosperity for years. But in 2015, her humanitarian move to keep Germany’s borders open at the height of Europe’s migrant crisis became political suicide. More than one million asylum seekers flooded into the country, leaving it deeply polarized and fueling the rise of the far-right. Recent regional elections in Hesse and Bavaria were disastrous for her CDU and its Bavaria-only sister party, leading Merkel to say the results were a “clear signal that things can’t go on as they are”. After Merkel’s announcement, a brief drop in the euro reflected anxiety at the prospective departure of the cautious and experienced German chancellor; it also jump-started activity among candidates of different parties jockeying for position.

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Going Cabinet Shopping: President Trump has already cast off eight cabinet officials, and after the midterm elections several more are likely to go. It would be a major disruption, even for an administration ever in flux, and is certain to cause bloody Senate confirmation battles. The list includes UN Ambassador Nikki Haley, who announced her departure at year’s end last month, embattled Attorney General Jeff Sessions, Defense Secretary James Mattis, Interior Secretary Ryan Kinke, Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, and Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen, a close ally of Chief of Staff John Kelly. One Republican close to the White House spun the upcoming evacuation this way: “The president is looking to get better performers…Trump wants the strongest A-team going into 2020.” (Politico)

– “Red-Hot Economy? Women Aren’t Convinced: Men feel better about the economy than they have in over a decade. Women are far more skeptical. And the sharp divide has emerged since President Trump was elected two years ago.” (NYT)

– “A 14-year-long oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico verges on becoming one of the worst in U.S. history: Between 300 and 700 barrels of oil per day have been spewing from a site 12 miles off the Louisiana coast since 2004, when an oil-production platform owned by Taylor Energy sank in a mudslide triggered by Hurricane Ivan.” (WaPo)

– “Coastal Pacific Oxygen Levels Now Plummet Once A Year: Hypoxia is a condition in which the ocean water close to the seafloor has such low levels of dissolved oxygen that the organisms living down there die.” (NPR)

– “The battle to curb our appetite for concrete: We extract billions of tonnes of sand and gravel each year to make concrete for the building industry, and this is having an increasing environmental impact as beaches and river beds are stripped, warn campaigners.” (BBC)

– “These Americans fled the country to escape their giant student debt: His debt is currently on its way to default. But more than 9,000 miles away from Colorado, Haag said, his student loans don’t feel real anymore.” We should call them exgraduates. If you’re feeling the crushing weight of loans can also just move to…Maine? (CNBC)

– “Superfoods Are a Marketing Ploy: Blueberries and macadamia nuts aren’t that good for you.” (Atlantic)

– “Alienation is the most powerful online brand: Do you ever wonder what being online is doing to you?” lol lmao 😛 haha no way 8-). (Verge)

– “Cesar Sayoc’s Home Was Foreclosed On By Steve Mnuchin’s Bank, Using Dodgy Paperwork” (Intercept)

– “Work was once the way to a better life. Not any more: A job that provides rising living standards is a thing of the past. Now the route to wealth is through property and pensions” (Guardian)

– “Making Sense of the Selling in the Stock Market: Some stock declines are more foreboding than others.” (NYT)

“and we don’t care about the young folks

talkin’ ’bout the young style

and we don’t care about the old folks

talkin’ ’bout the old style too”

– Young Folks by Peter Bjorn and John

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