The Good news: less terrorism; the bad news: Corruption still rules

 the bad news: Tribal and criminal gang related deaths, and corruption is still big in a lot of countries.

transcript here.

the article notes that lot of corruption goes with tribalism and stress on "us vs them": So if you steal or take a bribe, it is justified to help your family/clan. 

And of course that includes killing those who try to stop you. (e.g. a lot of the political murders in our area of the Philippines was over who got to stay in office to have access to all that lovely money. 

That's how our nephew was killed in the crossfire of a targeted hit. (and even though the Catholic church is pretending to be horrified at Duterte's trigger happy cops killing drug pushers, ironically the guy who paid for the hit was buried with full Catholic honors, including a KofC honor guard....The bad news is that the virus has weakened Duterte's hold on rogue cops and hit men: because he hasn't gotten to the root of things (i.e. getting rid of crooked politicians) there have been several murders over land grabs over the last few weeks, so it looks like things are going back to the "OK Corral" type murders of the past. LINK 

LINK2

Sigh.

as SP notes: it's hard to change a culture.

A major misunderstanding many political and military leaders make is to underestimate the amount of time it takes to fundamentally change a nation from a source of war and disorder to one of peace, prosperity and unity.

 

The fundamental misunderstanding is that the lack of civil society, as in a widely accepted set of cultural and political practices that create widespread trust, means that there is no quick fix for a chaotic area mired in war and mayhem. It takes decades or generations of sustained effort to achieve a civil society. Without a civil society to work with the best you can do is pacify. That’s why so many peacekeeping efforts never seem to end. 

On the other hand, nations with a civil society, like Japan and Germany after World War II, can change swiftly and effectively. That is why nations with lots of corruption and not much human development are so prone to violence and wars that never seems to end.

they also describe the concept of Empires: Something that keeps happening over and over again. It is easier to understand Russia, Iran, the Caliphate, Turkey, and China if you know a bit about their history. 

again, from the SP article:

In the east there is China, where the current dynasty is actually a bunch of communist party leaders trying to stay in power using the appeal of lost, several centuries earlier, imperial glories. Just as Hitler described his imperial effort as the “Fourth Reich (empire)” in the tradition of ancient Rome followed by the Holy Roman Empire and the 19th century German Reich, so does China claim legitimacy because of ancient claims by earlier Chinese empires.

and like the Germans, they think the Han are superior to the rest of us peons. Which explains the Chinese aggression against the Philippines in the West Philippine sea. The Philippines is unlikely to fight back, although Viet Nam, who once suffered as one of their colonies, has fought at least two minor wars over their aggression over the last 40 years.

But SP points out that two of their neighbors (India and Russia) have nukes and might not submit without fighting back.