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THESE DAYS IN HISTORY
June 3, 1940: World War II’s Battle of Dunkirk ends with the last British soldiers evacuating that city and leaving the Nazis victorious. At Winston Churchill’s order, the Royal Navy returned to Dunkirk the following day to evacuate roughly 26,000 French soldiers, so the full evacuation wasn’t completed until June 4. In all the British military (aided by dozens of small civilian vessels) evacuated 338,226 soldiers from Dunkirk, along with another roughly 192,000 evacuated from other parts of France over the next three weeks. The Nazis rolled into Paris on June 14, completing their conquest of France. Britain left a considerable quantity of materiel behind but the successful rescue of most of the personnel who were trapped at Dunkirk prevented a major defeat from reaching catastrophic levels.
June 4, 1615: The army of the Tokugawa Shogunate captures Osaka, ending a siege that had begun the previous month. This was the second Tokugawa siege of Osaka in less than a year—the initial siege, from November 1614-January 1615, had ended with a peace agreement that quickly collapsed. With its capture of Osaka, the shogunate was able to force the disbanding of its ruling Toyotomi clan, the last serious obstacle to full Tokugawa control over Japan.
A 17th century Japanese painting of the siege (Wikimedia Commons)
INTERNATIONAL
Worldometer’s coronavirus figures for June 4:
6,692,686 confirmed coronavirus cases worldwide (+129,990 since yesterday)
392,286 reported fatalities (+5499 since yesterday)
New climate data shows that despite the pandemic-induced drop in emissions, things are still heading in the wrong direction:
According to readings from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the amount of CO2 in the air in May 2020 hit an average of slightly greater than 417 parts per million (ppm). This is the highest monthly average value ever recorded, and is up from 414.7 ppm in May of last year.
Carbon dioxide levels are the highest they’ve been in human history, and likely the highest in 3 million years. The last time there was this much CO2 in the atmosphere, global average surface temperatures were significantly warmer than they are today, and sea levels were 50 to 80 feet higher.
The continuing rise in CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere may sound surprising in light of recent findings that the coronavirus pandemic, and the associated lockdowns, had led to a steep drop in global greenhouse gas emissions, peaking at a 17 percent decline in early April.
But the total amount of CO2 that winds up in the atmosphere is driven not only by human emission levels, but also through processes on the land surface (especially forests) and in the oceans that fluctuate on a yearly basis.
According to Scripps, actually slowing the rate of carbon dioxide increase would require a 20-30 percent cut in emissions sustained over a 6-12 month period. Obviously we’re nowhere near either of those benchmarks.
MIDDLE EAST
SYRIA
124 confirmed coronavirus cases (+1)
6 reported fatalities (unchanged)
Syrian media is reporting an Israeli airstrike against targets in Hama province, which it says caused material damage but no casualties. There are no details as yet in terms of what the Israelis targeted.
US and Russian forces reportedly squared off near the northeastern Syrian city of al-Malikiyah, or Dayrik if you prefer its Kurdish name, on Wednesday. This kind of thing is apparently happening more often than you’d like to think, in spite of supposed US and Russian efforts to coordinate their various patrols and sorties. The US continues to squat in northeastern Syria mostly to keep the region’s oil fields from coming back under the control of the Syrian government.
IRAQ
8840 confirmed cases (+672)
271 reported fatalities (+15)
Al-Monitor’s Shelly Kittleson reports that the Iraqi government has begun a new operation to clear the Islamic State out of Kirkuk province. As we’ve noted here there’s been a recent upsurge in IS activity, primarily in a band extending from Saladin province through Kirkuk and into Diyala province in eastern Iraq, so this operation is meant to blunt that resurgence. If it succeeds it will continue into Saladin province as well. But it may also be a political move by new Iraqi Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi. He’s decided to use a mix of military, Interior Ministry, and paramilitary Popular Mobilization Unit forces to carry out this operation, which could be intended to create some semblance of unity among Iraq’s various security forces and maybe establish some government control over the still mostly autonomous PMU.
ISRAEL-PALESTINE
17,495 confirmed cases (+118) in Israel, 464 confirmed cases (+7) in Palestine
291 reported fatalities (unchanged) in Israel, 3 reported fatalities (unchanged) in Palestine
The Kushner Accords and Benjamin Netanyahu’s related plan for Israel to annex parts of the West Bank really have generated a surprising level of backlash from Israeli settler groups:
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu responded to remarks by settler leader David Elhayani that US President Donald Trump and his senior adviser Jared Kushner are not true friends of the State of Israel. In a June 3 statement, Netanyahu strongly condemned Elhayani's words, saying, “President Trump is a great friend of the State of Israel. He has led historical moves for the State of Israel, including: Recognizing Israeli sovereignty in the Golan Heights, recognizing Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, moving the US Embassy to Jerusalem and recognizing the legality of settlements in Judea and Samaria," referring to the West Bank.
Earlier in the day, Elhayani, head of the umbrella settler body called the Yesha Council, said, “Trump and Kushner had shown through the proposal that they are not friends of the State of Israel and do not consider the security and settlement interests of the State of Israel."
The comment reflects an escalation in settler rhetoric vis-à-vis the Trump administration and its peace plan. Several leaders of the settlers believe that Trump’s plan and the annexation advanced by Netanyahu will eventually lead to the creation of a Palestinian state, to which they object. Now it seems that parallel to campaigning against Netanyahu’s annexation plan, some settlers intend to campaign against the American plan and perhaps even against Trump himself.
The settlers apparently can’t even abide the very slim possibility envisioned by Kushner that the Palestinians might one day be granted a farcical simulacrum of a state. Ironically, if they wind up alienating Trump—and there are signs that’s starting to happen—they could wind up doing more for the Palestinian cause than any Israeli has done since…well, maybe ever.
QATAR
63,741 confirmed cases (+1581)
45 reported fatalities (unchanged)
The Trump administration is reportedly pressuring Saudi Arabia and the UAE to ease their blockade of Qatar in at least one respect: overflight rights. Barred from using Saudi or Emirati airspace, Qatari commercial flights are forced to fly over Iran, which the Iranian government is happy to allow them to do for a price. The administration views the fees Qatar pays to use Iran’s airspace as undermining its “maximum pressure” campaign to squeeze the Iranian economy.
IRAN
164,270 confirmed cases (+3574)
8071 reported fatalities (+59)
The Iranian government has indeed released US Navy veteran Michael White, who’s been in Iranian custody since 2018, as their end of a prisoner swap involving recently deported Iranian scientist Sirous Asgari. Both US and Iranian officials have denied that these cases were part of an organized swap, but that’s not terribly surprising. In addition to Asgari’s deportation, US officials have also reportedly agreed to allow an Iranian-American doctor, Majid Taheri, to visit his family in Iran and obtain medical treatment while he’s there. Taheri is in US custody on sanctions violations, though I don’t know any details beyond that.
I’m not sure when Taheri is supposed to visit Iran but his trip may have to take into account what looks very much like a resurgence of COVID-19 that is now hitting the country. Iran recorded its highest yet daily increase in coronavirus cases on Thursday and has now recorded three straight days in which the number of new cases exceeded 3000. A spate of internal travel during last month’s Eid holiday may have contributed to the new wave of infections, though most of the blame probably rests with a faster-than-advisable lifting of Iran’s lockdown. If Iranian officials have to try to reimpose a strict lockdown it could have devastating economic consequences, and that’s assuming the Iranian people accept the reimposition without objection.
ASIA
INDIA
226,713 confirmed cases (+9889)
6363 reported fatalities (+275)
Foreign Policy reports that there are indications India’s COVID-19 outbreak is moving from cities to the countryside, a troubling trend given that, as meager as India’s medical system is in urban areas, it’s even more meager (meagerer?) in the rest of the country. The Indian government is easing lockdown measures even as the country is experiencing an increase in the number of daily new infections, suggesting a serious spike could be on the horizon.
PHILIPPINES
20,382 confirmed cases (+634)
984 reported fatalities (+10)
With a new United Nations report highlighting his disregard for human rights, Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte is about to sign a new “anti-terrorism” bill that will almost certainly be used to target his political opponents:
The measure, which has passed both houses of Congress, neared finalization as the United Nations released a scathing report that cites widespread human rights violations under Mr. Duterte, including the extrajudicial killing of more than 8,000 people.
Despite years of international and domestic criticism over rights abuses, Mr. Duterte appears eager to double down on his strategy of suppressing dissent and to give the police an even freer hand to crack down.
Critics said the legislation was so broadly written that it would allow the arrest and detention of people without a warrant or a charge for criticizing the government or acts such as causing property damage or carrying a weapon.
Apparently criticizing the government will now be “inciting” terrorism, which is just as bad as actual terrorism. And even if he can’t get his political foes convicted under the new law, Duterte can at least have them detained for up to 24 days without charges. And that will probably give some of his critics pause.
CHINA
83,022 confirmed cases (+1) on the mainland, 1099 confirmed cases (+5) in Hong Kong
4634 reported fatalities (unchanged) on the mainland, 4 reported fatalities (unchanged) in Hong Kong
The Chinese government announced Thursday that it will allow the 95 foreign airlines that suspended service to China due to the pandemic to apply to resume their flights. That presumably includes major US carriers. Consequently, the US government has announced that it will reconsider its decision to suspend all flights by major Chinese carriers, which it had imposed in order to force Beijing to allow US carriers to start flying their Chinese routes again. The Trump administration seems likely to limit those Chinese airlines to the same number of flights that US airlines are permitted by Beijing.
Donald Trump’s offer to mediate between India and China over their ongoing border flare-up has been inexplicably rejected. Officials from both countries are expected to meet this weekend to discuss the situation, but even if they manage to calm things down this time they likely won’t do anything to reverse what’s becoming a very troubling trend:
The latest tensions between China and India have further fuelled both countries’ build-up of troops and weapons to assert territorial claims at their disputed border areas, with China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) stepping up advanced arms testing and training at high altitude.
There has been no official confirmation of the numbers of troops each nation has deployed, but reports have suggested that the PLA has sent multiple advanced weapon systems and refitted fighter jets for operation in high altitude areas of the Tibetan plateau.
The Indian army, too, has moved several battalions from an infantry division usually based in the Ladakh city of Leh, near the border, to “operational alert areas” along the frontier, and reinforcement troops have been brought in.
AFRICA
LIBYA
209 confirmed cases (+13)
5 reported fatalities (unchanged)
Libya’s Government of National Accord announced Thursday that it has regained control of all of Tripoli, presumably bringing to an end the “Libyan National Army’s” attempt to capture the capital. The LNA still holds positions near Tripoli, but the city itself and its suburbs are in GNA hands. The two sides have tentatively begun reopening peace talks so there’s a possibility of a pause in heavy fighting. If the fighting continues or resumes, it will probably center on the LNA’s Tarhouna operating base southeast of Tripoli.
SENEGAL
4021 confirmed cases (+89)
45 reported fatalities (unchanged)
The Senegalese government has announced measures to ease that country’s pandemic lockdown, after protests in Dakar and Touba over the past couple of days. The country’s overnight curfew will be reduced to 11 PM-5 AM and restrictions on internal travel will be relaxed. Those measures, in place since March, have had a particularly devastating impact on drivers and other service workers in both cities.
BURUNDI
63 confirmed cases (unchanged)
1 reported fatality (unchanged)
Burundi’s Constitutional Court on Thursday upheld the results of last month’s presidential election, which had ruling party candidate Evariste Ndayishimiye winning with 68 percent of the vote. Runner up Agathon Rwasa, who finished with 28 percent, challenged the results alleging serious irregularities. Ndayishimiye’s victory is likely good news for outgoing President Pierre Nkurunziza, who considered running again for a controversial fourth term and was convinced to stand down in part by being given the newly created and mostly undefined position of “Supreme Guide.” That position obligates Nkurunziza’s successor to consult with him, a task that Ndayishimiye is more likely to take seriously than Rwasa would have.
MOZAMBIQUE
352 confirmed cases (+36)
2 reported fatalities (unchanged)
Although both Mozambique’s Islamist insurgents (who have pledged themselves to the Islamic State’s “Central African Province”) and its government want to portray the insurgency as a part of the global jihad movement, analysts Hilary Matfess and Alexander Noyes argue that its agenda is much more local than that:
The origins, aims and even name of the shadowy militia operating in Cabo Delgado remain difficult to pin down. When attacks were first reported in 2017, locals referred to the militants as “al-Shabab,” despite a lack of direct ties to the al-Qaida affiliate in East Africa of the same name. The rebels initially referred to themselves as “Ahlu Sunnah Wa-Jamo,” but then took on the name “Ansar al-Sunna” before aligning themselves with ISCAP. According to a report in the online news outlet Africa Confidential, “the insurgents have studiously avoided adopting a unique label and all these titles may be flags of convenience.” A pledge of allegiance to ISCAP is a particularly tenuous connection to the Islamic State, as the strength of the link between the extremist group and its Central African affiliate remains unclear.
As President Filipe Nyusi’s government seeks greater international support to respond to the crisis, it has emphasized the link between the insurgency in Mozambique and transnational jihadist networks, describing the violence as “external aggression” in official statements. Despite these purported international links, the existing evidence suggests that the insurgency should be considered primarily an outgrowth of local economic and political conditions. Compared to other provinces, Cabo Delgado is impoverished and its residents lack access to health and education services. The Islamists’ propaganda has capitalized on these disparities, emphasizing the insurgents’ local connections. In one video, a representative proclaims: “We occupy [the towns] to show that the government of the day is unfair. It humiliates the poor and gives the profit to the bosses.”
EUROPE
RUSSIA
441,108 confirmed cases (+8831)
5384 reported fatalities (+169)
One of the more inexplicable things about Russia’s COVID-19 outbreak has been its surprisingly low mortality rate—just 1.2 percent, far lower than even Germany, whose pandemic response has been widely lauded. But May’s mortality data from St. Petersburg suggests there’s a reason for that incredibly low rate, which is that Russian officials just aren’t counting COVID-19 deaths. The city of St. Petersburg recorded 1552 more deaths in May 2020 than it did in May 2019, an increase of 32 percent year over year. It only recorded 171 COVID-19 deaths for the month. This seems…implausible, to put it mildly.
Russian officials have apparently been very stringent about causes of death, meaning that if a coronavirus patient can technically be said to have died of some other condition that condition is what gets listed as their cause of death—even if they wouldn’t have died had they not been infected. But if just 75 percent of those additional deaths in St. Petersburg could actually be attributed to COVID-19, it would mean an extra thousand deaths added to Russia’s total. Doing likewise for Moscow, which has been home to roughly half of Russia’s total coronavirus cases, would likely bump that death toll up quite a bit.
BELARUS
45,981 confirmed cases (+865)
253 reported fatalities (+5)
Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko chose Roman Golovchenko, most recently the head of Belarus’s military-industrial committee, as his new prime minister on Thursday, replacing the fired Syarhey Rumas. Lukashenko seems to have sacrificed Rumas and his cabinet in an effort to appease the public’s dissatisfaction with his handling of the pandemic and his decision to run for reelection, extending a presidency that archeologists estimate stretches back to the Late Bronze Age. That dissatisfaction has manifested in the form of protests, featuring depictions of Lukashenko as a “cockroach,” that Harvard’s Vitali Shkliarov suggests mark a real shift in Belarusian politics:
It is difficult to overstate how unusual these protests are. Everywhere else in Europe, there is a normal push and pull between government and citizens. In those countries where political protest is an option for citizens, it can serve as an impetus for dialogue or a change in political leadership, forcing a problem into the open or revealing a wound that has long been covered and now needs to heal. Even Russia, with its de facto opposition leader Alexei Navalny, has outlets to organize expressions of political discontent.
But since 1994, protest has never been an option for average Belarusians. Lukashenko, who has been called the last dictator in Europe, has ruled in the absence of all political opposition for nearly three decades. There are no real opposition parties in Belarus, no social movements, no underground online communities. In Lukashenko’s Belarus, when there has been even a hint of unrest—even when silent protesters have stood in a public square for too long—authorities have shut it down swiftly and immediately. In some instances, even pedestrians passing by a peaceful protest have been swept into police vehicles and whisked away—better to get everyone off the street and sort out the protesters from the pedestrians later than let a crowd gather. The political situation may be dire under Vladimir Putin in neighboring Russia, but in Belarus it’s worse than dire—it’s nonexistent.
Or at least that’s what everyone thought. It turns out there has been unrest simmering all this time, so deep and low that it didn’t register with most people; it just took a destabilizing event as big as a global pandemic to uncover it.
POLAND
25,048 confirmed cases (+361)
1117 reported fatalities (+2)
The Polish government called for and won a surprise confidence vote on Thursday. The exercise appears to have been more or less a temper tantrum over recent criticisms leveled at the Law and Justice Party, meant to send a “put up or shut up” message to opponents. It may also have been meant to undermine a separate confidence vote against Health Minister Łukasz Szumowski, whose handling of the pandemic has been panned.
SLOVENIA
1477 confirmed cases (unchanged)
109 reported fatalities (unchanged)
Borders are reopening across Europe as several governments have apparently decided it is actually safe to go outside again. For example, the Slovenian government announced that it will open its border with Austria on Friday, reciprocating the Austrian government’s decision to reopen its side of the border.
CZECH REPUBLIC
9494 confirmed cases (+56)
326 reported fatalities (+2)
The Czech government, meanwhile, is reopening its borders with Austria, Germany, and Hungary on Friday, after reopening its border with Slovakia earlier in the week. Austria has set the pace here, having already reopened all of its borders except with Italy. Germany is expecting to open its borders on June 15.
SPAIN
287,740 confirmed cases (+334)
27,133 reported fatalities (+5)
And the Spanish government may be close to reopening its borders with Portugal and France. Or maybe not. Spanish Tourism Minister Reyes Maroto said on Thursday that those borders would reopen on June 22, but officials later walked that back. In addition to catching her own government by surprise, it seems Maroto hadn’t checked with either the Portuguese or French governments to see if they were ready to open those borders yet.
AMERICAS
UNITED STATES
1,924,051 confirmed cases (+22,268)
110,173 reported fatalities (+1031)
Finally, retired US military officers are coming out of the woodwork to criticize Donald Trump’s fascistic response to the George Floyd protests. Does it matter? I’m not sure. I’m particularly not sure that the people responsible for the atrocities of the US military all over the world are the best messengers here, however much I might agree with their message. Instead of focusing on them, and though it’s maybe not entirely in keeping with the focus of this newsletter, I’d like to leave you with Alex Pareene’s thoughts on the state of policing in America:
In Chicago last weekend, a man in tactical gear with a long gun brandished it menacingly at protesters. “Open carry” of firearms is illegal in Illinois. The police had a quick chat with him and sent him on his way unmolested. As police departments have everywhere else, this one gassed and beat unarmed demonstrators who were protesting police violence. “We don’t tolerate police misconduct—ever,” the mayor said. But they do. They have tolerated it among Chicago police officers for 100 years.
What would lead a police department—not a few misbehaving officers but every officer on the street, in this instance—to dismiss a heavily armed man as no threat (to either their own safety or the safety of the community) in one case, while, in another, viewing an unarmed local activist as so much of a threat that multiple cops decided to surround and brutally beat him with batons?
The incidents in Chicago and Philadelphia are evidence that American police across the country share a coherent ideology. Armed white boys don’t code as a threat to them; “anarchists” and angry black people do (even if the protesters are the ones at least attempting to engage in constitutionally protected behavior, while the roving white gangs are flagrantly violating the law). That disconnect, the galling image of watching the law so obviously tossed aside under certain circumstances, highlights a fundamental truth about what’s happening across the United States. The police are not using brutality to enforce “the law.” They’re using the law to enforce something else: a particular social order that is, to them, worth fighting for.