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Category: World AffairsPeace and the ObamessiahFour women and one man, all Norwegians of course, have awarded the Nobel Peace Prize to Barrack Obama from a field of 172 individuals and 33 organisations. The citation reads “extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples.” I must have missed them. But, apparently, it’s to do with all the fluff about “change” and the “new era of responsibility” mentioned in his inauguration speech (which was written not by him, of course, but by Jon Favreau). The committee’s announcement said:
I’d like to add my own voice to the Mass for Naivety which is “the world’s attention”, amending the committee’s words of wisdom thus:
Posted by Guessedworker on Friday, October 9, 2009 at 05:20 PM in World Affairs
White South African voices on the migration questionThe case of Brandon Huntley, a white South African granted asylum by an Immigration Board in Ottawa, has been in the headlines for a couple of days. The Canadian’s recognition that black violence and South African governmental dereliction can constitute grounds for asylum for fleeing whites has stung both the aforementioned government and the ANC. The moral poverty of both is evident in their reflexive ascription of racism to the decision. But some rather more interesting reactions have surfaced elsewhere … here in the Huffington Post, for example, where Western purveyors of the old anti-apartheid rubric are struggling - and failing - to come to terms with the moral superiority of the white South African victim. Like “sa-Ireland”:
The fact remains, though, that of the 4 million + South African whites well over three-quarters of them have not fled the country, and a substantial number appear to be willing to trade personal security for the benefit of the climate, the beaches, the bars, the upscale metropolitan white lifestyle. It’s hardly news that in South Africa the racial question still preoccupies everyone, whites included. But the old divisions among whites are long gone. Now they are split between optimists who are prepared to keep their head down and take what’s going on one side and, on the other, pessimists like “sa-Ireland”, for whom getting out is only a matter of time, and the realists who will stay but try to create change. Posted by Guessedworker on Wednesday, September 2, 2009 at 09:37 PM in World Affairs
A genocide in South AfricaBy David Hamilton To attain a goal through ideology you need two things: a vision for a better future but also a vision of terrible evil if the alternative to the vision is followed. An ideology always benefits some elite groups, and the one-world ideology benefits multi-national corporations that get the mineral rights. The process is very corrupt: Western governments appropriate tax money paid by their citizens and transfer it to elites in the Third World for the mineral rights to go to multi-national corporations; this also frees populations to be brought to the west as cheap labour and our work to be relocated where people live on subsistence wages. Having encouraged wage-slaves from the Third World they publicly apologise for historical slavery! There is racial genocide of the South African Boers taking place as I write and the Western media know all about it because they have agents and reporters there, but keep it from the outside world, presumably to allow it to go on.
It follows on from what was done to French Algerians, the Belgians of Congo, and the Portuguese of Angola and Mozambique, and what is happening in Zimbabwe. All these peoples were violently forced off lands which their ancestors had occupied for centuries. It was done with the encouragement of the US and British governments and made possible by finance taken from their own taxpayers for the purpose. What is behind this? It is what is now called Globalisation, which is a euphemism for the attempt to create a New World Order. Posted by Guest Blogger on Friday, March 13, 2009 at 11:49 AM in World Affairs
Greeks. But no political gifts just yetI am not yet as convinced as Telegraph journalist Ambrose Evans-Pritchard that the West or, at least, the EU is entering upon some Kali Yuga style end-game of strife, discord, quarrel, and contention. But his article in today’s Telegraph, titled Greek fighting: the eurozone’s weakest link starts to crack, makes a fair case for it. It also provides as good an assessment of the situation in Greece as I have yet come across. I won’t reproduce the whole piece here. But I will copy the following passage, which concluded it:-
The Telegraph software appears to display only the first twenty of the comments. There are, apparently, forty-two others on the thread that I cannot get to load on my browser. However, those twenty are also worth a read. There are more and more such eye-popping sentiments appearing on newspaper threads. Dissent is becoming endemic, but it lacks focus ... political form. What Evans-Pritchard’s piece really tells us is that we are embarking upon if not the revolutionary process exactly then, at the very least, a revolutionary preamble ... a lengthy period of reflection upon what it will really take to destroy the present system. The “ugliness” to which Evans-Pritchard refers ... the riots, the cynicism, the street politics ... will not do it. Its all about focus. Without that, these convulsions will as likely operate as safety valves. Posted by Guessedworker on Thursday, December 11, 2008 at 12:31 AM in World Affairs
Immigrants in Greece riot. MSM caught red-handed.The mainstream media is devoting much front-page coverage to this weekend’s violent leftist/anarchist/student riots in Greece. At the time of writing the headline on the Guardian website main page reads, Clashes across Greece after police kill teenager.
At the foot of the report, the Guardian helpfully provides its readers with a:-
But that isn’t the back story. It’s a classic piece of burying the bad news - bad for the liberal sensibilities of the mediocracy, that is. Here is the real back story:-
And here:- Posted by Guessedworker on Sunday, December 7, 2008 at 11:43 PM in World Affairs
Russian nationalists, Russian geopoliticsGeopolitics trumps everything, they say. That’s a pretty good rule, and pretty apposite in the case of the Russian invasion of Georgia now. The South Ossetians and Abkhazians are getting what they want, which is freedom from ethnic Georgia. They will doubtless feel that the military aggression they have wilfully exhibited towards the Georgians has paid off in the most handsome manner imaginable. But they are only foils for the real objectives of the Russian campaign. The problem is that no one knows exactly what those objectives are, and how far Russia must go to meet them. And they ain’t saying. The possible objectives are:- 1. To prevent Georgia from joining NATO, thereby furthering the latter’s ambition to encircle the bear. 2. To make a gesture in the direction of empire unmistakable to other Western-oriented neighbours, and also to the world community (not coincidental, it seems to me, at the moment when China is announcing to a watching world its own arrival as a major international power). 3. Possibly, if Russia seeks to install a puppet government in a defeated Georgia, to exercise control over the movement of oil and gas supplies across Georgian territory. Meanwhile, the Western press has moved swiftly to engineer public sympathy for poor little Georgia, notwithstanding the fact that Georgia was an inexplicable aggressor (or almost inexplicable). Judging from that Telegraph thread not many thinking folk are content to be engineered. Here’s Stratfor’s somewhat kosher but still worthwhile, current take - not illuminating enough, but as good as I can find at present:- Posted by Guessedworker on Wednesday, August 13, 2008 at 11:24 PM in World Affairs
KaradžićSeveral times over the days since his capture I’ve toyed with putting up a post about Radovan Karadžić. The angle would have been to speculate on his trial strategy ... on whether there really is forensic evidence for the Srebrenica massacre ... on whether the wider claims of a Bosnian genocide actually stand up ... on whether the issues will remain as clear as the prosecution would want, or whether the realities of Western geopolitics will be forced into the open, to overtake the moral standard. In a word, will Karadžić do what Milošević did prior to his death, and lead the Court by the evidential nose. But the deeper I got into the researching the issues to a depth sufficient to float the intellectual boat, the more I learned how little I understood, or really have any likelihood of understanding, this extraordinarily dark and challenging event. I did not understand the region and its peoples and their tremendously complex histories. I did not adequately understand the Bosnian War itself. I did not at all understand the legalities and precedent involved in bringing a case before The International Court of the Hague. I did, I felt, understand the geopolitics of Nato in Bosnia and of the importance to the West’s interests in Serbia of bringing Karadžić and Mladić to “justice”. But it wasn’t enough. Discretion won and I deleted my notes. Karadžić, however, remains a charismatic and slippery figure, comic in his disguise but also admirable in the roguish but resourceful way he lived. But he still has that word “Nationalism” attached to him and his, we are told, pitiless, genocidal deeds. For us it is an unjust attachment because Nationalism is not that, but is something born of love. Still, those who strive to darken Europe at dawn don’t baulk at such distinctions nor hesitate to use the spectre of Karadžić the War Criminal for their purposes. We are bound to respond in some way, and this post - a not-post, really - must suffice. Feel free to broach the issue however you please. Posted by Guessedworker on Thursday, July 24, 2008 at 10:50 PM in World Affairs
Serbia, Albania and the geopolitics of Europe’s south-eastern borderA translation by Fred Scrooby of an article by Prof Robert Steuckers which places the the Serbs’ struggle against national fragmentation in its wider European historical context. Reflections on Kosovo’s Unilateral Declaration of Independence The question arises as to whether or not to recognize Kosovo’s independence. To put it differently: Can one recognize the right of a population represented by a provincial parliament to declare its independence if most of its representatives are in favor of such a step? Two principles are involved in this inquiry: 1) The right of peoples to arrange their own affairs, the full right of identity, based on objective criteria and concrete foundations (ethnic, linguistic, historical, etc.), the right of peoples to furnish themselves with their own system of political representation within a given spatio-temporal framework, whether within the framework of a multi-ethnic state (as in the Swiss model) or within a state which envisions a more or less extensive federalism based on alternative models, such as German federalism or the country of autonomous communities that is present-day Spain. Does this right to autonomy confer the right to independence? As regards the European context, this question can be debated. 2) The right of European peoples to refuse any Balkanization which weakens the continent as a whole, creating in its midst conflicts which can be exploited by third-party powers foreign to the European continent (in the terminology of Carl Schmitt, “territorially-alien powers” – raumfremde Mächte). The first of these principles is a principle of rights; the second, of geopolitics. Kosovo’s unilateral declaration of independence presents a contradiction: because it is unilateral it pits rights against geopolitics, whereas in Europe rights and geopolitics aren’t supposed to be at odds but are supposed to form, together, an indissoluble unit. Rights should help consolidate the territorial whole, barring the door to all efforts at disruption, and not acquiesce in actions having weakening and fragmentation as their effects. Posted by Guest Blogger on Wednesday, March 5, 2008 at 09:40 AM in World Affairs
Southgate on Russia at Welf’s NR blogWelf Herfurth’s New Right Australia New Zealand blog is hosting it’s first offering from Troy Southgate. His subject is the meaning of Putin’s Russia, and its function in the emergence of a new geopolitical dispensation. Obviously, this is a weighty subject, and Troy has only danced lightly across the surface of it. He offers no closing prediction, except to note that in the modern context expediency will restrain geopolitical ambition. That’s true, but one might equally assert that stability is not independent of the second law of thermodoynamics, and things change all the time. Perhaps the more interesting comment precedes that, though. Troy terms as idealistic Hegel’s view, so faithfully reflected in Francis Fukuyama’s post-communist, 1989 essay “The End of History”, and in the sweaty expectancy of the PNAC that followed eight years later, that history as dialectic inevitably winnows away the extremes. I would hold that this can be true only within a single ideological universe. We are talking about synthesis of extremes in methodology here, not of fundamentally different ideas. But Putin’s Russia also contains elements of anti-liberal nationalism in it ... as well, of course, as some very high-octane power elitism. The struggle for the geopolitical future may be conditioned by the struggle for Russo-centricity (I don’t think it can be called nationalism in any real sense). If the economy slows and Putin’s thusfar remarkably adroit populism wears thin, we may be reminded again how very distant Eurasia is from Europe. GW RUSSIA IN 2008: THOUGHTS ON HEGELIAN GEOPOLITICS by Troy Southgate
Despite the negative image of Russia that is currently being portrayed in the media, it seems pretty feasible that Putin - possibly since his last meeting with Bush in 2007 - was eventually persuaded, albeit covertly, to capitulate to Western demands. That he’s a loyal friend of Russia’s capitalist ruling class is not even up for debate, even if some people in Right-wing circles do seem to respect him for ousting the Jewish oligarchs several years ago. In reality, however, Russian capitalism is no better than its Jewish-dominated counterpart and Putin’s so-called ‘successor’, Dmitry Medvedev, is little more than a puppet of the same socio-economic regime. But when you stop to think about the vilification of Russia over the last few months, especially with the well-publicised Litvinenko affair, the systematic construction of what many people are interpreting as a ‘new Cold War’ is, in a sense, rather Hegelian. The reason being, that contradiction, of course, eventually leads to reconciliation and some commentators believe that the thesis-antithesis-synthesis formula is better expressed in the dictum: ‘problem-alternative-solution’. Perhaps this potential return to a bi-polar world is a shift beyond Samuel Huntingdon’s ‘Clash of Civilisations’ strategy in which there is merely one superpower (United States) fighting against an imagined or manufactured opponent (Islam)? Let’s think seriously for a moment about the relationship between the West and Russia in both a Hegelian (after Fichte) and a geopolitical context:
* thesis or intellectual proposition (Western capitalism)
... and so it goes on ... Russia has not exactly presented a new antithesis in an ideological sense as Soviet Communism claimed to do, of course, and it was Hegel’s view that no new antithesis can ever arise due to the eventual disappearance of extreme ideological and philosophical positions, but this rather idealistic perspective does not seem to take into consideration the fact that convenience will often outweigh genuine revolutionary fervour. It remains to be seen where Islam will fit into all this. Food for thought. Posted by Guessedworker on Tuesday, March 4, 2008 at 10:19 AM in World Affairs
Molotov and the “youth” of ParisTwo nights of riots and counting:-
Two years ago just such an event triggered 20 nights of rioting, and accounted for almost 9,000 torched vehicles and 2,888 arrests. A state of emergency was declared. The French media stopped reporting the incidence of burned cars for fear of giving succour to Le Front National. And in April of this year Nicolas Sarkozy got himself elected, in part by stealing the FN’s clothes. Now there’s no incentive for Sarko the American to play to white France. He’ll look to avoid inflaming the situation, and distance himself from it if the unrest continues. Posted by Guessedworker on Tuesday, November 27, 2007 at 12:23 AM in World Affairs
The Belgian crisis in detailIt is now more than five months since the elections of June 10, 2007, and still the Belgians wait for a new government. Still there is no indication that a government can be formed. Early in October 2007, Minister for Foreign Affairs De Gucht ignored an essential rule in diplomacy: don’t make a fool out of yourself. He was fool enough to send a circular letter to Belgian embassies in all the corners of the world with instructions how to answer, should anyone ask if the country’s Dutch- and French-speaking parts are splitting up. His answer merely insulted the intelligence:-
And to the question of when there will be a government, Foreign Minister De Gucht’s memo suggests the safely serpentine answer: “When the time is right.” A much better analysis was to be found on 1st November in the Daily Telegraph, with thanks to Daniel Hannan. It’s worth reproducing it in full:-
Posted by Johan Van Vlaams on Tuesday, November 20, 2007 at 05:40 PM in World Affairs
United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples … and that means us, doesn’t it?My thanks to Desmond Jones for this link (pdf) which details a draft resolution before the UN General Assembly on the rights of indigenous peoples. Since it is inconceivable that the peoples of Europe can be winnowed out of this resolution, even on the grounds of past colonialism, it is a significant codification of our status as peoples even potentially under threat. There are several formulations in this document that struck me as interesting. But the plainest and most applicable to our uses is Article 8:-
You don’t need me to draw the picture for you. Our efforts against the replacers and their useful idiots will only be strengthened by this. Posted by Guessedworker on Thursday, October 4, 2007 at 12:17 AM in World Affairs
No Blacks please, we’re Jewish
Posted by Alex Zeka on Friday, August 3, 2007 at 09:18 PM in Immigration, World Affairs
The small matter of a vote in TurkeyFrom BBC News:-
It is in our interests for the revolt against the Turkish political Establishment, which saw the Islam-rooted Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi become the largest party in the Grand National Assembly in the November 2002 election, to continue today. And it will. Last time AK attracted close to 11 million votes, or 34%. Polls suggest that Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan will be returned with around 40% this time. More surprising, perhaps, is that the long-moribund Milliyetçi Hareket Partisi, the traditional vehicle for nationalist sentiment, could leapfrog the two steeply-declining Establishment parties, and come in second. An Assembly dominated by religious conservatism and Turkish nationalism is tantamount to a civilian coup! From a majoritarian European perspective this is most welcome. Indeed, any reflection anywhere of national character and the popular will in government is welcome to us. These things portend distinctiveness, and distinctiveness yearns for distance. Any consequent retreat from the homogenising cast of “modern” politics that we see throughout the West, and which finds its ultimate expression in the international institutions, is a good. In Turkey’s case the revolt against the modern world was initiated by the failure of a political status quo under the pressure of unsympathetic external forces, namely the dealings of the EU in frustrating Turkey’s ascession, the encouragement given by America to the Kurds, and the growing influence of Putin’s Russia in the region. One wonders whether there is a major historical dynamic appearing here, very fragile though it might yet be. One wonders what that might mean for Western power and Western-led internationalism in a post-Iraq era. One wonders what opportunities at the level of national politics might then arise. Posted by Guessedworker on Sunday, July 22, 2007 at 12:04 PM in World Affairs
The Bear’s Lair: The teetering dominoMartin Hutchinson’s latest offering at Prudent Bear revisits the geopolitics of Ukraine. It is a subject we have covered only once, quite early on in the Orange Revolution. Ukrainian politics are uniquely fascinating, however, since they juxtapose competing popular wills, competing visions of bureacratic governance, and the greater regional issue of competing Western liberal and Russian hegemonies. And overlaying everything is, for MRers, the wryest juxtaposition of all: that to the east lies both a bulwark against the nation-destroying forces of the West and, at some level, a murderous, near-Asiatic disrespector of political opponents. Thus flawed, then - a breaker of eggs - does Russia offer hope or disillusionment? Here’s Martin decisively choosing, from his usual economic perspective, the latter. GW The apparent revival of the Cold War by Vladimir Putin causes those of us nostalgic for the unpleasant certainties of a bipolar world to ponder whether the Domino Theory should also be revived. Indeed it should, and the domino currently wobbling most vigorously, magnificent in its precariousness, is Ukraine. Ukraine gets limited press in the West, but its fate over this long summer may well determine the geo-strategic and economic outlook for the next generation. Contrary to most Western reporting on Ukraine, the struggle there is not bipolar but tripolar. Favoring an economy dominated by publicly owned behemoths of heavy industry is the current prime minister Viktor Yanukovych, strong in the ethnically Russian eastern areas of the country and proponent of closer ties with Moscow. Vladimir Putin regarded Yanukovych as the natural successor to Ukraine’s previous corrupt and economically stagnant president Leonid Kuchma, so when in 2004 his election was opposed by the “Orange Revolution” of pro-Western forces he was furious, believing that the West had no business interfering in an election so close to the Russian heartland. He need not have worried. The Orange Revolution candidate for President Viktor Yushchenko, in spite of having married an American wife and during the campaign suffering a mysterious poisoning that would foreshadow the unexpected demise of so many of Russia’s opponents in years to come, was a weak social democrat, also favoring a group of big corporate oligarchs, those of ethnically Ukrainian nationality from western Ukraine. Essentially, like so many East European leaders from Mikhail Gorbachev through the socialists currently running Hungary, Yushchenko believed in an a non-existent “Third Way” under which a nominally capitalist economy would avoid the disruption of rapid change and preserve existing business structures. He was thus favored by the EU, the Financial Times and the Ukrainian Chamber of Commerce and Industry, all of whom tend to like social democrat compromisers who won’t rock the boat. Nevertheless, when the Orange Revolution won the election re-run in December 2004, the world outside the Kremlin rejoiced. It quickly became obvious that the Orange Revolution forces were far from united. Yushchenko appointed as prime minister his main ally, Julia Tymoshenko, but within a year had fallen out with her, to the extent that he dismissed her and called new elections in early 2006. These resulted in the revival of Yanukovych as leader of the largest party in parliament, with Tymoshenko second and Yushchenko’s forces reduced to third. Even though Yushchenko and Tymoshenko still had a parliamentary majority if their forces combined, Yushchenko chose to throw in his lot with Yanukovych. Posted by Guessedworker on Monday, June 18, 2007 at 10:47 PM in World Affairs
The Sarko-Party State comes to FranceFrom the The Independent:-
So now we will see what France, which has tested the integration model to destruction for British post-Multiculturalists, will get from the economic liberalism that is testing English and European-American society to destruction today. The answer, once the Sarko shine wears off, will surely be the promised but heavily-protested and politically bloody end of the French socialist model. That will produce sufficient economic growth to keep the middle classes happy. It will also will lead to the sort of “controlled immigration” that manages to lower labour cost and further cosmopolitanise France. The pendulum will swing politically, and the left will produce a neoliberal of its own. And the NF? It must build a national organisation from the bottom up. Councillors and mayors must come before a charismatic leader. Not that they have one to turn to anyway. Posted by Guessedworker on Monday, June 11, 2007 at 07:56 AM in World Affairs
Israel decides that the Bushies can’t attack IranFrom the Jerusalem Post:-
If Israel acquires the F22 by the end of the decade that will intersect nicely with Iran’s anticipated roll-out of nuclear weapons. The F22 was originally conceived as an air superiority fighter for use against the soviet airforce. But it is equipped now for ground attack. It certainly isn’t a very pretty airplane. But strangely, prettyness never bothered the “neighbourhood bullies” of, for example, Lebanon. 2009 looks to be the earliest date when the bullies of Iran will also receive their due. Posted by Guessedworker on Sunday, April 22, 2007 at 10:16 PM in World Affairs
Ideological conquest, political irrelevance: The FN after round 1.The largest turnout for over fifty years has produced a conventional Socialist v Conservative pairing for the 2nd round of the French presidential election, which will take place on 6th May. It will be interesting to see if/how Sarkozy’s “right-wing action man” image is reworked from here. Its success in bleeding away the support for Le Pen is now apparent. It should have been so beforehand really, since its corollary - the rank hatred from the “anyone but Sarko” camp - certainly was. For French nationalists the Le Pen vote of 11.5% holds little promise for the future. His high-water mark of 22% in 2002 will haunt his successor. The French liberal Establishment can draw three conclusions: 1) Their greatest electoral enemy is low turnout. Providing the bulk of the electorate carry on believing that conventional politics will solve their problems, a high turnout - this one was 84% - will always work for them. 2) If after the eighteen days of the Paris riots and the vote against the EU Constitution the French people still support the political centre, there is virtually nothing that can threaten them. 3) Incorporating FN ideas into public discourse works against political nationalism. It now remains to be seen how much of Sarkozy’s “I won’t betray you” promises to FN supporters and Royal’s wrapping herself in le tricolor will feed through to the victor’s presidential policy. For the reason of No.2 above, very little, I would say. The FN itself has an impossible task before it. The softening of Jean-Marie’s language under the guidance of his youngest daughter, Marine, has benefitted it nothing. I doubt now that Marine can succeed him to the party leadership. In reality no one can. He was a giant of nationalist politics, and without him the Party surely risks further electoral marginalisation from here. As a producer of ideas for popular consumption perhaps it will continue to have some success. But only nationalists execute nationalist policy. And that’s what would save France. Posted by Guessedworker on Sunday, April 22, 2007 at 06:49 PM in World Affairs
Rise of a New HitlerOr, Cognitive Elitism in Action A New Hitler is rising in the east. All that is required for evil to flourish is that good men do nothing. We must smash this new fascism in the east.
First Korean female Prime Minister claims Dokdo/Takeshima as Korean land, declares Korean racial supremacy
Posted by Svyatoslav Igorevich on Thursday, April 19, 2007 at 06:19 PM in World Affairs
Putin privileges Russian workers
Allison Gill, head of the Moscow office of Human Rights Watch, following the coming into effect yesterday of a law reserving retail jobs for ethnic Russians. From the Independent:-
Posted by Guessedworker on Monday, April 2, 2007 at 10:02 PM in World Affairs
Two once conservative, now respectable, writersI’ll never lament the passing of white rule in Zimbabwe (writes ex-editor of the Daily Telegraph, Max Hastings)
Evidently, denying blacks political rights, while having “beer guts contained with difficulty inside blazers with RAF crests”, is as bad as perpetrating a systematic genocide via land confiscation, on a parallel with the work done by Stalin’s men in the 1920s. And that’s not even mentioning the harm this is doing to the black population, who are suffering a famine in a nation that once exported food. I know I’ll never lament Hastings’ eventual passing from the world of journalism. And here’s what Lew Rockwell is publishing on his site:
Sting of racism, South, boo-hoo. I’ll cry for his experience of “racism” when his ilk cry for the murdered Boers of South Africa and Zimbabwe.
Posted by Alex Zeka on Tuesday, February 27, 2007 at 09:12 PM in World Affairs
De la Rey sal jy die Boere kom lei?(In English: de la Rey, will you come and lead the Boers?)
The Afrikaner hit song in the video by folk singer Bok van Blerk has been denounced by South African culture minister Pallo Jordan as “treason”.
In South Africa the distinction between being a critic of the government and a traitor is small, as evinced by the minister’s reference to the so-called Boeremag treason trial, and to the plotting of the “far-right” and the South African version of the Gulag. The latter, incidentally, reveals its full nature in the Public Prosecutor’s five-year search for evidence of criminality while most of the accused still languish in prison.
Posted by Johan Van Vlaams on Friday, February 9, 2007 at 10:51 PM in World Affairs
Universalism: Palliating the unpalatableI am very pleased to post the third of the essays PF has sent to me, venturing this time upon global and third world politics, and Iraq. PF will now join the MR writers panel and post without further need of my engagement. On behalf of everyone, then, I welcome a “potentially” valuable and unquestionably interesting and informative new member of the team.
It certainly was an interesting facet of 20th century politics that both CIA and Communist intelligence agents were most interested in peddling/enforcing their universalist ideologies in oil-rich and resource-rich regions (Bolivia, Chile, Iran, Kosovo).
Its an open question whether the CIA and Russian intelligence were motivated by “Freedom” and “Socialism” respectively, or by the potential for large-scale resource acquisition.
Posted by Guest Blogger on Sunday, January 21, 2007 at 10:58 PM in World Affairs
Le Pen and the second ballotOpen Democracy has a straightforward but informative piece by Patrice de Beer on next year’s French presidential election. The passage on Jean-Marie Le Pen told me two things I never knew before. First:-
Second:-
Obviously, Sarko has his eyes on Le Pen’s 13 to 17% poll rating. Right now, the Sarkozy-Royal contest is too close to call. But get the old devil into the race and his supporters won’t vote for Royal. Get the old devil out of the race at the first poll on April 22nd and they will have to vote for the Monsieur with the riot baton. The interesting thing is that Le Pen is thinking along not dissimilar lines. That 17%, polled in mid-November, is a record for him. And there’s still ample time for a surge between now and April. If the mainstream right is split going into that poll Le Pen could repeat his shock-wave performance of 2002, when he eliminated Jospin. This time the victim would be Sarko, followed by a face-off against the left. Le Pen, the unity candidate. Well, maybe. A last thought. Which candidate would the denizens of les banlieues prefer to see in the Élysée? Royal, no question. But which of the others would they prefer her to contest the second ballot against? And what methods do they have to hand to engineer that happy outcome? Posted by Guessedworker on Tuesday, December 5, 2006 at 11:24 PM in World Affairs
LitvinenkoThe Litvinenko poisoning has, and with what terrible, slow inevitability, become the Litvinenko murder, and is well on its way to becoming the Litvinenko Affair. How much the public will be told from herein is, to say the least, moot. Both the British and Russian secret services have become involved, we are told. Both involvements, though, may be more diversionary than truly investigative. Mr Litvinenko himself was in no doubt as to who his killers were, and then there is this:-
So what, in the shark-infested waters of international diplomacy, does the Litvinenko murder portend? Probably not that much, after all the cloak and dagger stuff has receded from the headlines. It isn’t in Britain’s national interest to humiliate Putin and find a radioactive FSB hand in the killing. An effective police investigation could prove disastrous. One can already hear the seasoned Foreign Office Russophiles proclaiming, “What, just so Blair at the Met can claim to keep the streets of London free from the FSB!” No one will reply that Russian state gangsterism impacts on our global interests - consider the dioxin-scarred features of the Ukrainian leader, Victor Yushchenko - and now there is some leverage against it. The plain truth is that we need considerably greater cooperation with Mr Putin, gangster or no. Our main interest is energy. Until recently Britain imported only modest volumes of gas from Russia. That will almost certainly change if security of supply can be established. If. The Ukrainian experience in January 2006, when the pipeline from the east was shut down for purely political reasons, is holding us back now. Only a reliable, cooperative Russia can encourage our trust, but Russia itself must be encouraged to that end. Then there is the Iranian nuclear problem, and the question of a regnant Iran regardless of that. Being America’s second best little buddy doesn’t auger very well for influencing Nejad. Russia has influence in Tehran. It is also a vital ally in resisting terrorism, for which sound working relations with the FSB are a prerequisite. So all in all we shouldn’t expect too much clarity from the Litvinenko investigation. It will, I believe, leave a bitter taste in many mouths. But diplomacy was ever thus. Posted by Guessedworker on Friday, November 24, 2006 at 11:20 PM in World Affairs
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Existential IssuesOf noteRecent CommentsWandrin commented in entry 'Europe's Future: Is this what "they" want?' on 03/18/10, 02:17 AM. (go) (view) Wandrin commented in entry 'Serious Crime - The Ethnic Dimension; Fact and Fantasy' on 03/18/10, 01:45 AM. (go) (view) Gorboduc commented in entry ''Enlightened' Child Abuse' on 03/18/10, 01:24 AM. (go) (view) Guessedworker commented in entry ''Enlightened' Child Abuse' on 03/18/10, 12:35 AM. (go) (view) Borvo commented in entry 'Europe's Future: Is this what "they" want?' on 03/17/10, 11:44 PM. (go) (view) PF commented in entry 'Diasporal Hijinks: Christopher Hitchens and the Janjaweed' on 03/17/10, 10:31 PM. (go) (view) Maximilio commented in entry 'Is Dr. David Duke, Ph.D., a Kosher Nazi?' on 03/17/10, 10:12 PM. (go) (view) Gorboduc commented in entry ''Enlightened' Child Abuse' on 03/17/10, 08:01 PM. (go) (view) PF commented in entry ''Enlightened' Child Abuse' on 03/17/10, 07:44 PM. (go) (view) Robert Reis commented in entry 'Europe's Future: Is this what "they" want?' on 03/17/10, 07:29 PM. (go) (view) PF commented in entry 'Blowing Bubbles' on 03/17/10, 07:27 PM. (go) (view) Dan Dare commented in entry 'Blowing Bubbles' on 03/17/10, 06:33 PM. (go) (view) Dan Dare commented in entry 'Blowing Bubbles' on 03/17/10, 05:44 PM. (go) (view) Gorboduc commented in entry 'Blowing Bubbles' on 03/17/10, 05:22 PM. (go) (view) g commented in entry 'Blowing Bubbles' on 03/17/10, 05:06 PM. (go) (view) Gorboduc commented in entry ''Enlightened' Child Abuse' on 03/17/10, 03:16 PM. (go) (view) Guessedworker commented in entry ''Enlightened' Child Abuse' on 03/17/10, 02:30 PM. (go) (view) DRS commented in entry 'Blowing Bubbles' on 03/17/10, 02:22 PM. (go) (view) James Bowery commented in entry 'Serious Crime - The Ethnic Dimension; Fact and Fantasy' on 03/17/10, 02:00 PM. (go) (view) Gorboduc commented in entry ''Enlightened' Child Abuse' on 03/17/10, 01:45 PM. (go) (view) MsAnnThrope commented in entry 'A genocide in South Africa' on 03/17/10, 12:17 PM. (go) (view) Lurker commented in entry 'A genocide in South Africa' on 03/17/10, 11:42 AM. (go) (view) Guessedworker commented in entry ''Enlightened' Child Abuse' on 03/17/10, 11:35 AM. (go) (view) Gorboduc commented in entry 'Serious Crime - The Ethnic Dimension; Fact and Fantasy' on 03/17/10, 10:37 AM. (go) (view) Gorboduc commented in entry ''Enlightened' Child Abuse' on 03/17/10, 10:18 AM. (go) (view) MsAnnThrope commented in entry 'A genocide in South Africa' on 03/17/10, 09:53 AM. (go) (view) Eddie Booth commented in entry 'Serious Crime - The Ethnic Dimension; Fact and Fantasy' on 03/17/10, 09:12 AM. (go) (view) Søren Renner commented in entry 'Saturday Riddle Classic' on 03/17/10, 03:12 AM. (go) (view) mossydottir commented in entry 'Saturday Riddle Classic' on 03/17/10, 03:08 AM. (go) (view) Guessedworker commented in entry ''Enlightened' Child Abuse' on 03/17/10, 01:12 AM. (go) (view) Gupta commented in entry 'The Indian/Chinese IQ puzzle' on 03/17/10, 12:25 AM. (go) (view) Gorboduc commented in entry 'Saturday Riddle Classic' on 03/16/10, 11:57 PM. (go) (view) Gorboduc commented in entry ''Enlightened' Child Abuse' on 03/16/10, 11:34 PM. (go) (view) Armor commented in entry 'End of the tunnel for Front National? Not yet - update 06.07.09' on 03/16/10, 10:16 PM. (go) (view) Guessedworker commented in entry 'Saturday Riddle Classic' on 03/16/10, 08:56 PM. (go) (view) Recent Posts
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