Category: World Affairs

Peace and the Obamessiah

Four 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:

“Only very rarely has a person to the same extent as Obama captured the world’s attention and given its people hope for a better future.  His diplomacy is founded in the concept that those who are to lead the world must do so on the basis of values and attitudes that are shared by the majority of the world’s population.”

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:

“Only when the Big Money and the global media barons act together can an empty suit be raised up into a symbol for anything you like, frankly, including whatever people conceive of as progress.  The raising up of the Obamessiah was so successful, it is practically inconceivable that anyone else could be awarded any prize whatsoever.  Norwegians will never be thought of in the same way again.”

Posted by Guessedworker on Friday, October 9, 2009 at 05:20 PM in World Affairs
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White South African voices on the migration question

The 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”:

There are brutal murders, hacking up of whites, slaying pets, and terrorizing and raping. The rule of thumb is to whites.
now if a white is not allowed to get a good job, (those in the good jobs were there for a long time , or are expats), if a white is not allowed a FREE education, because the last 3 years of school will not be paid by the government, if a white can not own property without the risk of it being removed forcibly, If a white has to live behind prison bars on our houses, can not own anything valuable as it WILL be forcibly removed, If we live in fear daily, because we own a car, a TV, or another valuable item then what is persecution?
There is a plan when Mandela dies - Whites are threatened daily with it. Our guns were redistributed to the blacks as well. When he dies, they will massacre us. All know about it and there is constant, daily propaganda, on the news, in TV programs, and everywhere, to PROMOTE white hatred. My kids weren’t even allowed to report a black in school for bullying as it was classed as racism.
There was a small group long LONG LONG-ago who did the apartheid. It was over in 1989. Why must we suffer for THEM?

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.

Continued...

Posted by Guessedworker on Wednesday, September 2, 2009 at 09:37 PM in World Affairs
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A genocide in South Africa

By 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.

Continued...

Posted by Guest Blogger on Friday, March 13, 2009 at 11:49 AM in World Affairs
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Greeks.  But no political gifts just yet

I 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:-

I am a little surpised that the riot phase of this long politico-economic drama known as EMU has kicked off so soon, and that it has done so first in Greece where the post-bubble hangover has barely begun.

The crisis is much further advanced in Spain, which is a year or two ahead of Greece in the crisis cycle.

My old job as Europe correspondent based in Brussels led me to spend a lot of time in cities that struck me as powder kegs - and indeed became powder kegs in the case of Rotterdam following the murder of Pim Fortyn, and Antwerp following the Muslim street riots (both of which I covered as a journalist). Lille, Strasbourg, Marseilles, Amsterdam, Brussels, all seemed inherently unstable, and I do not get the impression that the big cities of Spain and Italy are taking kindly to new immigrants.

The picture is going to get very ugly as Europe slides deeper into recession next year. The IMF expects Spain’s unemployment to reach 15pc. Immigrants are already being paid to leave the country. There will be riots in Spain too (there have been street skirmishes in Barcelona).

Hedge funds, bond vigilantes, and FX traders will be watching closely. In the end, a currency union is no stronger than the political will of the constituent states.

No doubt events will be ugly in Britain as well. My comments are not intended to suggest that British behaviour is better. Far from it. But I am certain that the British people still feel that the authorities who set economic policy are ultimately answerable to Parliament and to the democratic system.

Will the Greeks, the Spanish, the French feel that way about the European Central Bank and the Stability Pact when the chips are really down?

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
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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.

Thousands of youths armed with stones, batons and firebombs engaged in running battles with riot police, destroying shops, banks and cars in cities across Greece toight in a second night of rioting. The violence, the country’s worst civil disturbances in years, erupted late on Saturday when it emerged that a teenage boy had been killed by police in Exarchia, a district of central Athens long associated with lawlessness and drug abuse. Within hours, the protests had spread to Greece’s northern capital, Thessaloniki, its western port city of Patras and Chania on Crete, as protesters giving vent to a disaffection exacerbated by the economic crisis went on the rampage.

By tonight, several areas, including Athens’ main commercial strip and the streets around its fabled Polytechnic, resembled a battle zone, with glass, rubble and broken mannequins on to the sidewalks. As plumes of smoke filled the capital’s skyline, and shopkeepers rushed to clear up the debris, officials reported that more than 30 people had been injured, including police officers and firefighters and a number of passersby who had got caught up in the chaos. Looting was also rife. Local television stations showed stone-throwing youths erecting barricades in Athens as police responded by firing rounds of tear gas. The rioters in turn sought sanctuary in the grounds of the Polytechnic and Athens University, which traditionally have been off-limits to security forces since the collapse of military rule in 1974.

The chaos deepened today in both Athens and Thessaloniki as thousands of demonstrators marched through the streets shouting anti-government slogans. “Down with the murderers in uniform,” they shouted at the police.

At the foot of the report, the Guardian helpfully provides its readers with a:-

Backstory
Riots are not uncommon in Greece. Self-proclaimed groups of anarchists attack banks, high-end shops and foreign car dealerships. The November 17 parade is a particular flashpoint, when thousands mark the 1974 student uprising at the Polytechnic, an event that led to the collapse of seven years of hated military rule. Few of these attacks, however, cause injuries. Some believe Greece’s anarchist movement has its roots in the resistance to the dictatorship and the left/right divide that the period spawned. A number of anti-globalisation, anti-authoritarian, leftwing groups are also believed to have emerged at that time.

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:-

Continued...

Posted by Guessedworker on Sunday, December 7, 2008 at 11:43 PM in World Affairs
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Russian nationalists, Russian geopolitics

Geopolitics 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:-

Continued...

Posted by Guessedworker on Wednesday, August 13, 2008 at 11:24 PM in World Affairs
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Karadžić

Several 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
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Serbia, Albania and the geopolitics of Europe’s south-eastern border

A 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.

Continued...

Posted by Guest Blogger on Wednesday, March 5, 2008 at 09:40 AM in World Affairs
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Southgate on Russia at Welf’s NR blog

Welf 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.

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)
* antithesis or negation of the proposition (Soviet communism)
* synthesis or reconciliation (a gradual alliance, through perestroika, between the two)
* presentation of a new antithesis (Cold War 2, Russia as the ‘new’ bogeyman)

... 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
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Molotov and the “youth” of Paris

Two nights of riots and counting:-

Thirty police officers have been injured in a second night of violence between youths and officers in the flashpoint suburb of Villiers-le-Bel in Paris.

About 160 riot police came under attack in the notoriously crime-ridden district, 20 miles north of the centre of the French capital.

The violence was sparked on Sunday by the deaths of two young boys, who were killed when their moped collided with a police car.

The boys who died were said by locals to be “aged between 12 and 13”.

Police insisted that their car had not been chasing the boys when the crash occurred soon after dusk.

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
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The Belgian crisis in detail

It 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:-

Tell people we’re happy together.

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:-

Belgium has now gone for 144 days without a government and you know what?… everything seems normal

Eurocrats are booking their tables at Comme Chez Soi, Moroccan boys are breakdancing in the metro stations, civil servants (there are lots of these) are lingering over their Speculoos biscuits and coffee with gloopy vitamin-enhanced milk substitute.

Which prompts the thought: perhaps there should never be a Belgian government. Next week, Belgium will break its previous record for going unadministered, and no one – other than the armies of fonctionnaires who fret for their pensions – seems especially bothered.

If things carry on, the Flemish administration may be tempted simply to do a Yeltsin and assume the powers of the defunct federation.

Why am I troubling you with my thoughts on Belgium? Three reasons. First, to quote an unintentionally hilarious line from Harold Evans’s memoir of his days as editor of the Times, “It’s been too long since we had an opinion piece on Belgium”. Western countries don’t sunder very often, and the story deserves more attention than it has had.

Second, because Belgium was largely our fault. Determined to prevent the Channel ports falling under the control of a hostile power, we underwrote the new state, placed a suitable Saxe-Coburg princeling (Queen Victoria’s uncle, as it happens) on its throne as Leopold I, and guaranteed it militarily.

Not that Leopold’s heirs were especially appreciative. During the First World War, his grandson, Albert I, offered to switch sides if the Germans would confirm him in his throne and pay reparations. (When you bear in mind why Britain had gone to war in the first place, this possibly ranks as the most ungrateful act in human history.)

During the Second World War, Albert’s son, Leopold III collaborated, and was later forced to abdicate. In short, whatever reasons we may once have had, Belgium has long since ceased to be of strategic value to us.

But the third reason is the most important. Belgium functions – or malfunctions – on the same basis as the EU. There is no Belgian language, no Belgian culture, precious little Belgian history.

Continued...

Posted by Johan Van Vlaams on Tuesday, November 20, 2007 at 05:40 PM in World Affairs
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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:-

1. Indigenous peoples and individuals have the right not to be subjected to
forced assimilation or destruction of their culture.

2. States shall provide effective mechanisms for prevention of, and redress
for:

(a) Any action which has the aim or effect of depriving them of their
integrity as distinct peoples, or of their cultural values or ethnic identities;

(b) Any action which has the aim or effect of dispossessing them of their
lands, territories or resources;

(c) Any form of forced population transfer which has the aim or effect of
violating or undermining any of their rights;

(d) Any form of forced assimilation or integration;

(e) Any form of propaganda designed to promote or incite racial or ethnic
discrimination directed against them

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
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No Blacks please, we’re Jewish

Israel’s interior minister faces accusations of racism after he suggested suspending the policy of allowing Ethiopians with Jewish ancestry to move to the country.

While rabbinical authorities judge the so-called Falash Mura to be sufficiently Jewish to qualify for Israeli citizenship, Meir Sheetrit said they were not really Jewish and had been let in only because of “political correctness”.

In remarks that incensed the large Falasha community already in Israel, he implied that Ethiopians were fleecing the state by leaving the economic hardship of their birthplace and enjoying comfortable new lives in Israel.

Continued...

Posted by Alex Zeka on Friday, August 3, 2007 at 09:18 PM in Immigration,  World Affairs
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The small matter of a vote in Turkey

From BBC News:-

The people of Turkey are voting in a general election which is seen as a crucial test of its secular tradition.

The early election was called to resolve a political crisis after parliament repeatedly failed to agree on a candidate for president.

Secular parties and the powerful military blocked the nomination of a candidate for the post backed by the Islamic-rooted ruling AK Party.

They said Turkey’s secularism was in danger - a claim the AKP dismissed.

... Voters have been heading home from the beaches by the coach load, interrupting their holidays to take part in the polls, the BBC’s Sarah Rainsford in the capital Ankara says.

Some of them say they have made a special effort to come back this time because they believe that the secular system needs to be protected, our correspondent says.

The role of religion here will be a key issue at the ballot box, and so will Turkey’s relations with the outside world, our correspondent adds.

Nationalist sentiment is running high, fed by bitter disappointment with the EU. Renewed fighting with separatist Kurds and talk of an incursion into northern Iraq will also influence the result, she says.

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
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The Bear’s Lair: The teetering domino

Martin 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.

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.

Continued...

Posted by Guessedworker on Monday, June 18, 2007 at 10:47 PM in World Affairs
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The Sarko-Party State comes to France

From the The Independent:-

President Nicolas Sarkozy looks certain to win a crushing parliamentary majority after utterly dominating the first round of the French legislative elections.

The new President’s centre-right party and its allies are forecast to win well over 400 of the 577 seats in the National Assembly in the second round of voting next Sunday.

Despite a poor turnout of just over 60 per cent - reflecting the fatigue of the electorate after the April-May presidential election - M. Sarkozy will claim a mandate to pursue his fiscal, economic and social reforms. Computer projection suggested that his centre-right party and its allies could take between 405 and 445 seats.

M. Sarkozy’s aim had been not just to defeat the left and centre, but to “crush all hope” that they could put together a coherent opposition. In the event, the main opposition party, the Socialists, looks capable of achieving a respectable result next week with around 120 seats, compared to 149 at present. The new centrist party of Francois Bayrou, the Mouvement Démocrate, looks likely to take fewer than four seats.

... The decline of the French Communist Party, still a significant force two decades ago, will finally be reflected in parliament. Its seats are likely to fall from 21 to between 6 and 12. The far-right National Front will once again have no seats but its share of the vote collapsed yesterday from 11 per cent to only 4.6 per cent. This could mark the end of the Jean-Marie Le Pen era. The NF leader, 79 this month, is now likely to face internal moves to persuade him to stand aside.

... Openness and pragmatism are one side of M. Sarkozy’s character. The other is an obsessive need to control all that surrounds him. This extends to the media and the opposition.

One of the new President’s first acts was to appoint the former head of his private office to run France’s most-influential television channel, TF1.

He has already created a “new centre” party of ex-Bayrou followers, who will follow the Sarkozy line in the National Assembly. According to Le Monde, he plans to try to create a breakaway, parliamentary group of “Leftists for Sarkozy”.

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
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Israel decides that the Bushies can’t attack Iran

From the Jerusalem Post:-

In the face of Iran’s race to obtain nuclear weapons, the Israel Air Force has expressed newfound interest in receiving the F-22 - a US-developed fifth generation stealth fighter jet - and has requested that the Defense Ministry present the request on its behalf to the Pentagon, The Jerusalem Post has learned.

While the sale or transfer of F-22s to Israel did not come up in talks Wednesday between Defense Minister Amir Peretz and US Defense Secretary Robert Gates, defense officials told the Post that Israel would ask to receive the aircraft in order to retain its “military edge” in the Middle East.

... The F-22 formally entered operational service in the US Air Force in December 2005 but has not yet been sold outside the US due to a federal law which barred export sale of the aircraft.

Last March, however, Congress lifted the nine-year ban on its sale, potentially clearing the path for an Israeli purchase of what is considered the most advanced fighter jet in the world today.

The single-seater, double-engine aircraft can achieve stealth though a combination of its shape, composite materials, color and other integrated systems.

A positive US decision on the issue in the coming months could see the F-22 in Israel by the end of decade, years before the IAF is expected to begin receiving the Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) - another stealth fighter under development - also known as the F-35, expected in 2014.

On Thursday, Gates tried to ease Israeli concerns about the planned American weapons sale to Saudi Arabia as well as other US Gulf allies, saying that Washington remained committed to preserving Israel’s military edge over its neighbors.

Gates also said his 24-hour trip to Israel did not include any discussions on taking military action against Iran. He reiterated his belief that diplomacy was the best course of action for halting Iran’s nuclear program.

In her talks with Gates, Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni warned that the countries under threat from Iran were testing the Free World and vacillation was perceived as weakness. This might create a desire to appease Iran, she said. Livni cautioned that only the determination of the international community would keep the “moderate camp” on the same side.

“We live in a neighborhood in which a projected image is very meaningful,” she said. “If the impression is that the world is losing to the ‘neighborhood bully,’ they will want to join him.” Before leaving Israel, Gates visited the Yad Vashem Holocaust Museum in Jerusalem, accompanied by Peretz.

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
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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
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Rise of a New Hitler

Or, 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
http://www.occidentalism.org/?p=588

The then Korean Prime Minister, Han Myung-Suk, accused Japan of distorting Korean history, said that Korea’s claim to Dokdo/Takeshima was clear, and called on ethnic Koreans overseas to help Koreans to be the greatest race of the world. No one else has reported this, so I thought it was important that people know a little bit about what seems to be acceptable for the Prime Minister to say.

There is a long rant against Japan and baseless claims to Dokdo/Takeshima that supposedly extend back more that 4000 years, but what I found most interesting was in the last paragraph.

Continued...

Posted by Svyatoslav Igorevich on Thursday, April 19, 2007 at 06:19 PM in World Affairs
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Putin privileges Russian workers

The government needs to be sending a signal that it is not acceptable to discriminate against non-Russians. It should not be participating.  The irony is that in the Soviet era Russia was famous for promoting “friendship between peoples”, hosting large numbers of students from the developing world.  But now that slogan seems to have been turned on its head.  It is now Russia for Russians.

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:-

Russia bans foreign workers from retail jobs

The legislation, which has been described as state-sponsored racism by human rights activists, bans non-Russians from working in large chunks of the country’s retail sector.

In particular it prevents anyone who doesn’t hold a Russian passport from working in Russia’s huge indoor and outdoor food-and-clothing markets and in the thousands of roadside kiosks that sell anything from newspapers to cosmetics. Such jobs are usually low paid and involve working at least 12-hour days.

Until yesterday, it was not uncommon to visit a market staffed exclusively by migrant workers from across the former Soviet Union. But, as of yesterday, hundreds of thousands of migrant workers from countries such as Georgia, Azerbaijan and Tajikistan are looking for a new job.

In Russia’s Far East, where such positions have typically been filled by Chinese migrant workers, the impact was felt immediately. Many of them appear to have already packed their bags and returned home.

At Ussuriysk’s vast market near the Chinese border, almost all the stalls were reported to be deserted. “We had hoped good sense would prevail ... This could disrupt the economy and bring many problems,” said Sergei Simakov, a district councillor from Ussuriysk.

Some commentators have raised fears that prices may rise as employers are forced to pay higher wages and have questioned whether ethnic Russians will be willing to take up jobs that entail such long hours. At Moscow’s famous Dorogomilovsky food market several stalls were denuded of their usually exotic mixture of fruit and vegetables from across the vast region. In their place hung signs that read: “Wanted: Sales-people. Must be Russian.”

Officials from the country’s migration service raided a Moscow market yesterday. That is a sign that the Kremlin expects the new law to be scrupulously followed. Four foreign workers were detained.

A spokesman for the Federal Migration Service said the raid proved that the new law was effective. “Considering that this particular market has 1,200 trading stalls and only four foreigners were detected you can conclude that in general the law is working.” The Kremlin insists that there is nothing racist about the law that it says is intended to protect the rights of ethnic Russians, who have complained of being squeezed out of the retail sector by migrant workers.

Continued...

Posted by Guessedworker on Monday, April 2, 2007 at 10:02 PM in World Affairs
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Two once conservative, now respectable, writers

I’ll never lament the passing of white rule in Zimbabwe (writes ex-editor of the Daily Telegraph, Max Hastings)

Yes, we did. Like most of my colleagues, I reported from Rhodesia 30 years ago in an almost permanent state of rage. We saw a smug, ruthless white minority, beer guts contained with difficulty inside blazers with RAF crests, proclaiming themselves the guardians of civilisation in the heart of Africa. They killed carelessly, tortured freely, and exploited censorship to conceal their worst excesses. The city dwellers, patrons of Meikles Hotel bar, were the worst, because they were the most hypocritical. Fervent supporters of “good old Smithy”, many took care not to expose their necks, preferring to “kill Kruger with [their] mouths”, as Kipling had put it 70 years earlier.

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:

As a child and a young man, George S. Schuyler experienced the sting of racism in his hometown of Syracuse, New York and developed an aversion to all things Southern. An optimistic Schuyler joined the U.S. Army in 1912 to escape the discrimination of Syracuse, but experiences in the military increased his cynicism.

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.

Look at the jump around the fall of apartheid, remembering that the rate in the 80s was already inflated by terroristic protest attacks. This cataclysm unleashed a flood of violence against non-blacks, without diminishing the peril for blacks themselves. Only racial vengeance can make blacks celebrate this catastrophe, only utter masochism can make whites support it.

Posted by Alex Zeka on Tuesday, February 27, 2007 at 09:12 PM in World Affairs
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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”.

We have noted with keen interest the controversy generated by Bok van Blerk’s song about Anglo-Boer War General Koos de la Rey which has become a talking point in certain cultural circles because of its supposed popularity among right-wing White Afrikaans-speakers.

In fact, the magazine, Huisgenoot has asked the Ministry of Arts & Culture to comment on the song and the coded message, if any, it is said to contain.

Sadly, the popular song is in danger of being hijacked by a minority of right-wingers who not only regard De la Rey as a war hero but want to mislead sections of Afrikaans-speaking society to think that this is a “struggle song” that sends out a “call to arms.”

.. If there are White Afrikaans-speakers who feel they are besieged by crime, it will not help matters for such persons themselves to engage in criminal activity. Taking up arms against a democratically elected government, no matter how much one dislikes that government, is a crime, and a grave one at that.

The oft heard complaint that Afrikaans culture and the language are under threat is a nonsense, disproved by the very existence of journals like “Huisgenoot”, “Rooi Rose”, “Sarie Marais”, and a host of others plus at least two daily newspapers. Are there equivalents of these in the largest language community, isiZulu? Are there equivalents of these in the smallest language community, shiVenda?

Afrikaans speakers, White, Coloured, African or Asian, have exactly the same rights as other South Africans. It would be a terrible shame if a handful of misguided individuals hope to use an innocent song as a rallying point for treason.

The law on the issue of treason is clear, as the accused in the current “Boeremag” Trial are discovering. Those who incite treason, whatever methods they employ, might well find themselves in difficulties with the law.

It is significant to note that Van Blerk himself has denied that his song has any contemporary relevance.

As the Ministry of Arts & Culture, we wish the singer, Van Blerk good luck with his song, and who knows, if it’s really good, it might even become an international hit, like Solomon Linda’s Mbube.

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.

Continued...

Posted by Johan Van Vlaams on Friday, February 9, 2007 at 10:51 PM in World Affairs
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Universalism: Palliating the unpalatable

I 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.
GW

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.

Continued...

Posted by Guest Blogger on Sunday, January 21, 2007 at 10:58 PM in World Affairs
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Le Pen and the second ballot

Open 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:-

There is a snag - the same one that derailed his efforts in 1981. By law, each candidate needs the support of 500 elected representatives (from national or local assemblies, or mayors) to enter the contest; for the FN this is always difficult, as the party has few elected members (none in parliament), and Le Pen has always relied on courting rightwing village mayors.

Second:-

Jean-Marie Le Pen combatively proclaims a determination to win; and if he can’t reach the ballot, he threatens to unleash “his” voters against forces on the right he accuses of betrayal (thus the covert efforts from Sarko’s” camp to help him obtain the 500 signatures he needs).

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
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Litvinenko

The 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:-

Chemists said that a fatal dose of polonium could only be produced artificially, by a particle accelerator or nuclear reactor.

“This is not some random killing. This is not a tool chosen by a group of amateurs. These people had some serious resources behind them,” Dr Andrea Sella, a lecturer in chemistry at University College London, told Reuters.

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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