Category: World Affairs

There’s hope yet for Acacia Avenue

The Boer years were rolled back yet further yesterday when some official commission decided that the RSA capital Pretoria should henceforth be known as Tshwane.

A city built as a monument to the white Afrikaner heroes - and a symbol of resistance to the British during the Boer War - will soon carry the name of an African chief who once ruled the area.

Critics said the change was designed to obliterate the symbols and folk memories of the country’s three million Afrikaners.

But Ben Mncube, 28, said whites should learn to live with the new name. “It was the whites who introduced all these names when they came here,” he added. “There should be African names for African cities.”

Leaving aside the question whether there is such a thing, strictly speaking, as an African city, I don’t think one can argue there with Ben.  Sorry Pretorians of old, hunkered down behind your electrified fences, a loaded gun in every drawer.  African heritage and culture should inform the naming of the seats of power in African nation states.  Leaving aside, of course, the question whether there is such a thing as an African nation state ...

Justice ... nay, not merely justice but democracy and freedom demand that this worthy principle must translate everywhere.  That, after all, is only being equal, isn’t it?  Can’t argue with that.

And so to Britain, where the new colonisers have, with typically uncaring and selfish disdain, imposed their own culture upon us in the form of, quite probably, hundreds of alien place and street names.  Are we not to share in the rights of all ancient majorities, so expressly contained within that one glorious, never to be forgotten word, “Tchwa ... Tchaw ...  Tsch ... well knee, anyway?  Or Nay.  Or Nur.

Probably not.

Posted by Guessedworker on Friday, May 27, 2005 at 10:29 AM in World Affairs
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German democracy

Amazing news from Germany: Prime Minister Schroeder’s socialists have just lost an election in Germany’s biggest STATE and Schroeder has announced that he wants to bring the FEDERAL election forward by a year as a result.  Instead of clinging to power for as long as he is legally entitled to do, he wants to return his fate to the people. I thought that sort of thing—where moral concerns override legal powers—only happened in the Anglo-Saxon world.  It puts me in mind of the time when an Australian conservative Prime Minister (John Gorton) voted himself out of office.

But Germany and the Anglo-Saxons are closely related nations and it is little more than a carryover of wartime propaganda that portrays Germans as not democratic.  Even Hitler gained power by democratric means.  See here for more on German democracy and here for more on Hitler’s rise to power.

Posted by jonjayray on Sunday, May 22, 2005 at 04:56 PM in World Affairs
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“E ba gum,” as Lord Carrington once said

Those who still try on the old RDNE line and the one about evil white racists have some explaining to do this morning.

White farmers may be allowed back on their land in Zimbabwe as part of a plan by the government of Robert Mugabe to solve the country’s deepening economic crisis.

The president’s key finance aide has called for some of the farmers whose properties were confiscated in a land seizure programme to be allowed to resume growing crops to boost the country’s flagging agricultural output ...

“In order to ensure maximum productivity levels, there is great scope in the country promoting and supporting joint ventures between the new farmers with progressive-minded former operators,” said Mr Gono in a state radio and television broadcast that lasted nearly three hours.

He added that the skilled whites and other new investors would be given special guarantees of uninterrupted tenure of five to 10 years, backed by government force to prevent any disruptions on the farms.

Mr Gono was careful to say that it would not reverse Mr Mugabe’s redistribution of white-owned land to blacks.

However, observers say his plan would be an implicit admission that the land seizure policy has failed.

A Zimbabwean economist, John Robertson, said: “This shows the desperation of the government to improve the economy. They say it is not a reversal of their land seizures, but it is. It won’t get very far.”

I hope it doesn’t.  Not out of the simple desire to turn a profit ... not out of some romantic notion of Africa ... not out of any satisfaction born of righting the injustice of Mugabe’s land “reforms” should Zimbabwe’s former white population turn again.  A bitter lesson should have been very thoroughly learned.  White Rhodesians are stateless until they come home to where they truly belong.

Posted by Guessedworker on Saturday, May 21, 2005 at 04:37 AM in World Affairs
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The Bear’s Lair: The African problem

Professor George Ayittey of American University presented his new book “Africa Unchained” at Washington’s Cato Institute last week, which demonstrates that Africa’s problems primarily result from that continent’s appalling political leadership. This view hasn’t been widely enough vented, and may provide the germ of a solution.  I would however add a rider: the West is at least equally responsible for the mess that is Africa, and the West’s help will be needed to reform it.

Continued...

Posted by karlmagnus on Monday, May 16, 2005 at 11:24 AM in Economics & Finance,  Globalisation,  World Affairs
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The Bear’s Lair: The lights are going out

“The lights are going out all over Europe. We shall not see them lit again in our lifetime” famously intoned British Foreign Secretary Sir Edward Grey in the gathering dusk of August 4 1914 (there is now a fair consensus that Grey’s alliance with France and encirclement of Germany bore much of the responsibility for dousing them.)  This year another continent appears to be disappearing into the gloom, at least economically: Latin America.

Continued...

Posted by karlmagnus on Monday, May 2, 2005 at 09:01 AM in Economics & Finance,  World Affairs
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Iraqi democracy reaches full bloom

Chalabi to head Oil Ministry in Iraq’s new government.

Continued...

Posted by Phil Peterson on Thursday, April 28, 2005 at 03:07 PM in World Affairs
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The Bear’s Lair: Lashed by dragon tails

In ancient Chinese mythology, dragons live in the center of the earth, and when they awaken and shake their tails, earthquakes result.  The Chinese economic dragon has very clearly awakened; dealing with the lashings of its tail will be no mean feat.

Continued...

Posted by karlmagnus on Monday, April 25, 2005 at 10:51 AM in Business & Industry,  Economics & Finance,  Globalisation,  History,  U.S. Politics,  World Affairs
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“India and China can together reshape the world order”

So said Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh today at a ceremony for his Chinese counterpart, Premier Wen Jiabao, in India’s presidential palace.  It marked the signing of an agreement on a new “strategic and cooperative partnership” between the world’s two most populous nations.

This expression of geopolitical ambition is nothing if not an attempt to usher in the Asian Century by two political elites brimming with national confidence.  They are signalling a direct challenge to America and the West that goes far beyond the merely economic challenge we already know well.

It is obvious that the West cannot meet this challenge as “Mexamerica” and “Eurabia.”  It is just as obvious that the West cannot meet this challenge if it is colonized by the same Asians that it is competing against.

Competition between the Occident and the Orient only favours the Occident if it is itself, and not an admixed appendage of the Orient.

Posted by JW Holliday on Monday, April 11, 2005 at 10:25 AM in World Affairs
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Lebanon - the future of Europe?

Lebanon is like West Africa: there’s not a series of separate wars but one long, slow tribal war that flares up and cools off from time to time, but never goes away - like athlete’s foot.

The Muslims didn’t emigrate as much; they just didn’t have the money. So they did what poor folks do: stayed home and had babies. Pretty soon the Muslims were the majority.

More here.

Posted by Phil Peterson on Saturday, March 26, 2005 at 04:26 PM in World Affairs
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The Bear’s Lair: An agenda for Wolfowitz

(published by United Press International, March 21, 2005)

  If Paul Wolfowitz survives the inevitable sniping from Europeans to emerge as President of the World Bank, he will at least represent a different approach from outgoing president James Wolfensohn. It’s about time!

Continued...

Posted by karlmagnus on Monday, March 21, 2005 at 05:38 PM in Economics & Finance,  Globalisation,  U.S. Politics,  World Affairs
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The Communist Holocaust

This was of course the other Holocaust of the twentieth century. 100 million people slaughtered, condemned to starvation and disease in the quest for that most noble of human goals: Equality.

Continued...

Posted by Phil Peterson on Sunday, February 27, 2005 at 11:04 AM in World Affairs
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The U.N.

Inquiry’s Senator Coleman speaks: “While many questions concerning oil-for-food remain unanswered, one conclusion has become abundantly clear: Kofi Annan should resign.  The decision to call for his resignation does not come easily, but I have arrived at this conclusion because the most extensive fraud in the history of the UN occurred on his watch.  Annan was at the helm of the UN for all but a few days of the oil-for-food program, and he must, therefore, be held accountable for the UN’s utter failure to detect or stop Hussein’s abuses. The consequences of the UN’s ineptitude cannot be overstated: Hussein was empowered to withstand the sanctions regime, remain in power, and even rebuild his military.”

Continued...

Posted by jonjayray on Monday, January 10, 2005 at 05:45 PM in World Affairs
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After the tsunami, the view from above.

Such a unique natural disaster as the Asian Tsunami should not go entirely unmarked on any news-based comment blog, and to date it has done so here.  So we will correct that.  It behoves us to acknowledge the human suffering the great waves caused and, also, the humility with which Mankind, however Westernised and modern he may be, must stand before such total, elementary and blind force.

We are of the natural world and not the master of it - not even the master of ourselves, though many a political fool of liberal mein may think so.  We do not yet truly understand the natural world, much less control it.  We have only really reached the callow stage where we may observe it systematically.

The sense of awe that follows upon that exercise is, perhaps, no longer awe of the Almighty.  But who among us, thinking on their own thoughts and feelings as they study the images on this link to News@Nature, can say with any certitude that the quality of those feelings is any more refined, better or even different to those of our faithful forefathers.

Posted by Guessedworker on Thursday, January 6, 2005 at 12:36 PM in World Affairs
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Will it be Moslems for Jews and Ukraine for Sudetenland?

Because I see gathering ethnic instability in my homeland and throughout Europe and try to calculate the consequences I’m a bit of a sucker for prediction in general.  A particularly fascinating example of the species appears in the Telegraph today.

The always thought-provoking Niall Ferguson offers the vision of a new authoritarianism in Russia.  The parallels he draws between Hitler’s Germany and what is emerging in Putin’s Russia are arresting: a weakened parliament, media control, a developing state control of the economy, a disregard for private property rights and the rule of law …

Continued...

Posted by Guessedworker on Saturday, January 1, 2005 at 07:33 AM in World Affairs
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No chickens in Kiev

The world is watching Ukraine.  In Kiev and in all the cities across that 75% of the country which is Ukrainian-speaking the rights of the electoral majority are being asserted.  The only question would seem to be whether peaceful protest will be enough to dislodge Viktor Yanukovich.

It is not certain that it will.  The results of Sunday’s run-off are to be officially announced today.  If Yanukovich is declared the winner, as he has insisted he was, a highly unpredictable trial of strength will ensue.  Yanukovich has powerful friends, among them State President Leonid Kuchma (who in 2001 was embroiled in the extraordinary scandal of the disappearance and gruesome decapitation of an opposition journalist, Georgyi “George” Gongadze).  Russia’s President Vladimir Putin is another, and has already welcomed Yanukovich’s self-declared victory.

The great unknown was the position of the army, security services and the police force.  Only the Defence Ministry was thought to be definitely loyal to the President.  But this morning Defense Minister Oleksander Kuzmuk has declared neutrality.

Continued...

Posted by Guessedworker on Wednesday, November 24, 2004 at 08:07 AM in World Affairs
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