Majorityrights Central > Category: World Affairs

It’s no surprise that the kings of the fraud business turn out to Nigerian.

More than $380bn has either been stolen or wasted by Nigerian governments since independence in 1960, the chief corruption fighter has said.

Nuhu Ribadu told the BBC that Nigeria has “nothing much” to show for the missing money.

He said the worst period for corruption was the 1980s and ‘90s, but currently two-thirds of governors are being investigated by Mr Ribadu’s agency.

Does anyone seriously suppose things will change?  That screw-you style of pig-individualism isn’t a spot of temporary bad luck in Sub-Saharan political life.  It’s much more likely that ordinary Africans do indeed like their vaunted “strong man” rulers because they are, basically, what the ordinary African male would rather like to be himself.  A life of quiet dedication and public service doesn’t enter into it.  Lord Acton’s moral sewer does.  It’s all sociobiology.

So, then, what do the dreamers and the Western idealists think they are up to?

Ah yes, striving to devote 0.7% of the national GDP of each developed nation in aid for the fight against global poverty.

That should work.

The reburial yesterday of Tsaritsa Maria Feodorovna, mother of the last Tsar, in the royal crypt of St Petersburg’s Peter and Paul Fortress was a fine and hopeful event.  The Russian people do not deserve to have escaped the horrors of the 20th century only to find that because the murderers and revolutionaries cut the cord of the past the bastards had a victory after all.  A future of economism (in which only the big cities prosper) and a losing battle against the awfulness of American cultural imperialism will not feed that famous Russian soul.

But it may be that, unlike in the West, there is no shortage of politicians in the country who have the right instincts.

After the service, the funeral cortege made a final journey around the former royal capital where the Empress had lived for more than 50 years, then received a full military escort when it arrived at the fortress.  Russia’s Culture Minister, Alexander Sokolov, said: “Today we have fulfilled the innermost will of the Empress.  It means the time has come to fill the gaps in our history and culture.”

Or, as one ordinary Russian woman said:-

We have waited such a long time for this day.  I thank God that He has brought Empress Maria Feodorovna back.

It would be my dream to see the Romanov dynasty come back.  Until there is a Tsar in Russia again, Russia will never be at ease.

Why am I heartened by this?  Because our situation today is not better than that of Russians during the days of Soviet empire.  We are prosperous but we are dying.  Where is the value in that?

I hope with all my being that someday we, too, will be able to talk about filling in the gaps in our culture and history, and from time to time I shall watch Russia to see, perhaps, how it is done.

NBC News anchorman got his reward yesterday for comparing the Iranian hostage-takers to the Founders last year and elite American forces to suicide bombers last month: an exclusive interview with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in a Midtown Manhatton hotel.

Here are the interesting exchanges as reported by Williams:-

Brian Williams: How do you think the discussion has been allowed to get that far, that we’re discussing possible war between the U.S. and Iran?

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad: I think we need to ask this question from American, U.S., politicians. The world has changed. The time for world empires has ended. The U.S. government thinks that it’s still the period after World War II, when they came out as a victor and enjoyed special rights. And can rule, therefore, over the rest of the world. I explicitly say that I am against the policies chosen by the U.S. government to run the world. Because these policies are moving the world towards war.

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The death of Oriana Fallaci

The author of La rabbia e l’orgoglio (The Rage and the Pride, 2002), the courageous, indomitable, individualistic Oriana Fallaci, has died in her home town of Florence.  She was 77, and had fought a battle with cancer for several years.  It was, of course, the Italian authorities she really desired to fight over their dhimmi reaction to La rabbia.  A pity she was denied the opportunity.  There is an excellent and affectionate article on the lady from a Times blog here.

German Neo-Nazis poised for “stunning” poll breakthrough

Not exactly a liberal meltdown, though.  A Guardian hack explains:-

Germany’s racist neo-Nazi party is poised to make a stunning breakthrough during elections this weekend, entering a regional parliament for the second time in three years, polls suggest.

According to a poll for ZDF television the far-right National Party of Germany (NPD) is likely to win 7% of the vote in elections on Sunday in the north-east state of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern. Another Infratest poll puts the party on 6%.

The projected result is above Germany’s 5% hurdle - and means the far-right MPs will sit in the parliament for the first time.

Well, we’ll see.

Pope Benedict XVI quotes from 600 years ago.  Muzzies everywhere go bananas.  But it wasn’t Ben’s real opinion.  Honest.

Judge for yourself.  Here’s the full speech.

200 South Asian illegals land at Tenerife

the migrants ... are the first Asians among more than 24,000 migrants to arrive on the Canary Islands from Africa this year.

The boat was boarded by Spanish police on Thursday when it anchored 3km (two miles) south of Tenerife island.

... Spain’s El Pais newspaper says Pakistanis had flown to Dakar, the capital of Senegal, and were paying $500 (£266) each to Senegalese traffickers in the hope of continuing their journey by sea to Greece.

... Deputy Prime Minister Maria Teresa Fernandez de la Vega said the government was going to negotiate a fast repatriation of the new arrivals.

And almost too perfect to be true ...

A number of Nigerian politicians  have been conned out of thousands of dollars by people selling papers purporting to certify them as “corruption-free”.

Iran’s President Ahmadinejad has a blog.  It’s in English, too ...  English so poor that I can only suppose he really wrote it himself.  But never mind.  My Persian is not great either.

The page is a bit slow to load.  But if you have an hour or two on your hands, and don’t have to go down the shelter, you can always ask the hip, young bearded one a question or two.  Something like this, perhaps:-

Dear Humble Servant of Almighty Allah’s glorious messenger (pbuh, natch),

I was struck by this passage in your writing ...

Since the extinct shah - Mohammad Reza - was supposed to take and enter Iran into western civilization slavishly, so many schemes were implemented that Iran becomes another market for the western ceremonial goods without any progress in the scientific field. Our Islamic culture would not allow such an infestation, and this was an impediment in front of shah and his foreign masters’ way. Thus, they decided to make this noble and tenacious culture weak gradually that Iran be attached strongly to the west as far as its economy, politics, and culture was concern.

... and it occurred to me that, as the decent and fair man you undoubtedly are, you could not possibly object if our noble and tenacious Western culture would not allow an Islamic “infestation”.  Or have I got something badly wrong there?

Link to the Ahmadinejad blog from Rowan Berkeley’s post to New Right Online Forum.

This video animation constructed from Mordechai Vanunu’s famous sixty photographs is worth a look while pondering Iranian ambitions.

Thanks to Troy for the link.

President Robert Mugabe has begun to reverse his “insane” land grab and offer some white farmers the chance to lease back their holdings in Zimbabwe.

With the fastest shrinking economy in the world, Mr Mugabe has had to backtrack on six years of chaos and his own determination to rid the country of all white farmers.

The Daily Telegraph today.

So the ruinous hand of black African power extends an olive branch to the people it demonised, robbed, terrorised and murdered.  Remember the late Hitler Hunzvi, the “War Veterans” leader who compared himself to revolutionary figures like Che Guevara, Napolean Bonaparte and even Jesus Christ.  He is on record euphemistically threatening, “All revolutions require violence ... No-one can stop the revolution we have started.”

Wrong.  The corruption of Mugabe’s cronies and the incapacity of his people have stopped it.  What few black farmers are cultivating former white-owned lands are doing so on a subsistence basis.  Eighty to ninety per cent of the land, howevever, lies untended while Zimbabweans go without.

Vanity precludes Mugabe himself from making the announcement.  Two “trusted” underlings will be deputised to grovel before an unsurprised world.  Ian Smith described Mugabe as a “Marxist terrorist” and one can’t help but feel that were he alive today, he would counsel the expellees strongly against cooperating with his enemy now.

I suppose in the end there will be some white farmers prepared to listen not to the ghost of Ian Smith but to a chastened yet hardly repentant Mugabe.  It will be short memories and white individualism - the inability or just refusal to observe group dynamics - which will lead them back.

At least one ex-farmer has perfect clarity of mind and purpose, and said yesterday:-

“It’s bloody miserable out there. All our friends have gone, our equipment has been broken, irrigation has been vandalised, our homes have been wrecked, the roads are a mess, our workers have gone so why should we return? I am sure there will be some clots who are so damn miserable in other countries or living in towns that they will go back.

“We should be campaigning for compensation, not going back to help people who wrecked our country.”

Back on News Years Day 2005 at, I see, the civilised hour of 11.33 am I posted a short piece on the political future of Russia.  The core of the article was an interesting prognostication by Telegraph journalist, Niall Ferguson.

His argument was intriguing, and provided several striking parallels between Weimar Germany and present-day Russia.  He concluded like this:-

We must all hope that events in Georgia and Ukraine will inspire a democratic revolution in Russia itself. But the Weimar parallel is not encouraging. Germany’s descent into dictatorship went in stages: there were three more or less authoritarian chancellors before Hitler, each of whom sought to rule Germany by decree.

The question that remains open is whether Putin is just a more successful version of one of these authoritarian warm-up acts, or a fully-fledged Russian führer. Either way, he is fast becoming as big a threat to Western security as he is to Russian democracy.

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