[Majorityrights News] Alex Navalny, born 4th June, 1976; died at Yamalo-Nenets penitentiary 16th February, 2024 Posted by Guessedworker on Friday, 16 February 2024 23:43.
[Majorityrights Central] A couple of exchanges on the nature and meaning of Christianity’s origin Posted by Guessedworker on Tuesday, 25 July 2023 22:19.
[Majorityrights News] Is the Ukrainian counter-offensive for Bakhmut the counter-offensive for Ukraine? Posted by Guessedworker on Thursday, 18 May 2023 18:55.
A Chinese ban on interracial marriage is largely a step in the right direction, but it is troubling that the rule would not extend to men for a few reasons: they have a disproportionate male population which, like black women, tend to be shunned in interracial partner selection. Similar as with Muslims, this frustrated excess male population can create an explosive effect in interaction with other populations.
From a European man’s perspective, the Chinese situation is complicated, since it can relate to the Chinese banning of interracial marriage - to blacks in particular, recognizing that in terms of feminine qualities and those sublimated qualities necessary to create a reasonable and sufficiently complex civilization, that blacks are not offering anything near sufficient exchange.
China Bans Interracial Marriages For Females; No Plans To Restrict Men
The Supreme People’s Court of China today passed legislation that will ban Chinese women from marrying non-Chinese men, with the law coming into effect at the beginning of 2018. The policy had been fiercely debated for a number of months before it finally won approval from the required number of legislators earlier today. Civil rights groups in China have condemned the restriction, pointing out that it discriminates against women by still permitting males to enter into interracial marriages.
“We strongly urge the People’s Court to reconsider this new law, and repeal the legislation before it comes into force.” A small group of protesters staged a rally outside the courthouse in central Beijing today, but were soon dispersed by authorities. Following decades of the one-child policy, China is now faced with a shocking gender imbalance – for every girl below the age of 18 in China, there are now three boys. “The law was introduced in order to promote social harmony,” commented one of the People’s Courts legislators. “We need to ensure there are enough Chinese women available for marriage; otherwise there is a high probability of increased levels of rape and other violence.” One of the more controversial aspects of the new law is the fact that Chinese men are not banned from marrying women of other races. “Because we have such a shortage of women in China, we need to make sure Chinese men have as many opportunities as possible to find a bride.”
The news comes as a positive to matchmaking businesses that introduce prospective brides from neighboring countries, such as Vietnam and Thailand, to Chinese men. “I had feared that they might also ban men from interracial marriage,” commented the owner of a successful matchmaking business in China’s Fujian Province. “Thankfully common sense has prevailed, although by banning Chinese women from marrying foreigners, my business will have more competition.” Meanwhile, industry groups representing ESL teachers in China have also criticized the new policy. “The majority of teachers are male, and most end up wedding local women,” said a spokesperson for a chain of English-teaching cram schools in Shanghai. “If our teachers are banned from marrying Chinese girls, they may not stay in the country as long, and we risk losing talented staff.”
European men might see a bit more legitimacy obtaining to intermarriage with more civilized peoples - viz., Asians - casting it more in terms of the accountability necessary to sustain important qualities and quantities of native populations. However, while broaching European group delimitation with blacks, Jews and probably Arabs would entail prohibition in any number, broaching an accountable number and quality with any group would entail exclusion from citizenship. Nevertheless, Europeans are not primarily accountable to bear excesses and imbalances in Asian populations - the Asians are.
Poland’s right-wing Prime Minister Beata Szydlo vowed Friday (20 May) that her government would never bow to any EU ultimatum and accused some members of the European Commission of trying to “destroy” the 28-member bloc.
Szydlo was responding to a Monday deadline (23 May) set by the Commission for Poland to reverse a controversial overhaul of the country’s top court that has set off a fiery dispute between Warsaw and Brussels.
“Poland will never succumb to any ultimatum,” Szydlo said during a stormy debate in parliament.
“There are some in the European Commission… who want to destroy the European Union rather than see it develop.”
Hungary, Poland and illiberal democracy
The EU’s problem is that others are following the illiberal regimes of Hungary and in Poland, and it is possible that among them be Germany, writes George Friedman.
The executive warned earlier this week it could take further action against Poland because of concerns over the commitment of the governing Law and Justice (PiS) to the rule of law.
“If there is no significant progress by 23 May, then the First Vice-President (Frans Timmermans) has been empowered to adopt the draft rule of law opinion,” the commission said in a statement on Wednesday.
The exact contents of the opinion are not known, but if Warsaw fails to address the issues raised, it could eventually face a suspension of voting rights in the European council of ministers, the EU’s most important decision-making body.
However, Poland’s regional ally Hungary is likely to torpedo any possible sanctions, which would require the unanimous approval of all 28 EU members.
In Friday’s parliamentary debate, leaders of Poland’s liberal opposition party the Civic Platform blasted Szydlo for “desecrating the constitution” and “burning more bridges with Europe”.
An MP from the conservative Polish Peasants’ Party went so far as to charge that the actions of her administration risked “civil war”.
Poles launch campaign against court reform
Tens of thousands of Poles took to Facebook Thursday (10 March) to support the country’s top court in a constitutional battle against the right-wing government.
Szydlo’s government plunged Poland into political crisis in December when it pushed through legislation to revamp the constitutional court and modify its decision-making rules.
The European Commission in January launched an unprecedented probe to see if the changes — seen by critics as endangering the court’s independence — violated EU democracy rules and merited punitive measures.
Since taking office in November, the PiS government has pushed through several pieces of controversial legislation, including strengthening state control over public broadcasters and seeking to tighten already limited access to abortions.
Poland’s rejection of refugees under an EU-wide plan to tackle Europe’s worst migrant crisis since World War II has also chilled ties with Brussels.
Poland and Hungary: Tactical alliance or strategic partnership? Commentary for New Eastern Europe…
We still have serious work to do with regard to distinguishing who we are, who our friends are, and what alliance means.
News united, KENNETH SHINZATO, WORKER ON U.S. MILITARY BASE IN JAPAN ACCUSED OF DUMPING BODY OF LOCAL WOMAN RINA SHIMABUKURO, 20, RAISING ANTI-AMERICAN TENSIONS AHEAD OF BARACK OBAMA’S VISIT TO HIROSHIMA, 20 May 2016:
Kenneth Shinzato, worker on U.S. military base in Japan accused of dumping body of local woman Rina Shimabukuro, 20, raising anti-American tensions ahead of Barack Obama’s visit to Hiroshima news
A worker at a U.S. military base in Okinawa has been arrested on suspicion of dumping the body of a 20-year-old Japanese woman, police said Thursday - sparking outrage among locals.
Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe says he’s outraged at the murder of a 20-year-old woman, following the arrest of a US man on suspicion of homicide in Okinawa. Japanese media later reported that the suspect admitted killing his victim.
“I feel extremely strong outrage,” Abe told reporters.
He added that he has no words “to express, considering how the family” of the victim feels.
“We urge the US side to take thorough measures to prevent the recurrence of such events.”
Kenneth Shinzato, a 32-year-old civil employee of the US military base in Okinawa, and former US Marine, has been arrested for his alleged involvement in the woman’s death. He allegedly admitted that he throttled and stabbed his victim, Kyodo News said, citing sources close to the police investigation.
Trump is making a bad choice in saber rattling against China and the rest of Asia. It is to say the least that his conciliatory stance with regard to Israel is of little help to us beyond perhaps serving to strategically placate them, but neither is siding with The Russian Federation over China the right priority.
China is never going to side with the The Russian Federation. Neither is Japan. We need cooperation with these and other Asian countries, and we do not need the headaches of The Russian Federation.
We need China, Japan and the rest of Asia to assist against Islamic and Middle Eastern imposition, Jews and Africans; we need Asian assistance in regard to our borders and along The Silk Road.
Russia’s tenuous claim, tenuous economic industrial and demographic support for its vast eastward expanse is a burden that we don’t need to share in. We’d all be better off with a Russian state scaled to the size of an ethno-state. The eastern part of the present Russian Federation will be taken over by Asian peoples eventually anyway. We need Asian cooperation to secure our own ethno-states, and its best to deal with these realities.
Israel and The Russian Federation or China, Japan and the rest of Asia in alliance with ethno-nationalism, White and otherwise? Trump is taking the wrong side.
WASHINGTON: In another sign of escalating trade tensions between China and the United States, Beijing told the World Trade Organization on Friday that Washington was failing to implement a WTO ruling against punitive U.S. tariffs on a range of Chinese goods.
China’s Ministry of Commerce (MOFCOM) said it had requested consultations with the United States over the issue, and anti-subsidy duties on products including solar panels, wind towers and steel pipe used in the oil industry.
China’s complaint to the WTO was filed just days after Washington lodged a similar complaint against China, accusing it of unfairly continuing punitive duties on U.S. exports of broiler chicken products in violation of WTO rules.
“By disregarding the WTO rules and rulings, the United States has severely impaired the integrity of WTO rules and the interests of Chinese industries,” MOFCOM said in a statement distributed by the Chinese embassy in Washington.
The case was first brought before the WTO by China in 2012 against U.S. duties on 15 diverse product categories that also include thermal paper, steel sinks and tow-behind lawn grooming equipment.
In December 2014, the WTO’s Appellate Body ruled in favor of Chinese claims that the products subject to duties had not benefited from subsidies from “public bodies” favoring particular manufacturers.
The deadline for implementation of the rulings and recommendations of the WTO Dispute Settlement Body, set through binding arbitration, expired on April 1, according to WTO records.
A U.S. Trade Representative spokesman said the United States had been “working diligently to comply with the recommendations” and to fully conform with its WTO obligations.
He added that the U.S. response to China’s request for consultations would come “in due course.”
Trade tensions between the two largest economies have been rising in the past year as China’s economic slowdown floods world markets with manufactured goods. U.S. producers of steel and aluminum have filed a number of anti-dumping and anti-subsidy complaints against imports from China.
On Tuesday, the U.S. Commerce Department is scheduled to announce its final determination in an anti-dumping investigations of imports of cold-rolled flat steel products from both China and Japan. That case was brought by major U.S. producers U.S. Steel Corp , AK Steel Corp Arcelor Mittal USA, Nucor Corp and Steel Dyanmics Inc
A new study which locates the origin of Yiddish and in fact, the Ashkenazim, in Eastern Turkey is interesting not only for the implications it has for Jewish origins and behavior, but because it has correspondence with the origin of the parent haplogroup of Jews.
However, the hypothesis that Jews have origins other than the Middle East presents problems and opportunities when looking at ways to deal with conflicts with them. When and how did Jews take on attributes that cause us problems? What to do about it based on the facts?
Fausette’s “niche theory” of the development of Jewish virulence traces the origin of their infamous rootless and parasitic behavior to the Babylonian captivity - thereafter, they returned to Palestine/Israel and occupied managerial niches over the sedentary populations; thus evolving a parasitic relation to native peoples.
If we take a look back further along their genetic line, to the origin of J1 in Eastern Turkey, however, their characteristic rootless and mercantile nature might predate and indicate that that Jewish evolution may have imposed itself on the Middle East having already mutated the characteristic form prior to the Babylonian captivity.
Another well known hypothesis of non-Middle East origin of characteristic Jewish peoplehood is The Khazar hypothesis made popular by Arthur Koestler. While Khazaria was much later than the Babylonian captivity and a bit to the east of eastern Turkey, the temperament that the Caucus mutations have given rise-to do have family resemblance to Jewish behavior. Inasmuch as the theory holds true, it could throw some predictive light on them.
Being of pragmatic disposition, I tend to be averse to the hypothesis that Jews are of Khazarian origin. The practical reasons to reject the hypothesis that I have in mind are firstly, to go along with the preponderance of genetic evidence which currently organizes them as Middle Eastern peoples. That goes to the second reason to be averse to theories of alternative, e.g., Khazar origins: the purpose to locate Jews both genetically and geographically in order to hold them to account, curb the shenanigans of their sundry diaspora - what Bowery has referred to as their horizontal transmission - which is the idea based on the niche hypothesis that their exiles and border crossings only select for their non-sedentary, parasitic characteristics. The solution that he proposes is that they be compelled to stay in one place and develop “vertical transmission”, a non-parasitic, viz., symbiotic relation with a particular land. Nevertheless, we certainly do not want to propose that their rightful place is among European lands and to allow them to continue their exploits among us; nor would it necessarily do us any particular good to see them return to the lands of ancient Khazaria or somewhere else in the near east, even if that is where they are from.
Even so, while it may not be convenient for those of us who’d like to see them all forced to go to Israel, stay there and perhaps develop some vertical transmission, we might need to have a deeper understanding of their motives and their place (or non-place, as it were) in order to come to a better concept of how to deal with them as they are, and as the facts are, whether in Israel or in diaspora.
I suppose that those who find the Khazar hypothesis appealing might be motivated from the opposite direction - that we might be able to put an end to the trouble that they are causing in the Middle East by denying their warrant to be there; and eventually perhaps diffuse their virulence by its assimilation or dying-off.
Whatever we might want, however, facts won’t necessarily bear it out. Nevertheless, there are important matters of historical punctuation, viz., when and where Jews begin as a people; and there is our capacity to determine how the facts count surrounding any such assertions: Jewish claims are assailable indeed; their claims are within our negotiative control and subject to our agentive preference. Operational verifiability will only assist us to warrantably assert our preferences.
First, let’s take a quick look at the kind of argument that is being made against the Khazar hypothesis:
And indeed, Kevin MacDonald et al. argue persuasively for the genetic and geographical location of the origin of Jews in the Middle East. KM and Duke argue that there’re only one or two (unreliable, they say), genetic studies that endorse the Khazar hypothesis, while scores, they say, verify ME origins.
Patrick Slattery argues that there are two massively difficult conversions that would have to have been made to underpin the Khazar hypothesis: first, a mass of people held to become the Ashkenazi would have had to convert to Judaism. Next and an even greater challenge, is to explain why people who are held to have originated in Khazaria spoke Yiddish - a largely Germanic language
Now, GW has raised very valid points about characteristic temperament and other kinds of special relation that Jews have to the area.
He has responded:
Posted by Guessedworker on Fri, 03 Apr 2015 16:18 | #
1. The Mosaic faith developed specifically as a survival mechanism in captivity, and developed through the Babylonian and Roman periods as such. For any people which has lost its guarantor of group survival - its land - and faces a permanent exile, with a future holding no more than an inevitable process of persecution and genetic dissolution, a mass conversion to Judaism is a perfectly logical choice.
Groups are capable, under stress, of taking immense decisions, including to suicide en masse. We should not regard mass conversion to a foreign faith as simply impossible.
2. Yiddish is an artificially-constructed language rooted in the languages of the host, particularly in the east, but containing influences from Hebrew and Aramaic which may simply originate in the oral faith tradition.
Again, while it isn’t quite Khazaria, it isn’t far from it either, and looking at this new GPS hypothesis, Eastern Turkey and surrounds show relevance to Ashkenazi origins and behavior after and perhaps before the Babylonian captivity. Interesting also is the fact that this study contradicts Slattery’s understanding of Yiddish as a mostly German derived language. The study below asserts that German words were merely added to an underlying language, the fundamental grammatical structure of which came from the East.
If we are willing to go to more ancient times, well prior to Khazaria, the fountain head of J1 does indicate an origin in Eastern Turkey (neither far nor very different climes from Khazaria) - viz., “the greatest genetic diversity of J1 haplotypes was found in eastern Anatolia, near Lake Van in central Kurdistan.”
The only problem with arguing non-ME origins for Jews is that it seems more helpful to middle-easterners than to Europeans. On the contrary, it could spread them around more and amongst us (e.g., from Turkey up into Eastern Ukraine!) - that is the last thing we might want when we need to quarantine them.
Want or not, however, it might even have some explanatory value for their influence on the margins of the Near East: In the Ukrainian - Russian war, for example; and their predictable role on both sides. Both Ukraine and ancient Khazaria would be appealing targets as a strategic and valuable real estate for them with some historical affinity as well as by being a place to put the products of Jewish men’s whore-mongering - prostitution is legal in Israel but the bastard products are not legally entitled by Israel to citizenship - they are not born of a Jewish mother. Where better to put them? Many of their mothers are Ukrainian or Russian, from these areas.
However, if we can pinpoint some of their characteristics virulence to mutations having occurred along the Silk Road in Eastern Turkey, that might help us to identify other anti-bodies to their virulence.
The origin of the Yiddish language (spoken at least since the 9th century A.D.), and consequently Yiddish speakers, has been debated for the past several centuries, mainly between linguists. While the Rhineland hypothesis suggests a German origin, the Irano-Turko-Slavic hypothesis, proposed by Paul Wexler, suggests a more complex origin starting with Slavic lands in Khazaria, followed by Ukraine, and finally Germany where the language was relexified, i.e., adopted a German vocabulary, but retained its Slavic grammar, which is why Yiddish was oftentimes called “Bad German.”
GPS predictions for the DNA of Ashkenazic Jews (orange triangles) overlap villages whose name may be derived from the word “Ashkenaz” that reside along the Silk Roads and other trade routes. GPS predictions for the DNA of Iranian (yellow triangles) and Mountain (pink triangles) Jews are also shown.
To evaluate these two hypotheses we applied the Geographic Population Structure (GPS) tool to the genomes of over 360 sole Yiddish and non-Yiddish speaking Ashkenazic Jews. This is the largest study of Ashkenazic Jews and the first one to study Yiddish speakers. Surprisingly, GPS honed in an obscure region in northeast Turkey. There we found four primeval villages (one was abandoned in the mid-7th century A.D.) whose name may be derived from the word “Ashkenaz,” suggesting that this was the central location of ancient Ashkenaz.
The search for ancient Ashkenaz has been one of the longest quests in human history lasting at least 1000 years (perhaps second only to Noah’s Ark that has been searched at least since the 3rd century A.D.). This is the only place in the world with these placenames and they cluster within a hub of atrade routes, as can be expected from a nation of traders where linguistic, genomic, historic, and geographic evidence converge.
Evidently, the ancient Ashkenazic Jews were merchants who, together with Iranian Jews, plied land and maritime trade routes and invented Yiddish as a secret language with 251 words for “buy” and “sell” to maintain their monopoly. They were known to trade in everything from fur to slaves. These findings are consistent with historical records depicting Jews as merchants. Indeed, by the 8th century the words “Jew” and “merchant” were practically synonymous. Around that time, Ashkenazic Jews began relocating to the Khazar Empire to expand their mercantile operations. Consequently, some of the Turkic Khazar rulers and the numerous Eastern Slavs in the Khazar Empire converted to Judaism to participate in the lucrative Silk Road trade between Germany and China.
After the fall of Khazaria (10-13th ce) Ashkenazic Jews split into two groups. Some remained in the Caucasus and others migrated into Eastern Europe and Germany that has been incorrectly proposed to be the original land of Ashkenaz. The two groups still call themselves Ashkenazic Jews, however the name became more strongly associated with the latter group. After their separation Yiddish became the primary language among European Jews and underwent relexification by adopting a new vocabulary that consists of a minority of German and Hebrew and a majority of newly coined Germanoid and Hebroid elements that replaced most of the original E. Slavic and Sorbian vocabularies, while keeping the original grammars intact.
Further evidence to the origin of AJs can be found in the many customs and their names concerning the Jewish religion, which were probably introduced by Slavic converts to Judaism, like the breaking of a glass at a wedding ceremony and placing stones over tombstones.
Our study demonstrate the potential of the GPS technology combined with citizen Science to shed light on the forgotten chapters of our history.
Eran Elhaik
University of Sheffield, Department of Animal and Plant Sciences
Sheffield, UK
Posted by DanielS on Thursday, 14 April 2016 05:00.
Click image for video updating events on the fronts of this theater.
Jeffery Samandar
The simple and unbiased answer is that Russia most probably cannot bring about a reasonable resolution (from the Russian perspective) to the Syrian crisis. This is for multiple reasons. I’ll talk about these lightly so you can do your own research.
Foremost reason being Russia’s own military strategy. Review statements from Valery Gerasimov, Russia’s General Staff of the Armed Forces. He has stated that current and future military issues cannot be resolved by traditional military tactics. Russia now heavily favors Guerrilla warfare tactics to accomplish their objectives. (See war in Ukraine.) This stems from their inability to conduct normal military operations outside of Russian borders due to NATO and other threats.
Next issue is resources. Russia is also going through a nasty economic turmoil. They have like 15% inflation and GDP growth is falling. This is to say that any kind of mass deployment to Syria by Russia is likely to exceed its capacity to finance such an expedition.
Additionally, Russia has had to reorganize its entire military structure around these economic short comings. They now operate on the Brigade level rather than on the Divisional level. That’s good for “frogman” operations going on in Ukraine and counter insurgency operations like Chechnya, but not for large scale street by street offensive sweeps. There’s too much command and logistical overhead.
Also, what units would you pull into the fight? The big issue here is that Russia is heavily involved in the fighting in Ukraine. Russia almost surely seeks to occupy more of Ukraine, well past the current Donbass front. (See failure of Minsk II agreement.) What that means is that Russia is using its crack forces in Ukraine, probably up to 10,000 men in Donbass alone, and that significantly cuts into Russia’s ability to redeploy these men or their resources to another theater of conflict.
Considering how big the opposition in Syria is (probably over 150,000 “rebels/terrorists”) Russia would need to deploy at least 15,000-20,000 men. That would be like the whole of the VDV! (which would never be used in this application). My point is that Russia would have to bring in hordes of conscript soldiers, and they are unmotivated to fight and take disproportional higher casualties (see war in Chechnya). This is more expensive in every possible way, and is massively unpopular back in Russia.
All of this is to say that Russia is incapable of resolving this issue by brute force. I think they have been very smart in how they’ve handled the situation so far. They support their ally up to a reasonable ability and leave the liberation of Syria to Syrians. Syrians must resolve this issue themselves or with the aid of an Arabic Coalition, which isn’t going to happen as the Arab states are largely against the Al-Assad government.
Very regrettably, it seems as if the war will continue on: with Russia propping up the Al-Assad government with limited military assistance and intervention, and with Western/Arab nations supporting the collapse of the Al-Assad government by funding and arming opposition parties.
The sort of alliance that Majorityrights advocates between European peoples and Asia(ns) is Happening. We envisage a coordinated effort to protect our peoples, secure our lands, access to vital resources and to maintain our channels of commerce. Allying our peoples and military stations along that line come with the broader purpose of securing our people against Islamic, Arab and African populations, Abrahamic/Judaic and Jewish populations, power and influence.
A home to military bases for the US, France and soon China, Djibouti may be the most important tiny African state you’ve never heard about.
At the close of another hot day on the coast of Djibouti, a tiny country on the Horn of Africa, workers are clambering over huge concrete cubes beneath a red crane. One by one, the 2,500-tonne blocks are being submerged in the water: part of a plan to stun the shoreline into submission and create a vast new port at the heart of global trade.
“We’re going to fill in the sea,” Abdo Mohammed, the logistics manager for the $590m project, tells me with quiet glee.
Thirty per cent of all shipping in the world passes this point on the north-east edge of Africa, where the water narrows to a few kilometres opposite Yemen. A former French colony that became independent only in 1977, Djibouti sits at the southern entrance to the Red Sea, en route to the Suez Canal — a waypoint between Africa, India and the Middle East. Over the past 15 years, the country has set about capitalising on its location at the nexus of international trade: once completed, the Doraleh Multi-Purpose Port will be the largest of eight ports that together will handle containers, livestock, oil, phosphates and more.
But the geostrategic ambition of the small, authoritarian state — which at 23,200 sq km (8,950 sq miles) is only slightly larger than Wales — does not stop there. The US, several European countries and Japan have all pinned global military ambitions on Djibouti. Now China is set to do the same.
Construction began on the new port in 2013. “But then [last year] we had to change things around,” says Mohammed. He gestures with his phone in the direction of the arid land behind us. “We had to make a new section over there, beside the mountain, inside the port. That’s where the Chinese military base will be.”
The sun, by now a giant orange disc, slips behind the sea. Mohammed’s nonchalant disclosure marks the culmination of the search that brought me here. China is planning its first overseas military base at Doraleh, within a few kilometres of America’s largest military outpost in Africa. As superpowers jostle for strategic influence, this impoverished state, home to fewer than a million people, is helping to shape a new world order.
Djibouti first came to the attention of France when the French navy commandeered its coastline in 1862 as a stop to refuel and restock coal steamers en route to French Indochina. French Somaliland, as the colony became known soon after, opened up the landlocked African hinterland to international trade; in the 1910s, a new railway from Addis Ababa to Djibouti linked Ethiopia to the sea. Djibouti is a barren land of mountains and desert, and its location has always been its most precious resource. Even now, it is more port city than country: by far the majority of the population lives in the seaside capital of the same name.
A military and trading entrepôt that welcomes all comers, Djibouti today oozes espionage chic. It is home to pirate-hunters, soldiers, spies and Arab traders. Conservative Somali culture mixes with the legacy of flamboyant French Legionnaires.
“Djibouti is really experiencing a boom,” says Ahmed Osman Guelleh, the 56-year-old chief executive of GSK Group, a family logistics company that has forged its fortune through shipping. Yet the baking heat makes it remarkable that anything much gets done at all. One US soldier who served here describes it as “a hot hell box in the armpit of Africa”. Temperatures reach into the mid-40s for nearly half the year. Government offices shut down at 12.30, and an entire nation of men, and many women, take up the national pastime: chewing for hours on khat, a bitter leaf so renowned for its amphetamine-like properties that it is banned in Britain and the US.
The drug gives its wired adherents a daily buzz — and mollifying fuzz — they cannot be without. I watched market traders, government officials and on-duty police officers chew khat. Even the 49-year-old finance minister Ilyas Moussa Dawaleh admitted to me that his family has shares in the largest khat importer.
“If Djiboutians stopped chewing khat for seven days, they would overthrow the government,” says one port worker. He is only half joking. Eccentric and appealing as it is, Djibouti is authoritarian and brittle too. President Ismaïl Omar Guelleh, a former head of the secret police who has run the country since 1999, will seek re-election for his fourth term on April 8, having altered the constitution in 2010 to allow him to extend his rule. The opposition complains regularly of illegal security crackdowns and the impossibility of free and fair elections.
Flanked by Eritrea, Ethiopia and Somalia, Djibouti is viewed as a haven in the unstable Horn of Africa and hosts armed forces from around the world. “There’s no country with so many military bases. You can throw stones from one end to the other of Djibouti and find military bases all the way, right next to each other,” says one senior official. France pledged to protect its former colony as part of a post-independence deal; after 9/11 it was joined by the US, which chose Djibouti as its base for rooting out emerging Islamist terror networks in the region. Initially, US troops were stationed on a navy ship but in 2003 they set up in Camp Lemonnier, a rundown French Legionnaires’ base beside the airport. The site has since expanded from 88 acres to 500. In 2014 a 10-year lease nearly doubled the annual rent the US pays Djibouti to $63m, with an option to extend for another 10 years.
In the past decade piracy has increased the tiny state’s strategic importance; as Somali pirates took hundreds of crews and vessels captive, costing global trade an estimated $7bn at a 2011 peak, several nations contributed to anti-piracy missions in Djibouti, including Germany, Italy and Japan.
Russia may also be interested in establishing a base. Djibouti’s foreign minister Mahmoud Ali Youssouf, an articulate 50-year-old with a reputation as the most competent minister in the government, tells me that while Djibouti turned down a request from Iran to host its military here — “because we think that Iran’s policy in the region is not a peaceful one” — it has not declined a similar recent request from Moscow. “Russia is a key player, it is a permanent member of the Security Council,” he tells me in his office. “For Russia we have no problem.”
The country is already so full of military personnel that its small, sandy capital city at times resembles a sprawling garrison. US fighter jets share the same airport runway as commercial airlines at the civil airport. French soldiers in impossibly skimpy, neon-hued shorts jog past brightly veiled women and mosques. The five-star Palace Kempinski hotel, a bubble of exclusivity in the otherwise poor city, serves $5 Cokes and popcorn tossed in truffle butter to crewcuts in uniform. Battle tattoos flash on the biceps and backs of Speedo-wearing soldiers in the infinity pool. Special-forces operatives sip Moscow Mules on the pontoon. International spies and drones operate daily. One western spy told me they enjoyed Djibouti because it is “quirky”.
Despite the multi-force troop presence, when rumours started circulating early last year that China was not only going to build its first overseas military base but that it was going to build it in Djibouti, rival powers were taken by surprise. Western countries and their allies view the prospect of China’s military arrival at a global chokepoint for trade and security with alarm. An anti-piracy mission in the Gulf of Aden in 2008 was the first time China had sent naval ships on a mission outside its territorial waters in more than 600 years.
For two fundamental reasons, I welcome China‘s outreach to African states (and believe any sane person should, though I must admit that sanity is not a commodity in great supply in the US these days). First, Africa needs all the help it can get and the Chinese have lots of stored up capital. Second, when the Chinese try to attach strings to their aid, before or after, the Africans smell it out rather swiftly. So far, the Chinese have been less than stellar in camouflaging such strings.”
Since then, Beijing has gradually shifted its foreign policy to embrace a more assertive military posture, moving to a strategy it calls “active defence”. Its pursuit of a Djibouti base has been cloaked in secrecy, with public statements short on detail. Some diplomats speak darkly of China’s “100-year horizons”. One senior western diplomat, with a more immediate timeframe in mind, says, “The worst-case scenario is that they [China] develop this web of bases to give them a kind of control over strategic waterways all the way into the Med.”
In financial terms, China is already what one official in the region describes as the “major show” in town. Following the model it has employed throughout Africa — offering billions of dollars in financing in exchange for access to resources — China is helping to bankroll a targeted $12.4bn of spending on huge infrastructure projects including the Doraleh port and a new railway to Ethiopia. Amid the boom in construction, Djibouti’s growth rate is likely to surpass 7 per cent this year. But the investments are having “limited trickle-down effects”, according to the International Monetary Fund. Nearly two-thirds of the population lives in poverty, and half the labour force is unemployed. In the absence of many skilled domestic workers, Chinese labourers have been flown in.
Loans from China for a water pipeline and the new railway from Ethiopia — agreed before talk of a military base — come to $814m, half of the country’s annual GDP. In 2013 the IMF suspended discussions with Djibouti because of its concerns over debt vulnerability; last year it warned of “elevated solvency risks”. Finance minister Dawaleh tells me he recently travelled to Beijing, seeking to negotiate easier repayment plans. Djibouti’s public and publicly guaranteed debt burden is likely to reach 81 per cent of GDP next year, mostly as a result of Chinese financing.
“We don’t want the Americans to leave but the Chinese invest billions of dollars in our infrastructure; that’s what the Americans are not doing,” foreign minister Youssouf explains. “So we are trying to keep the balance to see where our interest lies, as a small country with very limited resources.”
In early 2014, Djibouti and China signed an agreement to allow the Chinese navy — which contributes to international anti-piracy operations — to use its port. Beijing made no official comment when President Guelleh said, last May, that Djibouti was in talks with China to establish a military base. In November, China confirmed only a naval “support facility” destined for Djibouti, with a spokesperson saying, “It will help China’s military further carry out its international responsibilities to safeguard global and regional peace and stability.” Even in February this year, announcing the start of work on the project, China referred only to “logistical facilities” for naval rest and resupply. The Chinese embassy in Djibouti turned down my requests for an interview with the ambassador.
But when I speak to Youssouf, he is candid and happy to provide details of the deal he and President Guelleh have struck with China. “The terms of the contract and agreement are very clear and they are the same for each and every country that requested military presence in Djibouti,” he tells me in his office in the capital.
China will, he says, pay $20m a year for a 10-year lease for the military base, with an option to extend for a further 10 years. There will probably be “a few thousand” troops and military staff at the site, along with its own naval berth at the new port. It would use the base to protect its national interest — monitoring its merchant vessels passing the Bab el-Mandeb Strait that leads to the Suez Canal, and for its navy to refuel and restock — much as the French did more than 150 years ago. Youssouf also says that China, which is slated to build a second major airport in the country, would have as much right to use drones as the US and French. China’s foreign ministry declined to respond to faxed questions from the FT about the terms of the new base.
“The Americans have enough technology, enough fighter aircraft, enough drones [here] to control each and every piece of this land and even beyond,” says Youssouf. “Why should the Chinese not have the right to also use those materials . . . to preserve and protect their interest in the Strait of Bab el-Mandeb. Why?”
Official comments from those potentially affected are clipped: “We follow the situation about the Chinese base very closely,” says Tatsuo Arai, Japan’s ambassador to Djibouti. Youssouf admits that both Japan and the US have “expressed their worries” to both him and President Guelleh about the arrival of a Chinese military presence so close to their own, and its potential capabilities.
“Those preoccupations and worries expressed by the Americans and others are groundless, for us at least,” Youssouf tells me, deriding the west’s “hypocritical vision of our common interest”.
“We can host Chinese bases as we can host American bases . . . They might have conflicting interests elsewhere but here they cannot have conflicting interests, because the strait of Bab el-Mandeb is vital for each and everyone in the world,” he says. “There is no conflict of interest when it comes to global peace. China has no interest in doing anything [bad]. Everybody knows that nobody can take any action that could jeopardise the maritime traffic . . . This is a vital lifeline for the whole of international trade.
“We tried to reassure [the Americans and Japanese ], saying don’t worry, the same agreement we signed with them is the one we signed with you. So there is no reason to worry.”
That sense of equivalence may be precisely what is worrying the US. America, after all, is undertaking in Djibouti what Ambassador Tom Kelly tells me is “the biggest active military construction project in the entire world . . . It’s number one of everything we’re doing.” In his office at the US embassy, a monolith in sand-blown Haramous (what counts as the city’s upmarket district), the 54-year-old Kelly is unambiguous about the country’s vital role, describing Djibouti as “at the forefront of our national security policy right now”.
Geography is important (most who use the term ‘geopolitical’ don’t even know what they are implying by it). From Djibouti, Aden is just across, as is its state, Yemen, where al-Qaeda abounds. The narrowest part of the Red Sea route, south, is there. Jeddah is just up the opposite coast and Mogadishu, another haven for al-Qaeda, is the other way across the landmass. Moreover, the government of Djibouti, unlike most other African states, seems to be either sufficiently worried about its own security or lusting for hard currency, or both, to be one of the few African states willing to host a US troop presence.”
“The greatest threat to the US is terrorism, and we’re right on the front lines here,” he says. “It is an extremely important counterterrorism platform for the United States; within striking distance of two active affiliates — AQIP [al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula] and al-Shabaab in Somalia.”
The US runs special ops across the continent as well as drones from Djibouti, protects 16 embassies in the region and fights al-Qaeda affiliates in Somalia, Yemen and further afield. The country is also a key point for monitoring and securing trade routes. At Obock, a sleepy fishing port at the mouth of the Bab el-Mandeb Straits, the US has installed a surveillance centre.
From here, Djibouti can monitor southern access to the Suez, track seafaring traffic, patrol coastal waters and protect maritime borders. The US built a naval pier here in 2009 and conducts counterterrorism training and houses radar equipment in the nearby Ras Bir lighthouse.
The US presence is growing; $1bn is being spent on expanding its base, bulking up its presence for the long term. While the drone site has been moved to Chabelley, 10km south-west of the capital, the main US base in the city still has what operatives call a “secret side”, with a covert compound dedicated to special operations, targeting not only AQIP and al-Shabaab but also the main branch of al-Qaeda, Boko Haram, the Lord’s Resistance Army and Isis. As US troops withdraw from Afghanistan, Djibouti is now the active centre for what US soldiers at the camp refer to as “g-wot”: the global war on terror.
“Guys who come back can’t believe how much bigger it’s got,” one of the 4,500 troops and contractors living inside the base tells me. Unlike the French, they are allowed to leave the base only rarely during their downtime. Camp conditions approximate to, in the words of one resident, “adultday caree”. US forces eat at Combat Café, watch films at the Oasis Movie Theatre, play ping pong, poker and Xbox 360 in the gaming room, go to the gym and crack gags instructing each other to “have a Djiboutiful day”.
Japanese troops, whose anti-piracy mission numbers several hundred, sometimes visit for a game of soccer or touch rugby to alleviate what one Japanese soldier described to me as a dismal time coping with heat and boredom. Japan’s base also finds ways to remind cooped-up soldiers of home: I was treated to a tour that included a room filled with manga comics, traditional Japanese communal hot baths and the rare prospect of sushi.
The confines of the camp are in contrast to the freer life downtown. My own interest was piqued when a Somali friend described Djibouti as “Mogadishu meets Las Vegas”. The country, which a diplomat calls “one of the sentinels of moderate Muslim societies”, goes more or less by the secular French penal code, a leftover from colonial days. Compared with neighbouring Somalia’s practice of sharia, it is relatively liberal. Women rarely wear the full niqab, some shirk a headscarf completely. They meet for late-night sheeshas, guava juice and gossip beside the quay in the hot night air. Many have boyfriends, even if they shield it from their families.
“You can have your private life in Djibouti. That’s why we’re not like Somalia,” an impassioned 30-year-old woman tells me, saying it was down not to French influence but to “the Djiboutian mentality”. “We are much more open, more free. We don’t talk about sex ever but it goes on out of marriage. As long as you don’t bring shame on your family, your private life is free.”
Djibouti’s nightclubs stay open until 4am, with police carefully shepherding revellers to avoid clashing with the call of the muezzin as worshippers attend morning prayers. I watch a group of five Frenchmen — all swagger, sleeves rolled up, hands in pockets — rolling out of l’Historil, a bar-restaurant, heading for the bright lights of the disco zone. Another group of French soldiers passes through the metal detectors to enter Shams, a nightclub rammed with revellers lit by disco balls. The outlines of the Statue of Liberty and a bare-breasted woman hang on the walls; 13 waitresses stand elbow to elbow serving drinks at the red-lit bar.
While parts of the city and many Muslims are dry, drinking is common. “Everyone here drinks and if they don’t, they drink in private,” one Djiboutian jokes to me over his whisky. Alcohol is sold in bars and the state licenses a clutch of tightly controlled booze importers.
Larry Modi is among them. The Christian son of an enterprising Indian runaway and an Ethiopian woman, the 67-year-old has run a supermarket in Djibouti City for many years. Warm and avuncular, with soft features, big round eyes and greying hair, he greets me at 11.30am with an offer of “champagne?”, pouring glasses for us both. His shop features floor-to-ceiling shelves of beer, gin, vodka and more. He is beloved by generations of soldiers and his office has the military memorabilia — gifts from soldiers serving out their time in this peculiar way station — to prove it; the French made him an honorary Legionnaire.
The cultural quirks of a country that appears to welcome all belie Djibouti’s repressive political climate. A London judge last month, ruling on a corruption case brought by Djibouti, painted a picture of President Guelleh’s regime as “capricious”, “cavalier” and on occasions “reprehensible”. Diplomats whose troops rely on the president’s welcome describe him as the crafty, powerful and impressive leader of a centralised autocracy, one stop short of dictatorship.
Human-rights activists decry a series of abuses. The government routinely suppresses the opposition, “harassing, abusing and detaining government critics”, says the latest report from the US state department, published last year, which also censures Djibouti for conducting torture, arbitrary arrest and detention of demonstrators, opposition members and journalists.
In 2011, the state put down a series of protests that hinted at the beginnings of Arab Spring-like uprisings. In December last year, police clashed with the opposition, killing at least seven and wounding dozens. Today the opposition protests against vote-rigging and harassment.
“There’s a lack of freedom, people are desperate, poor — it creates a lot of discontent. People are patient but there’s a limit,” Daher Ahmed Farah, spokesman for the opposition coalition group Union for the National Salvation, tells me.
Opposition figures such as Farah, a 54-year-old who goes by his initials “Daf”, have been followed, arrested and tortured. They meet and speak with the furtive glances and low voices borne of well-informed paranoia. Daf himself has been arrested more than 25 times since 2013, he says.
When I meet him one afternoon, we go to an empty café until a lone man comes and sits right next to us and, Daf feels, listens in. We lower our voices, move tables, and finally we leave.
That evening, I receive a call from reception to my hotel room. “There are some visitors here to see you.” I was not expecting any. I go downstairs to see a man wrapped in a skirt, wired on khat, and his adjunct dressed in a camel flannel uniform. “Come with us,” says the man in the skirt.
“Hello. Greetings. How can I help?” I ask, attempting a smile. “Police. Come with us.” I say I do not think it wise for us to have this conversation — or perhaps it is an arrest — at night, in the dark, in an unknown location, and could we pursue this tomorrow. They insist.
I manage to alert my back-up contacts before the police take me to what turns out to be the city’s central commissariat. Along with two other men, a colonel questions me at length, asking why I met with the opposition, what Daf said and who introduced us. I demur.
He directs the same questions to me again and again, especially the last, in a bad comedy of repetition, peppering his inquisition with the admission that it is perfectly legal for me, an accredited journalist with the right visa, to meet the perfectly legal opposition. The whole thing lasts four hours.
Back in my hotel room, I do not sleep for what is left of the night. I relate the tale the next day to a diplomat. “It’s intimidation,” he tells me.
In May 2014, Djibouti’s assumption that it was a well-protected island of peace in a troubled region was shaken when al-Shabaab launched a double suicide attack on a downtown restaurant popular with locals and westerners. One person was killed and dozens wounded.
Being targeted not only for sending troops to fight al-Shabaab in Somalia but also for hosting foreign bases — the attack took place in the same month that Djibouti signed its extension agreement with the US — was a shock to a country that had until then considered itself off-limits.
“Djibouti is calm, peaceful — a Djiboutian can never do that, they like peace too much — but, if someone is prepared to die, you can’t stop them,” says a member of the government’s antiterrorism group, which comprises 160 security officers and 600 civilians linked into a reporting network. “It was a wake-up call,” says the agent. “We have totally reorganised policing and protection along the border. Now we pick up communications — we see the value in talking to people and we’re much more alert.”
Djibouti’s belief that it stands to benefit from being the linchpin for an international coalition against terrorism clearly brings its own risks. But foreign minister Youssouf insists that the country has not wavered “from our belief that globalisation means everything”. Djibouti’s security role also helps establish a modicum of leverage distinct from populous, landlocked Ethiopia, on which it has always been seen as dependent. “Everyone said Djibouti would be swallowed by Somalia or Ethiopia but in the end we are the umbilical cord for Ethiopia, and now they and the Chinese see us as that,” says Youssouf, concerned to dispel the notion that Djibouti exists solely to service the Ethiopian economy.
The US has tried to enlist China as friend not foe in the military field in Africa, suggesting integrated operations in areas such as landmine clearance and peacekeeping training. China turned down a request for a joint demining programme but it participates in international anti-piracy missions and some naval exercises. The US hopes to encourage greater co-operation. Djibouti could, if it goes well, become a catalyst for what one observer calls “a joint globalised security architecture”. But the flipside augurs ill: well-armed superpowers jostling in a city of closely guarded secrets, raising the stakes on the militarisation of trade routes and security chokepoints. Managing the existence of both a US and a Chinese military base in the same country “will be a challenge for all involved”, says ambassador Kelly.
For Djibouti, the answer is clear. “For many years Japanese, Italians, Germans, French and Americans are just coexisting in this very small land,” says Youssouf. “So why should it be different in the future?”
Posted by DanielS on Saturday, 13 February 2016 15:29.
Jews may not flock to Russia upon Putin’s offer, as New Observer quotes Mikhail Skoblionok saying, but they’re already comfortably affixed there. The reason they may not flock there from other places is because the parasitic ways they established there have already desiccated the economy of that host -
European Jews will not take up Vladimir Putin’s recent offer to take “refuge” in Russia, even though the Russian Prime Minister and Deputy Prime Minister are Jews, Mikhail Skoblionok, a leading member of the Euro-Asian Jewish Congress has said.
Writing in the Tatar news website Realnoe Vremya, Skoblionok, (here in Russian, and here in English) who also is president of the Jewish National and Cultural Autonomy of Tatarstan, said that “a Jew of sound judgment won’t go to Russia.”
Putin made the offer last month in a meeting with members of the European Jewish Congress (EJC) that took place in the Kremlin. Moshe Vyacheslav Kantor, EJC president, complained to Putin about the rising anti-Semitism across Europe and the growing number of attacks against Jews.
Putin replied: “Let [the Jews] come to us then,” adding that “during the Soviet period they were leaving the country, and now they should return.”
Skoblionok, who represents the 10,000 Jews in the Republic of Tatarstan, a federal state of the Russian Federation in the Volga Federal District, expressed his doubt that Jews would take up Putin’s suggestion.
“To start with, I will describe the situation in Israel,” Skoblionok said.
“There is a tendency there: French Jews have been buying up apartments in Israel for the last five years. There are houses but the light is off. I am asking, ‘Why is the light off? Are these apartments empty?’
“People say that French Jews bought up these apartments and keep them in store. They are afraid that France will become a merely Muslim state so have prepared reserve flats,” he wrote, indicating that Jews were preparing to leave France in large numbers in the case of an emergency.
“My friends, who go to France, note that the Arab people are crowded into the country. Arabs will soon account for 80 percent of the population, like our Far East is populated by Chinese people,” he continued, in this case referring to the colonization of the far eastern regions of Russia.
“The population of ethnic French people is reducing in number; they are not reproducing, unlike the Arabs. The Muslims have large families there—sometimes a family has fifteen children,” Skoblionok pointed out.
“France lacks space, and Jews go to other countries where there is work and an opportunity to make money. The number of attacks based on national and religious beliefs is increasing in Europe. There is hysteria among the Arabs too. Europe fears a pogrom against Jews, and this feeling is strongly noticed in France,” he said.
Skoblionok then went on to discuss Putin’s proposal: “Vladimir Putin always knows what to do and say. But a Jew of sound judgement won’t go to Russia,” he said.
“I will explain why. Our country is at the height of an economic crisis. There is a huge gap between the rich and the poor which does not exist in many other countries. The rich buy villas, hotels, and yachts abroad, while the poor simply have nothing to eat. A revolution may yet come about here,” he said—ignoring the fact that he is one of the “rich” himself, having become the oligarch head of the natural gas exploration and petroleum production company TAkPO CJSC in 1987—and then buying it when privatization came after the fall of Communism.
“The Jews all over the world know and have assessed this situation. This is why I don’t think that there will be a mad rush of Jews from the whole world to Russia.”
However, he then said that that there was no danger to Jews in Russia.
Under the heading “Country headed by Jews,” Skoblionok said that “in Russia, the attitude of both ordinary citizens and the government to the Jews is good.
“In addition, there are large numbers of Jews in the Russian government. [Prime Minister Dmitry] Medvedev has Jewish roots. [Deputy Prime Minister Arkady] Dvorkovich is Jewish. What attitude will they have to themselves?” he rhetorically asked.
Even so, he went on, in his own region of Tatarstan, “the situation is different. The regional government has no Jews [in it].”
He told of how a local synagogue had failed to be given land next to its building, even though they had won the rights to it in court.
This piece of land, he lamented, “will be up for auction. And we were told ‘go and buy it’ [instead of getting it for nothing].”
“What Jew will come here?” he concluded.
But where there is a will there is an oy vey! And where there is a vey! they can make a deal, such a deal.
Chinese laundry commercial washing away the fraud of anti-racism
Viktor Orban and Premier Beata Szydło
