McBride, that irrelevant muppet and the faux outrage he caused

This really is much ado about nothing — it’s no different to the expenses nonsense. They’re all at it. It’s what they do. They fiddle and they scheme, and one or two, might actually do some work once in a while.

Politicians like to claim that they’re morally superior to us, or that they’re in the know about things we’ll never comprehend, but in reality they’re like the rest of us: a mix of shirkers, workers, liars, pervs, twats and smart-arses (have I missed anyone?). MPs are no different to that bunch of goons and loons you work with. No better, and probably no worse. It’s the anthropology, stupid.

Guido’s desperate to make this a big deal because it feeds his gargantuan ego. Is it really news that politicos scheme against one-another? No, don’t be so daft you silly hypocritical gonad.

If the political blogosphere really is going to be the antidote to the MSM, rather than its desperate echo-chamber, we really have to be better than this.

Next!

the irregular photo of the day II

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fs50-50 (Murmansk city), originally uploaded by fukel.

Follow through to the photographer’s flickr stream for more cool snowboarding shots.

Kosovo referred to ICJ

From the BBC ::

The UN General Assembly has voted to refer Kosovo’s independence declaration to the International Court of Justice.

The ICJ will be asked to give an advisory, non-binding opinion on the legality of Kosovo’s declaration of independence from Serbia in February.

Seventy-seven countries voted in favour, six against and 74 abstained.

[…]

Most EU countries abstained – Britain called Serbia’s request primarily political.

This is something of a diplomatic coup for the Russians (not to mention the Serbs).

As the United States and Russia continue to manoeuvre politically and militarily across Eastern Europe and Central Asia, many countries will again be forced to pick sides in what could become a new Cold War.

This is not lazy hyperbole. Who could have predicted that 5-years ago Russia would openly attack a US ally? It happened this summer, and many Eastern European countries are getting jittery as Russia continues to rebuild itself, thanks to its oil and gas receipts.

American primacy is over. Iraq, Afghanistan and the crisis on Wall St. have seen to that.

Internationalists hoped that globalisation, and the interconnectedness of international markets and trade, would lead to a peaceful transition from behemothic empire to collective prosperity and security. However, greed and hubris has meant this dream has collapsed.

We now see the nascent state of Kosovo referred to the International Court of Justice. Whether or not the case is legitimate is not for me to discuss, but to watch Russia and the U.S. use Kosovo as a political football is deeply worrying.

Rightwing sense

How would we have reacted if Moscow had brought Western Europe into the Warsaw Pact, established bases in Mexico and Panama, put missile defense radars and rockets in Cuba, and joined with China to build pipelines to transfer Mexican and Venezuelan oil to Pacific ports for shipment to Asia? And cut us out? If there were Russian and Chinese advisers training Latin American armies, the way we are in the former Soviet republics, how would we react? Would we look with bemusement on such Russian behavior?

Pat Buchanan’s piece over at the US conservative site, Human Events, is worthy of your time. The comments, from the rabid “nuke now” readership, are much more scary…

hypocrisy

US warning to Russia over Georgia (BBC).

C’mon Vlad, don’cha geddit?

No-one likes to see dead white people on TV.

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also…

Image via. BBC. No authority requested.

James Traub’s piece in the NYT Review is worthy of your time and attention – all six pages of it.

russia-georgia links

More on the Russian-Georgian war ::

Amused Cynicism has a take. Along with two roundups. Here and here.

The view from Back Towards The Locus is here.

Douglas Muir is in Georgia (although plans are afoot for his evacuation), and has penned this interesting post.

And finally, Lenin’s Tomb’s excellent post looking at “the big picture”.

russia’s georgian play

I don’t suppose the Chinese could be more pissed off. Just when the eyes of the world were supposed to be focussed on Beijing, they’re diverted to Russia’s bloody spat with neighbours Georgia, over the destiny of the mountainous enclave of South Ossetia.

Today the combat widened to engulf another breakaway province, Abkhazia.

Russia’s decision was in reaction to an escalation by Georgian forces last week, who have long battled separatist guerillas. But the conflict is not simply Moscow protecting ethnic Ossetians, but a wider play that will achieve several objectives.

Few would doubt that Russia is back. Sky-high oil and gas prices have ensured that billions of dollars are flowing into Russia every month. This wealth has papered over the cracks in Russia’s crack-pot economy, allowing the state to dislocate itself from Western influence and chart a new, more confident course.

Recently Russia has flexed its muscles, intimidating smaller neighbours. Estonia, Lithuania, Poland, Ukraine, and other former Warsaw Bloc countries, have felt the brunt of Russian political and economic pressure. Europe, fractured by internal strife and reliant on Russian fuel, has been impotent in facing down this Russian aggression. Now Russia begins its latest calculated power-play.

Several points should be noted ::

– This escalation is a warning shot to the EU and America. America is planning to site nuclear weapons in former Soviet states in Eastern Europe. Moscow has warned that this will be considered an act of aggression. Attacking a pro-American ally will show that Russia isn’t afraid of confrontation.

– The invasion is a wider demonstration of Russia’s intention to regain former influence on the world stage.

– Russia has no interest in the recent stabilisation in oil prices (although an extended conflict will reduce Russian oil companies’ market value and put off investors – a calculation the Kremlin will have evaluated). The Caucasus’ are a corridor between East-Asian oil & gas and Europe. A corridor that circumvents Russia. This war may lead to a rise in oil prices, and maybe make the West reconsider its investments and its perceived energy security.

– American chiding has little weight. Yet again we can see the long-term damage the Bush doctrine has done to American moral authority. The Kremlin rather enjoys pointing out American hypocrisy.

– The Georgian president and long-term thorn in the Kremlin’s side, Mikheil Saakashvili, will lose political credibility and appear weak at home. Saakashvili has naively courted the West. Washington probably feels like a long way away at the moment.

– Other neighbours, thinking about getting cosy with Nato, the EU, and America, may think twice about cold-shouldering Moscow in future.

– The Russians never miss an opportunity to poke Beijing in the eye.

– Putin is furious at the West’s involvement in the Kosovan declaration of independence (Russia vehemently opposed its dislocation from Serbia). This is a shot back, via. one of the West’s closest allies.

– Ossetians want to be part of Russia. Russians consider Ossetians their own kin. Protecting South Ossetia and tackling the Georgians (who have long put down the Ossetians with brute force), will play very well with the Russian public.

– The Russian people can see that Vladimir Putin is still very-much the main man.

It really is a win-win situation for Moscow. It’s a war they simply can’t lose, and the strategic benefits are numerous. Globalisation, as it did at the turn of twentieth century, was always going to lead to huge power-plays by the big players. This was is no surprise, and neither is Russia’s adoption of C19th globally-minded power politics.

brown falters in japan

So Brown has found it difficult to persuade the new Russian President, Dmitry Medvedev, to ease pressure on BP workers struggling with visas in the new Russia.

Shock. Horror.

Russia – like most of the oil-producing countries have already – wishes to release itself from the shackles of foreign oil conglomerates and take control of its own resources. While this may be bad form, considering the agreements it made following the collapse of the USSR, it is exactly the same path that most of the oil-rich nations have followed. However, Russia, unlike politically fragile nations such as those in the Middle East, has no reason to kowtow to the West and arrange special relationships with western governments that would go some way to re-balancing the relative trade-balances. It can – or feels it can – act independently. So it maintains frosty relations with the west.

Seriously, if we reject Russian oil and gas, where exactly are we going to go, and what options do we have?

None is the short-form answer.

Brown is between a rock and the proverbial hard place. And who, seriously, can blame the Russians? Okay, they probably don’t have the off-shore expertise that the Western companies have, but do they really want to surrender so much profit to foreign companies? No. And it’s an easy domestic victory to stick it to the companies who hope, so desperately, to profit hugely from the riches of Russia.

Russia probably should, if it has any desire for constructive diplomatic cooperation, hand over Andrei Lugovoy (a suspect in the Alexander Litvinenko murder), but then it has a commitment to never handing over Russian citizens to foreign powers (oh, for us Brits to enjoy such protection). Again another domestic political coup.

Only if British, and Western, politicians begin to understand and appreciate the current Russian body politik, will they ever hope to understand the motivations of the Russian state. Until then, I guess we’ll have to accept these heavily biased news headlines.

2007: a political year. part two

Part one can be found here.

Abroad
Huge corporatocracies control our governments and shadowy agents work against the interest of global peace, international law, and environmental sustainability. In fact, never has it been more apparent that democracy is just an illusion and that all political parties operate within the same narrow superstructure. In the last decade Рand very much in 2007 Рwe have seen the fa̤ade of Western Democracy reach a nadir, as elected governments crush hard-won liberties and act with impunity across the globe, all in the name of fighting the nebulous spectre that is Islamic Fundamentalism.

The British and American governments continue to fight a war that was started illegally and – at least in Britain – lacks any significant public support. The Middle East is still in flux, with tentative steps toward peace lacking any real substance. And we, the West, do business and have strong diplomatic relations with a country that routinely liquidates thousands of political dissidents every year: China.

Is it any surprise that on a planet where 51 of the largest 100 economies are in fact corporations and not states, that we the people, seem to matter less and less to our leaders. This year the British Government quashed an enquiry into the actions of one of our top corporations, British Aerospace (BAe), which was accused of having bunged bribes to foreign nationals to grease a multi-billion pound defence contract. In 2008 the desperate state of the British Government’s morality was exposed as it disregarded the rule of law after an orchestrated campaign by BAe and the corrupt Saudi royal family. Weeks later our Queen rolled out the red carpet for a head of state who denies his subjects any religious or political freedom and prevents women from driving, and pretty much everything else. The Saudis are our friends and a strong ally in the Global War on Terror (GWOT), apparently. It’s worth noting that Riyadh finances many of the fundamentalist Madrases that educate poison young Muslims against the West.

2007 also saw Iraq get worse before it got better. Suicide bombings and violence reached record levels early in ’07, before a ‘surge’ in US troop numbers restored a semblance of order to Baghdad. Another of Washington’s solutions to the quagmire in Iraq included paying Sunnis militias to patrol their own streets, the Iraqi police having been exposed as corrupt and riddled with “enemy combatants”. The Sunnis, it appears, turned on al Qaeda forces and returned peace to their neighbourhoods, but many Americans find it hard to accept that their government is stuffing dollars into the pockets of fighters, who only a few months ago, were planting IEDs under US vehicles and mortaring its bases. “Progress” in Iraq is of course built on a foundation of sand, as no sustainable political solution has been reached by a still-born Iraqi parliament. However, one of the few pieces of legislation pushed through this cancerous institution was a law liberalising Iraq’s oil industry, a law strong-armed by the US. Priorities, it seems, have not been forgotten (remember electricity has still not returned to pre-2003 levels). And with Turkish military excursions into Northern Iraq, even the success-story that is the Kirkuk region, appears to be heading for violence.

In Central Asia a coalition between China, Russia and former Soviet Republics (the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation) are asserting pressure on the US to close bases in the region (poverty stricken former states of the USSR were happy to accept US dollars prior to the rise in gas and oil prices, but now cash-flush China and Russia are happy help). America is being pinched in every direction. Indeed, China, Russia, and their acerbic bedfellows Iran and Venezuela, have grown in stature and now strut the international stage, hampering UN action in flash-points such as Darfur. Oil-drenched Russia has planted its flag below the resource-rich arctic circle and China’s military spending, not to mention its space weapons technology, is causing USPACOM to sweat. If the West continues to focus its attention on fighting a fluid, imprecise enemy on the streets on the Middle East, it may find itself marginalised and impotent as Russia and China solidify their global reach. 2007 has indicated that the unipolar world will be short-lived and that the Fukuyama-envisigned future of a global-wide market democracy is still a long way away.

Europe too has reached a nadir. As leaders push through a watered-down constitution, no-one seems willing or able to communicate a pro-European vision for the continent. Countries are pulling within themselves and politicians are pandering to nationalistic sentiments. Immigration is a key political stick for right-wingers and racial tensions are running high across Europe. If European leaders are unable to reassert the founding principles of the European Union in the coming year, it’s increasingly clear that the people of Europe will, en masse, grow weary of the project and European co-operation and economic harmony may never again capture their imagination.

Following the assassination of Pakistan’s former PM, Benazir Bhutto, we cannot be sure that the fragile stability of one of Asia’s most important states can be maintained. Myanmar (formerly Burma) is in political turmoil and with North Korea just missing the deadline to give a full account of its nuclear weapons under a disarmament-for-aid deal, it is clear that the world will still be taking shape in 2008.

In Summary
I offer no apologies for the negativity of both these assessments. The world and the UK are in a period of great change and economic uncertainty. I would love to believe that 2008 will bring greater international unity and collected action, but I doubt this will come to pass. In Britain we have a government struggling to regain lost credibility, and abroad our dreams of global democracy are in tatters.

The one bright light on the horizon is the coming US elections, and the possibility that a moderate will win the presidency. If a Clinton, Edwards, Obama, or McCain wins in November, then maybe, just maybe, this slide can be slowed and a return to rational leadership in Washington is possible. Let’s hope so…