Back to them good ol’ days

Posted on July 13, 2013 by Antigone1984.com

Editorial note: If you have not yet read our mission statement above, please do so in order that you can put our blogs in context. 

13 July 2013

THE FUTURE IS IN THE PAST

As we compose this post on our white Apple MacBook, we have also on our desk a dinky Underwood portable typewriter identical with that on which US beat novelist Jack Kerouac wrote his epic road-trip novel “On the Road” in 1951.

[See our post yesterday 12 July 2013. The novel was not published until 1957.]

We picked up this neat little writing-machine in 2006 in a shop selling bric-à-brac in Seville at a time when we were living in Andalusia in southern Spain. Bizarrely, it has a label etched onto it indicating that it originally came from Watson’s Typewriters Ltd of 128 St Vincent Street, Glasgow, in Scotland.

Kerouac used this machine to write his epic in three weeks on a 36-metre scroll of tracing paper, the separate sheets of which he had joined together using sellotape, the roll then being wound round a plastic rolling pin. The aim was to write the book non-stop without letting his train of thought be interrupted by the continual need to feed new sheets of paper into the typewriter. Kerouac worked day and night to complete the text, his wife feeding him cup after cup of coffee to keep him awake.

The original scroll and typewriter are still extant and were displayed last summer in France in an exhibition devoted to “On the Road” at the Musée des Lettres et Manuscrits in the Boulevard St Germain in Paris. Unfortunately, the end of the scroll is missing as a dog ate it.

Kerouac’s Underwood was obviously in tip-top condition to be able to withstand all that non-stop pounding by the key representative of the post-war Beat Generation.

We have not been so lucky. The paper-pickup mechanism on our machine is out of order, so we have not so far been in a position to stand down our smooth silent soulless word-processor and revert to a machine which – no less than the savour of a Madeleine cake or the contours of a church steeple dispatched Marcel Proust on a never-ending quest for the vanished world of his youth – will inevitably evoke nostalgic memories of the days, long gone alas, when the rackety click-clack of antiquated Remingtons resounded through the newsroom as we first pressed typeface to paper in our salad days as a cub reporter on a local rag in north-east London.

However, things may be changing apace and a swift repair job at London’s only still-functioning typewriter surgery may soon become an urgent necessity.

According to a report in the Russian newspaper Izvestiya – relayed yesterday 12 July 2013 in the London Guardian – Russia’s Federal Guard Service (FSO), which protects the country’s top-rank officials, has ordered 20 Triumph Adler typewriters.

The aim is to counter electronic snooping by Russia’s enemies in the wake of the revelation by ex-CIA whistleblower Edward Snowden that United States spies have been intercepting internet data worldwide on a colossal scale.

An FSO source is quoted as saying: “After the scandal with the spread of secret documents by Wikileaks, the revelations of Edward Snowden, reports of listening to Dmitry Medvedev during his visit to the G20 summit in London [in April 2009, when Medvedev was President of Russia], the practice of creating paper documents will expand.”

And a jolly good thing, too, according to Antigone1984.

It has become massively apparent over the past few years that the spooks of the world have united in an Orwellian quest to pry into the most intimate secrets of every individual on the planet.

Not only that. Most of the world’s electronic data flows, at some point or other in its course through cyber space, via networks controlled by the world’s major internet companies – Apple, Google, Microsoft, Facebook, etc, all based in the United States.  According to the latest media reports, these companies are guilty of supplying private data by the  shedload to US spymasters.

The precautionary principle suggests, therefore, that we should treat more or less every communication we send or receive as being potentially bugged.

Antigone1984 believes that anyone concerned to protect the privacy of their personal, political or business communications should forthwith jettison all the electronic paraphernalia with which they have been saddled by the snake-oil salesmen of the internet. They should revert instead to good-old person-to-person oral communications supplemented, if necessary, by handwritten or typed messages.

And that means saying goodbye to smartphones, tablets, interactive TVs, computers and even old-fashioned Marconi landlines.

What a relief it will be to consign to the dustbin all the electronic garbage that so clutters up modern life and destroys social contact, turning what were once human beings into glassy-eyed inter-nerds!

But what about this blog of ours?  Shall we cease to publish?

Here again we can take our cue from the Russians, who appear to be setting the pace in taking us forward to the past.

Antigone1984 would be quite happy to abandon cyberspace and turn, instead, to composing samizdats – a Russian word for “self-publishing” – which were typed or handwritten political texts banned by the state that circulated clandestinely from hand to hand among dissidents in the bad old days of the Soviet Union.

Here’s to the past. We never appreciated it till it was gone.

Time for a revival perhaps.

The future is in the past.

——–

 You might perhaps care to view some of our earlier posts.  For instance:

1. Why? or How? That is the question (3 Jan 2012)

2. Partitocracy v. Democracy (20 July 2012)

3. The shoddiest possible goods at the highest possible prices (2 Feb 2012)

4. Capitalism in practice  (4 July 2012) 

5.Ladder  (21 June 2012)

 6. A tale of two cities (1)  (6 June 2012)

 7. A tale of two cities (2)  (7 June 2012)

 8. Where’s the beef? Ontology and tinned meat (31 Jan 2012)

Every so often we shall change this sample of previously published posts.

——-

Posted in Literature, Russia, USA | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Why bother?

Posted on July 12, 2013 by Antigone1984.com

Editorial note: If you have not yet read our mission statement above, please do so in order that you can put our blogs in context. 

12 July 2013

“My whole wretched life swam before my weary eyes, and I realized no matter what you do it’s bound to be a waste of time in the end so you might as well go mad.”

Philosophical musing from “On the Road”, the cult masterpiece of  US beat novelist Jack Kerouac (1922-1969), published in 1957.

——–

 You might perhaps care to view some of our earlier posts.  For instance:

1. Why? or How? That is the question (3 Jan 2012)

2. Partitocracy v. Democracy (20 July 2012)

3. The shoddiest possible goods at the highest possible prices (2 Feb 2012)

4. Capitalism in practice  (4 July 2012) 

5.Ladder  (21 June 2012)

 6. A tale of two cities (1)  (6 June 2012)

 7. A tale of two cities (2)  (7 June 2012)

 8. Where’s the beef? Ontology and tinned meat (31 Jan 2012)

Every so often we shall change this sample of previously published posts.

——-

 

 

 

 

 

 

Posted in Literature, USA | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

A smoking gun

Posted on July 11, 2013 by Antigone1984.com

Editorial note: If you have not yet read our mission statement above, please do so in order that you can put our blogs in context. 

11 July 2013

Talk about a smoking gun!

As we suggested on 5 July 2013 in our first blog, “The pachyderm in the pyramid”, on the recent coup d’état in Egypt, it is a racing certainty that the United States, which is funding the Egyptian military to the tune of an estimated $ 1.3 billion in annual aid, was briefed in advance of the impending putsch and okayed it.

Now we have the smoking gun which proves it.

Or rather not a smoking gun but four ultra-sophisticated F-16 fighter jets.

The news today is that the United States is to go ahead with delivery of the planes to a military regime that only a week ago forcibly ousted a democratically elected president.

If that is not backing a military coup d’état, then we don’t know what is.

The decision by Washington to go ahead with the delivery of the jets makes it crystal-clear that the use of force by the Egyptian army to unseat President Mohamed Morsi on 3 July 2013 took place with the full backing of the United States. You do not send warplanes to putschists with whose exploits you disagree.

Given the long history of US implication in coup d’états against governments which it dislikes, it is quite feasible to suppose that the putsch was actually orchestrated by the United States.

US officials say Washington will deliver the four F-16 fighter jets to the Egypt in the next few weeks. They are part of an already agreed order of 20 planes.  The first eight were sent to Egypt in January and the final eight are expected to be shipped later this year.

White House spokesman Jay Carney said yesterday 10 July 2013 that it would not be “in the best interests of the United States to make immediate changes to our assistance programmes”.

And what about the best interests of Egypt – now in riotous turmoil and without a government?

Regular readers of this blog will be unsurprised that it is not the best interests of Egypt that the US has in mind in sending the jets. As always, it is the best interests (as judged by the hawks on the Potomac) of the United States.

For it can hardly be in the interests of Egypt to receive further military hardware at a time when the country is being torn apart by continuing violent unrest – as a direct result of the coup d’état. Sending heavy weapons into a conflict zone is hardly the best way to bring about peace. Over fifty supporters of the ousted president have already been shot dead by the army.

Day after day the media continue to reiterate the Washington line that President Obama has not “made up his mind” as to whether a coup d’état did in fact take place on 3 July 2013.

However, we do not need to wait for  Obama to make up his mind about this.

As we said in our 5 July blog, “However you spin it, four legs, a trunk and two tusks make an elephant. When the democratically elected leader of a state is overthrown by the army, this is a coup d’état. There is no other word for it.”

Like the rest of the world, Mr Obama knows perfectly well that a coup d’état took place.

However, he is coy about admitting this as under US law, the US Government cannot give aid to armed forces which have staged a putsch against a democratically elected leader.

Since, in fact, with the decision to deliver the F-16 warplanes, the US is resolved to continue to supply Egypt’s armed forces with US military hardware, it is hard to see how the US President can ever come to the conclusion that a putsch occurred.

In fact, perhaps nothing happened at all on 3 July 2013. Perhaps people just watched television as usual and then went to bed. Perhaps President Mohamed Morsi suddenly decided he had had enough of being president and thought he would fancy a spell in military custody instead. Perhaps those fifty supporters of the ousted president who were shot dead committed collective suicide instead of – as eye-witnesses attested –  being killed by the army. In short, perhaps everything is hunky-dory, really, and everyone should go home and read a good book.

The barefaced hypocrisy of the US takes some beating.

The fact is that – not by any means for the first time – the US  is giving its calculated approval to the violent ouster of a legitimate government which had the temerity to contest the supremacy of the global hegemon.

This is the Empire fighting back.

It is no different than it was when the Romans ruled the roost. Then too, when managing its network of colonies, the Empire always preferred a docile local dictator to the hotheads in the forum.

——–

 You might perhaps care to view some of our earlier posts.  For instance:

1. Why? or How? That is the question (3 Jan 2012)

2. Partitocracy v. Democracy (20 July 2012)

3. The shoddiest possible goods at the highest possible prices (2 Feb 2012)

4. Capitalism in practice  (4 July 2012) 

5.Ladder  (21 June 2012)

 6. A tale of two cities (1)  (6 June 2012)

 7. A tale of two cities (2)  (7 June 2012)

 8. Where’s the beef? Ontology and tinned meat (31 Jan 2012)

Every so often we shall change this sample of previously published posts.

——-

 

 

 

 

 

 

Posted in Egypt, Military, UN | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a comment

Slumming it for Jesus

Posted on July 10, 2013 by Antigone1984.com

Editorial note: If you have not yet read our mission statement above, please do so in order that you can put our blogs in context. 

10 July 2013

Let’s hear it for Jorge Mario Bergoglio!

Who he?

Well, that is in fact the guy’s real name but we have to admit he is perhaps better known as Pope Francis.

So hats off to Pope Francis! Or maybe we should use the traditional lingo of the Catholic Church and say “Laudemus Papam!”

So why should a blog which normally regards religion as the preserve of nutters be high-fiving the Vatican’s head honcho?

Well, for the same reason that we sometimes – very rarely, it is true – speak up for America’s politicians: when someone does something of which we approve, we congratulate them, whoever they are and wherever they come from.

So what’s the Pope been doing lately to merit our plaudits?

Simply doing what he said he would do when he became Pope on 13 March this year – refocusing the energies of the Catholic Church on the wretched of the earth.

It should not be forgotten that Jorge Mario Bergoglio chose the papal monicker of Francis – the first of 266 Popes to do so – in obeisance to St Francis of Assisi (1182-1226), who forsook a life of wealth to serve the poor.

So, true to his word, on Monday 8 July 2013 Pope Francis, an Argentinian of Italian extraction, pitched up in Lampedusa, making the first ever papal visit to this tiny Italian island with an area of about 20 km2.

The most southerly point of Europe, Lampedusa has become the preferred point of entry into the European Union for tens of thousands of penniless would-be immigrants who cross the hundred or so kilometres that separate it from Africa in overcrowded and often unseaworthy fishing-boats and makeshift rafts.  Many never make it and drown at sea when their craft capsizes.

About 8000 immigrants are said to have landed up on Italy’s southern coasts so far this year.

John Hooper, the London Guardian’s Italy correspondent, took up the story in Tuesday’s edition, saying the Pope had lambasted the rich world for its lack of concern for the suffering of immigrants and inveighed against what he called “a globalisation of indifference”.

The thought of the immigrants’ suffering had come to him repeatedly like a “thorn in the heart”, he said. “We have become used to the suffering of others. It doesn’t affect us. It’s not our business.”

He also asked pardon for “those who are complacent and closed amid comforts which have deadened their hearts” and forgiveness for “those who by their decisions at the global level have created situations that lead to these tragedies”.

He also shook hands with some recent immigrants and praised the inhabitants of Lampedusa (population about 5000) for their solidarity with the incomers.

Not for nothing is Pope Francis’s motto “Miserando et Eligendo” – a text taken from the Homilies of the Venerable Bede, an English monk and historian (673-735) – which can be glossed as “Having mercy [on those who are despised] and chosing [them as one’s own companions]”.

And so say all of us!

Well done, Pope.

——–

 You might perhaps care to view some of our earlier posts.  For instance:

1. Why? or How? That is the question (3 Jan 2012)

2. Partitocracy v. Democracy (20 July 2012)

3. The shoddiest possible goods at the highest possible prices (2 Feb 2012)

4. Capitalism in practice  (4 July 2012) 

5.Ladder  (21 June 2012)

 6. A tale of two cities (1)  (6 June 2012)

 7. A tale of two cities (2)  (7 June 2012)

 8. Where’s the beef? Ontology and tinned meat (31 Jan 2012)

Every so often we shall change this sample of previously published posts.

——-

Posted in Argentina, Europe, Italy, Religion | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a comment

Hunted whistleblower gets gong

Posted on July 9, 2013 by Antigone1984.com

Editorial note: If you have not yet read our mission statement above, please do so in order that you can put our blogs in context. 

9 July 2013

The prestigious Sam Adams Award was accorded yesterday 8 July 2013 to Edward Snowden, the 30-year-old whistleblower now being hunted down with relentless ferocity by the wounded lion of a US hegemon outraged at his effrontery in unmasking the empire’s Orwellian Big Brother global espionage network.

The award is  given annually by the “Sam Adams Associates for Integrity in Intelligence”, a group of retired US Central Intelligency Agency (CIA) officers, to an intelligence professional who has taken a stand for integrity and ethics.

It is named after  Samuel A. Adams, a CIA whistleblower during the Vietnam War (1955-1975).

Previous laureates include Julian Assange, the Australian found of Wikileaks, now holed up in the asylum of the Ecuador Embassy in London, who published millions of secret US embassy cables that exposed US diplomatic double-talk.

Another recipient was Craig Murray, who was sacked as British ambassador to Uzbekistan in 2004 for exposing alleged human rights abuses by the Karimov regime.

In an article published today in the London Guardian, Snowden, a computer expert who has worked for the US Central Intelligence Agency and the National Security Agency, gives an insight into his motivation.

In an interview for the paper, he said he had not fallen out of love with the US, only with its government.

“America is a fundamentally good country,” he told the Guardian. “We have good people with good values who want to do the right thing. But the structures of power that exist are working to their own ends to extend their capability at the expense of the freedom of all publics.”

“I don’t want to live in a world where everything that I say, everything I do, everyone I talk to, every expression of creativity or love or friendship is recorded. And that’s not something I’m willing to support, it’s not something I’m willing to build and it’s not something I’m willing to live under.”

He also insisted he had waited for political leaders to rein in  government excesses. But “as I’ve watched I’ve seen that’s not occurring, and in fact we’re compounding the excesses of prior governments and making it worse and more invasive. And no one is really standing to stop it.”

Antigone1984:

Which is presumably why he broke cover and let the cat out of the spy bag.

Snowden, who was born in North Carolina in 1983, is an icon for all those anywhere in the world who value individual freedom and admire the courage of individuals prepared to risk everything to expose wrong-doing by the almighty.

It is clear that the full extent of the espionage being carried out by the United States Government – even as we write – will never be known.

We are dealing here with spying, which, by definition, is a clandestine activity whose full ramifications will never see the light of day.

Two other aspects of espionage should not be forgotten either.

Firstly, the full budgets of the intelligency agencies are never published as this would be giving information to the “enemy” – the enemy often being an imaginary foe magicked up out of thin air to justify wasting trillions of dollars of tax-payers money on spy games.

Secondly, there is never any public supervision of the intelligence agencies since, here again, this would be to provide information to the “enemy”.

Thus, what we have in the intelligence community – this is true of all intelligence networks, not just those of the United States – is a secret body responsible to no one and with an inestimable budget dispensed from accountancy oversight.

For anyone prepared to take the president’s shilling and keep mum for the rest of their lives the job of a spook is the sinecure of dreams.

Antigone1984 has an issue with Snowden’s distinction between the American Government (bad, at least in parts) and the American people (good, at least some of them).

We confess to having made this distinction ourselves at times but we now think it cannot be accepted without a caveat.

In countries like the US, where governments change as a result of votes cast into a ballot box, it is the people who are responsible for electing the government. The people cannot subsequently deny their responsibility when the government turns out to be a bad one. They were the ones who put that government in power.

As to America being a “fundamentally good country”, some might not agree: judicially approved executions, abuse of human rights (Abu Ghraib and Guantánamo Bay), invasion of insubordinate countries (Afghanistan, Iraq, Vietnam, etc), encouragement of or acquiescence in coups d’état (Chile, Cuba, Venezuela and now Egypt), an economic system based on dog-eat-dog competition that enriches the rich and impoverishes the poor, and so on.

 

——–

 You might perhaps care to view some of our earlier posts.  For instance:

1. Why? or How? That is the question (3 Jan 2012)

2. Partitocracy v. Democracy (20 July 2012)

3. The shoddiest possible goods at the highest possible prices (2 Feb 2012)

4. Capitalism in practice  (4 July 2012) 

5.Ladder  (21 June 2012)

 6. A tale of two cities (1)  (6 June 2012)

 7. A tale of two cities (2)  (7 June 2012)

 8. Where’s the beef? Ontology and tinned meat (31 Jan 2012)

Every so often we shall change this sample of previously published posts.

——-

 

 

 

 

 

Posted in Politics, USA | Tagged , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Snake oil from faith healer

Posted on July 8, 2013 by Antigone1984.com

Editorial note: If you have not yet read our mission statement above, please do so in order that you can put our blogs in context. 

8 July 2013

Anthony Charles Lynton Blair, British Prime Minister from 1997 to 2007, is famous for being a devoutly religious man, who recently converted from Protestantism to Catholicism.

Preferring, for electoral expedience, to be known by the more demotic monicker of “Tony” Blair, he is so religious – and narcissistic – that he has even set up his very own Tony Blair Faith Foundation to promote dialogue between religions and counter religious “extremism”.

Blair, who was born in Scotland in 1953, is also famous for accepting the invitation of George W. Bush, US President from 2001 to 2009, to join him in launching the Iraq War without the approval of the United Nations Security Council.

The war, which lasted from 2003 to 2011, resulted in an estimated 600, 000 deaths, an untold number of people wounded, millions of displaced persons, and the devastation of Iraq’s economy and infrastructure.

Even though the western army of occupation formally withdrew from Iraq in 2011 – “mission accomplished” – the sectarian enmity between Shia and Sunni Muslims that was stoked by the war continues to result in hundreds of violent deaths every year in that country.

The pretext for the war was trumped-up “intelligence” to the effect that the Iraqi President Saddam Hussein –  hanged in 2006 after a show trial – possessed weapons of mass destruction which could be unleashed on the west in fifteen minutes. Investigations after the start of the war proved that Hussein had no such weapons.

Fresh from his triumphs in Iraq, which made him so unpopular in Britain that he was forced to resign as Prime Minister, Blair fossicked around furiously – having taken a shine to his war-time prominence on the international stage – to find another role which would keep his name in the global limelight.

The international community – for which, read “western oil interests” – was only too happy to oblige and chose him for a post for which his involvement in the carnage in Iraq made him eminently suitable. To the astonishment of the rest of the world, he was appointed Middle East representative of the self-styled Quartet – the US, Russia, the EU and the UN.

[Why the UN, which is supposed to represent all the countries of the world, chose to demean itself by becoming a member of this coterie on a par with the other three parties is beyond us, but that is another story.]

Blair’s job description was simple: sort out all the problems that have dogged the Middle East – not least the conflict between Palestine and Israel –  since its geography was redesigned in the chancelleries of Europe and America after the First World War ended in 1918.

Blair’s achievements in this job can be counted on the fingers of a man with no hands.

However, that has not stopped him putting his oar in whenever he thinks that this might thrust his name into the headlines.

Thus, yesterday 7 July 2013, he waded into the current Egyptian quagmire with the help of the front-page lead article in Britain’s Observer newspaper.

His pontifications involve nothing less than a redefinition of democracy.

We refer below to parts of the article, which was written by Toby Helm and Martin Chulov.  We have put direct quotes by Blair in bold. The rest of the article is in italics.

Tony Blair says the Egyptian army had no alternative but to oust President Morsi from power, given the strength of opposition on the streets. The military were confronted…with the simple choice of intervening or allowing chaos.

…Blair…now accepts that, in some of the world’s more fraught regions, democracy will not necessarily deliver the kind of governments that can be defended in the face of overwhelming popular protest.

Blair states that given the current situation in Egypt: “We should engage with the new de facto power and help make the new government make the changes necessary, especially on the economy, so they can deliver for the people.”

He adds: “The events that led to the Egyptian army’s removal of President Mohamed Morsi confronted the military with a simple choice: intervention or chaos. Seventeen million people on the streets are not the same as an election. But it as an awesome manifestation of power.”

Blair makes clear that, overall, he believes it was the right move. “I am a strong supporter of democracy. But democratic government doesn’t on its own mean effective government. Today efficacy is the challenge.”

Having taken this country to war in Iraq in 2003 despite huge public opposition, including a march by more than a million people through London, Blair now argues that shows of public unrest such as that in Egypt – fuelled and organised through social media – cannot be ignored.

“This is a sort of free democratic spirit that operates outside the convention of democracy that elections decide the government. It is enormously fuelled by social media, itself a revolutionary phenomenon.

“And it moves very fast in precipitating crisis. It is not always consistent or rational. A protest is not a policy, or a placard a programme for government. But if governments don’t have a clear argument with which to rebut the protest, they’re in trouble.”

Blair says events in Egypt are just “the latest example of the interplay, visible the world over, between democracy, protest and government efficacy. Democracy is a way of deciding the decision-makers but it is not a substitute for making a decision.”

‘He launches a stinging attack on the Muslim Brotherhood’s record in government, saying it was “unable to shift from being an opposition movement to being a government. The economy is tanking. Ordinary law and order has virtually disappeared.”

Blair also argues that the west needs to remain fully engaged in the region, including in Syria, Iran and Palestine.

 

Antigone1984:

 

Blair’s recalibration of democracy recalls remarks made by Britain’s current Foreign Secretary, William Hague, who has been quoted as referring to the putsch by the Egyptian army on 3 July 2013 as a  “popular” move involving “military intervention” rather than a coup d’ état.

 

According to the London Guardian on 5 July, he said: “We have to recognise the enormous dissatisfaction in Egypt with what the president had done and the conduct of the government over the past year.”

 

In our post on 5 July, “The pachyderm in the pyramid”, Antigone1984 commented:

 

Are we to take it then that unpopular governments warrant military intervention to topple them?

We can think of quite a few governments that could be described as “unpopular”, not least the current British government of which Mr Hague is the foreign affairs mouthpiece.

Does Mr Hague agree then that military intervention to topple the British government would be justified?’

The same question could be put to Blair.

As we write, the estimated total of people murdered in violence following the coup d’état is approaching 100, including over 50 people shot dead near a barracks today in Cairo. So much for what apologists for the military regime have referred to as a “soft” (ie bloodless) coup.

We conclude our eulogy of Britain’s greatest statesman since Sir Robert Walpole (Britain’s first Prime Minister, who held office from 1721 to 1742) by drawing attention to another role currently being played by our hero in yet another troubled part of the globe.

Yes, you’ve guessed it!

Where would Kazakhstan be today without a helping hand from pious Tony?

You see, sorting out the Middle East is not a big enough job for a political titan of his calibre.

So he has decided to sort out Central Asia at the same time.

According to an article in the London Guardian on 1 July 2013, Blair has a multi-million pound contract with Kazakhstan to advise on governance.

But wait a minute.

Isn’t Kazakhstan ruled by Nursultan Nazarbayev, an autocrat who, according to the Guardian, “has been in power for more than 20 years and who likes to win elections with 95% of the vote or more”?

Afraid so.

Amnesty International is reported to have said that this former Soviet Republic has a “disgraceful” record on human rights.

In an earlier Guardian article on Kazakhstan, David Mepham, director of Human Rights Watch, is quoted as saying: “We are very concerned about the serious and deteriorating human rights situation there in recent years, including credible allegations of torture, the imprisonment of government critics, tight controls over the media and freedom of expression and association, limits in religious freedom, and continuing violation of workers’ rights.”

The Guardian points out that, while Kazakhstan’s human rights record may look woeful, Nazarbayev has good spin doctors. “Chief among them is Tony Blair,” says the paper.

The line reportedly being spun by Blair is that he is advising a country that is in a transition to full democracy.

This lesson seems to have been well learned by the Nazarbayev regime.

According to the Guardian, Erlan Idrissov, the Kazakh Foreign Minister, has gone so far as to claim that his country is in transition to becoming a “Jeffersonian democracy” –  Thomas Jefferson served as third President of the United States from 1801 to 1809 – but added that this would take some time to complete.

According to the Guardian, Blair’s deal with the Kazakh government “is rumoured to be worth  $ 13 million a year”.  [Antigone1984 has no means of confirming this figure].

However, Blair is said to have told the Financial Times last year: “The purpose of this is not to make money, it’s to make a difference”.

So that’s all right then.

And if you believe that, you’d believe anything.

G’night, folks.

——–

 You might perhaps care to view some of our earlier posts.  For instance:

1. Why? or How? That is the question (3 Jan 2012)

2. Partitocracy v. Democracy (20 July 2012)

3. The shoddiest possible goods at the highest possible prices (2 Feb 2012)

4. Capitalism in practice  (4 July 2012) 

5.Ladder  (21 June 2012)

 6. A tale of two cities (1)  (6 June 2012)

 7. A tale of two cities (2)  (7 June 2012)

 8. Where’s the beef? Ontology and tinned meat (31 Jan 2012)

Every so often we shall change this sample of previously published posts.

——-

Posted in Egypt, Politics, UK, USA | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a comment

No, Mr ElBaradei, no!

Posted on July 7, 2013 by Antigone1984.com

Editorial note: If you have not yet read our mission statement above, please do so in order that you can put our blogs in context. 

7 July 2013

The international diplomat and Egyptian politician, Mohamed Mustafa ElBaradei, has played a commendably liberal and courageously outspoken role on the world stage in recent years.

His most prominent international position was his role as Director-General of the International Atomic Energy Agency, a subsidiary body of the UN, from 1997 t0 2009.

His most outstanding achievement in that post was his protection of the integrity of the agency against pressure from the United States, which wanted to turn it into a tool of US foreign policy.

Wikipedia sums up his success as follows:

“During his tenure as Director General of the IAEA (1997-2009).…ElBaradei downplayed claims of possible military dimensions to Iran’s nuclear program, which undermined US efforts to press Iran over its safeguards violations.

“According to a 3 July 2003 article in Time Magazine, ElBaradei also maintained that Iraq’s nuclear program had not restarted before the 2003 Iraq War, contradicting claims by the Bush Administration.”

In testimony to his dogged determination to maintain the agency’s independence from outside interference, ElBaradei, along with his agency, was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2005.

El Baradei, who was born in 1942, subsequently returned to Egypt and became involved in national politics, where his criticism of US policy continued. According to Wikipedia, he told the German news magazine Der Spiegal on 12 July 2010 that he favoured opening the border between Egypt and the Palestine’s Gaza Strip, at the same time accusing Israel of being the biggest threat to the Middle East because of its nuclear weapons. According to Wikipedia, ElBaradei has also called for an international criminal investigation of former Bush administration officials for their role in planning the Iraq War (2003-2011).

 

Heading Egypt’s National Council for Change, ElBaradei has led non-Islamist and youth opposition to the administration of President Mohamed Morsi, who was ousted by the army in a coup d’état on 3 July 2013.

 

Along with other groups, ElBaradei has subsequently been involved in talks with the army about the way forward. Last night he was named by officials as Egypt’s new Prime Minister only to find the announcement disowned 24 hours later by Egypt’s new puppet President Adli Mansour, who was installed by the army. According to Adli Mansour, no decision has yet been taken on who will be Egypt’s new Prime Minister.

Mansour’s démenti comes as no surprise, in fact, as ElBaradei’s appointment as PM would not be welcomed by Islamist groups that must necessarily play a political role of some kind if the intention is to form a big-tent administration.

 

Antigone1984:

 

Regardless of ElBaradei’s outstanding roll-call of liberal credentials, Antigone1984 unreservedly condemns his naked lunge for power in exchange for public exculpation of the military putsch which has just taken place in Egypt.

 

Mr ElBaradei has attempted to excuse the coup on the grounds that “we were between a rock and a hard place”.

 

He was quoted yesterday as claiming that the military ouster of Morsi was a mere “hiccough” in the developing scenario of Egyptian politics.

 

No, Mr ElBaradei, no!

 

This is no mere hiccough.

 

The way to remove a president who has been democratically elected at the ballot-box is to vote him out of office at the ballot-box.

 

The army has no political role in a democracy.

 

It is not for unelected generals to take the law into their own hands and decide off their own bat how a country is to be run.

 

What happened last Wednesday 3 July 2013 was the overnight transmogrification of Egypt from a democratic polity, however imperfect, into a military dictatorship.

 

No, Mr ElBaradei, no!

 

The end does not justify the means.

 

At a stroke ElBaradei has destroyed the liberal reputation of a life-time.

 

Corruptio optimi pessima.

 

——–

 You might perhaps care to view some of our earlier posts.  For instance:

1. Why? or How? That is the question (3 Jan 2012)

2. Partitocracy v. Democracy (20 July 2012)

3. The shoddiest possible goods at the highest possible prices (2 Feb 2012)

4. Capitalism in practice  (4 July 2012) 

5.Ladder  (21 June 2012)

 6. A tale of two cities (1)  (6 June 2012)

 7. A tale of two cities (2)  (7 June 2012)

 8. Where’s the beef? Ontology and tinned meat (31 Jan 2012)

Every so often we shall change this sample of previously published posts.

——-

 

 

 

 

 

 

Posted in Egypt, Israel, Military, Palestine, USA | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

Vive la différence!

Posted on July 6, 2013 by Antigone1984.com

Editorial note: If you have not yet read our mission statement above, please do so in order that you can put our blogs in context. 

6 July 2013

“Another struggle has been the struggle to keep the value of a local and particular character, of a particular culture in this awful maelstrom, this awful avalanche towards uniformity.”

Remark made by US poet Ezra Pound (1885-1972) in an interview published in the second series, published in 1963, of the Paris Review’s “Writers at Work”.

Editorial note:

Readers of this blog who have checked out two recent posts – “Dark satanic mills” published on 3 July 2013 and “The pachyderm in the pyramid” published on 5 July 2013 – might like to know that they have both been expanded significantly in the meantime.

 

——–

 You might perhaps care to view some of our earlier posts.  For instance:

1. Why? or How? That is the question (3 Jan 2012)

2. Partitocracy v. Democracy (20 July 2012)

3. The shoddiest possible goods at the highest possible prices (2 Feb 2012)

4. Capitalism in practice  (4 July 2012) 

5.Ladder  (21 June 2012)

 6. A tale of two cities (1)  (6 June 2012)

 7. A tale of two cities (2)  (7 June 2012)

 8. Where’s the beef? Ontology and tinned meat (31 Jan 2012)

Every so often we shall change this sample of previously published posts.

——-

 

 

 

 

Posted in France, USA | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

The pachyderm in the pyramid

Posted on July 5, 2013 by Antigone1984.com

Editorial note: If you have not yet read our mission statement above, please do so in order that you can put our blogs in context. 

5 July 2013

In his “Poetics” Aristotle said that the unexpected has a tendency to occur. In Egypt today the contrary is the case. Nonetheless, the long-expected coup d’état by the army on Wednesday 3 July 2013 appears to have taken the world’s kremlinologists entirely by surprise.

What is equally unsurprising is the limp-wristed reaction from the paladins of democracy in the free world. Not a whisper of condemnation has come from the United States or its satraps.

In Britain, US satrap No 1, Foreign Secretary William Hague is quoted as referring to the putsch as a  “popular” move involving “military intervention” rather than a coup d’ état.

According to today’s London Guardian, he said: “We have to recognise the enormous dissatisfaction in Egypt with what the president had done and the conduct of the government over the past year.”

Are we to take it then that unpopular governments warrant military intervention to topple them?

We can think of quite a few governments that could be described as “unpopular”, not least the current British government of which Mr Hague is the foreign affairs mouthpiece.

Does Mr Hague agree then that military intervention to topple the British government would be justified?

As to whether the coup d’ état is “popular” with Egyptians, well, it depends on whom you speak to. Certainly, it is popular with Egypt’s anti-Islamist secularists as well as with diehard supporters – particularly numerous among the police and the army – of Hosni Mubarak, the Egyptian dictator deposed in February 2011. It is certainly not popular with the Muslim Brotherhood, whose candidate Mohamed Morsi won 52 % of the vote in the 2012 presidential election.

However you spin it, four legs, a trunk and two tusks make an elephant.

When the democratically elected leader of a state is overthrown by the army, this is a coup d’état. There is no other word for it.

Mohamed Morsi assumed office as President of Egypt almost exactly a year ago on 30 June 2012 after a clear victory at the polls. Today, unceremoniously stripped of office, he languishes in military custody.  The army has ordered the arrest of the Muslim Brotherhood’s entire senior leadership – up to 300 people – in an attempt to decapitate the organisation and so render it ineffectual.  A total of 36 people have been killed in post-putsch violence, at least three of them being shot dead by the army.

These facts give the lie to the propaganda being peddled by the putschists led by General Abdel Fatah al-Sisi.

First prize for hypocrisy must go to the senior judge,  Adli Mansour, who was chosen by the military to replace Morsi as their puppet president. Adli is said to have reached out to the Muslim Brotherhood, post-coup, calling it “part of the fabric of Egyptian society”.

Then there is the disingenuous statement issued after the coup by the Egyptian army command:

“Wisdom, true nationalism and constructive human values that all religions have called for, require us now to avoid taking any exceptional or arbitrary measures against any faction or political current. Peaceful protest and freedom of expression are rights guaranteed to everyone, which Egyptians have earned as one of the most important gains of their glorious revolution.”

Incredibly, given that Morsi and many of his supporters have actually been arrested, US President Guantanobama has called on the Egyptian military to “avoid any arbitrary arrests of President Morsi and his supporters”.

Why this weak-kneed reaction from the West?

Well, in the first place, Mohamed Morsi led a government controlled by the Muslim Brotherhood, a motley crew of conservative Muslims, who could not be relied on to toe the party-line set by the global superpower.

In any case, western attitudes towards Muslim-dominated governments have turned increasingly negative since the attack by a group of Muslims on the World Trade Centre in New York on 11 September 2001.

Another running sore was the Brotherhood’s ambiguous attitude towards Israel, America’s principal ally in the Middle East.

Last but not least, the Egyptian military – as the Egyptian institution most favourably disposed towards cooperation with the US world order –  is receiving annual aid amounting to an estimated $1.3 billion from the United States. In these circumstances, it is a racing certainty that the US was advised in advance of the impending putsch and okayed it.

In other words, the US-backed Egyptian army staged a coup d’ état against the democratically-elected Egyptian president.

If media reports are to be believed, proof of US collusion comes out of the mouth of President Guantanobama himself. These concur that, in commenting on the coup d’ état, the US president has deliberately avoided using the world “coup d’ état” since, under US law, the US government cannot give aid to armed forces which have staged a putsch against a democratically elected leader. If this is true, then it means that the US president wishes to continue to give military aid to a putschist regime that has overthrown a legitimate government. Which means that the US – not by any means for the first time – is backing a coup d’ état against a democratic government it dislikes.

These factors go some way towards explaining why western reaction to the military takeover has been exceedingly muted.

 Unlike the “democratic” states of the west, however, Muslim governments seem to have no problem calling a spade a spade.

In Tunisia Rached Ghannouchi, head of the ruling Islamist Renaissance party,  is said to have condemned Morsi’s deposal as “a flagrant coup against democratic legitimacy”.

Turkish foreign minister Ahmet Davutoglu is reported to have said that it was unacceptable that Morsi had been brought down by a “military coup”.

And the African Union – an organisation not usually considered a bastion of support for democratic rights –  has also called the putsch a coup and suspended Egypt’s membership.

Additional comment on 6 July 2013

Writing in today’s London Guardian, commentator Jonathan Freedland makes what we consider to be some valid comments:

“To remove an elected president, to arrest a movement’s leaders and silence its radio and TV stations, is to send a loud message to them and to Islamists everywhere. It says: you have no place in the political system. It says: there is no point trying to forge a version of political Islam compatible with democracy, because democracy will not be available to you.

“It is the same message sent in Algeria two decades ago, when Islamists were on course to win an election but were pushed aside in a military coup before they could take power; and similarly in Gaza in 2006, when Hamas won the votes but were internationally shunned. Except this week, the point has been rammed home in one of the largest, historically mightiest Muslim nations. Chatham House’s Nadim Shehadi worries that, after this week, “extremists will tell moderates, ‘Don’t even bother fighting elections. This is what happens to us if we win.’.

“… more radical jihadist voices – recall that at al-Qaida’s helm is Ayman al-Zawahiri, an Egyptian – will now have a powerful rhetorical weapon. You tried the democratic route, they will say. And look where it got you.”

An editorial today in the same paper warns: “Once you stage a coup once, you can stage another one again. Once parliaments are dissolved and constitutions suspended, the street becomes the only arbiter of legitimacy.”

——–

 You might perhaps care to view some of our earlier posts.  For instance:

1. Why? or How? That is the question (3 Jan 2012)

2. Partitocracy v. Democracy (20 July 2012)

3. The shoddiest possible goods at the highest possible prices (2 Feb 2012)

4. Capitalism in practice  (4 July 2012) 

5.Ladder  (21 June 2012)

 6. A tale of two cities (1)  (6 June 2012)

 7. A tale of two cities (2)  (7 June 2012)

 8. Where’s the beef? Ontology and tinned meat (31 Jan 2012)

Every so often we shall change this sample of previously published posts.

——- 

Posted in Egypt, Turkey, USA | Tagged , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Smarts v. Fancy

Posted on July 4, 2013 by Antigone1984.com

Editorial note: If you have not yet read our mission statement above, please do so in order that you can put our blogs in context. 

4 July 2013

“Brains are not all; brains, as a critic has recently pointed out with some wisdom, are not for instance necessary for the writing of novels, whereas imagination is; brains may father the Theory of Relativity but not Sam Weller.”

Extract from “The Vanished World”, the first volume (published in 1969) of an autobiographical trilogy by the English short-story writer and novelist H. E. Bates (1905-1974).

Sam Weller is a character in “Pickwick Papers”, a novel by Charles Dickens (1812-1870) published in serial form in 1836 and 1837.

——–

 You might perhaps care to view some of our earlier posts.  For instance:

1. Why? or How? That is the question (3 Jan 2012)

2. Partitocracy v. Democracy (20 July 2012)

3. The shoddiest possible goods at the highest possible prices (2 Feb 2012)

4. Capitalism in practice  (4 July 2012) 

5.Ladder  (21 June 2012)

 6. A tale of two cities (1)  (6 June 2012)

 7. A tale of two cities (2)  (7 June 2012)

 8. Where’s the beef? Ontology and tinned meat (31 Jan 2012)

Every so often we shall change this sample of previously published posts.

——-

 

 

 

 

 

 

Posted in Literature | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment