Monday, September 12, 2016
US politics IV
This weekend's glimpse of Hillary's support system reminded me of the last days of Eva Peron. And the strange metal object that fell from her clothes? My first thought was of "a cone of bright metal, the size of a die".
Sunday, August 14, 2016
Australia
Pauline Hanson is the real leader of the opposition. And as elsewhere in the West, "globalism" is the new "neoliberalism".
Friday, July 15, 2016
Turkey
So it looks like there was an attempted coup in Turkey. Amidst all the other issues - Erdogan vs Gulen, Kurdish separatism, EU membership (unlikely after Brexit) - I will guess that the core issues here are secularism and the future of NATO.
France just saw another Islamist attack on symbols of the republic (the Bastille Day massacre in Nice). Europe is trending towards rightwing populism and European institutions will probably take on a new identity. One ingredient of European identity is as a bastion of Christian civilization; another is as inventor of secular modernity. The Turkish military aren't Christian, but they were secular, whereas Erdogan's AK Party is Islamist.
Meanwhile, I'm sure Russia would love to see Turkey out of NATO; and Saudi Arabia's "Islamic military alliance" does represent a different bloc that Turkey could join. And even if Erdogan has given up on the Syrian Islamists, I doubt that he will want to just fall in line with whatever Plan B is devised in America - especially since that currently involves support for Syrian Kurds.
France just saw another Islamist attack on symbols of the republic (the Bastille Day massacre in Nice). Europe is trending towards rightwing populism and European institutions will probably take on a new identity. One ingredient of European identity is as a bastion of Christian civilization; another is as inventor of secular modernity. The Turkish military aren't Christian, but they were secular, whereas Erdogan's AK Party is Islamist.
Meanwhile, I'm sure Russia would love to see Turkey out of NATO; and Saudi Arabia's "Islamic military alliance" does represent a different bloc that Turkey could join. And even if Erdogan has given up on the Syrian Islamists, I doubt that he will want to just fall in line with whatever Plan B is devised in America - especially since that currently involves support for Syrian Kurds.
Tuesday, June 28, 2016
Three theses
1) China, India, and the Islamic world are the center of world affairs. The troubles of the US and the EU are the troubles of the former center.
2) The magnitude of chaos following the Brexit vote is a symptom of the fact that for years now, those countries have been "managed democracies" governed by a new transnational elite, in which all political questions were decided by negotiations within this elite.
3) This is just a preview of what's coming later this year, when America finally votes.
2) The magnitude of chaos following the Brexit vote is a symptom of the fact that for years now, those countries have been "managed democracies" governed by a new transnational elite, in which all political questions were decided by negotiations within this elite.
3) This is just a preview of what's coming later this year, when America finally votes.
Tuesday, June 21, 2016
Money in American politics
Latest example. But I wonder... how often do the donors get their money's worth? I am not denying that they must do so, to some degree. It's just - if one person is getting donations from dozens of plutocrats and giant corporations, they're not going to be able to satisfy all of them, right? So maybe, some of the time, it's more like: donation is the price of admission. If you donate, then we'll give you a hearing, we'll make sure you get to be part of the process.
Friday, May 6, 2016
Wednesday, April 6, 2016
War of the leaks
Intelligence agencies gather information, especially secret information. They bug bedrooms, they hack databases, they recruit traitors. Wikileaks was unusual in that it made its secret information available to the whole world, via the Internet. It seems clear that Russia, perhaps the most accomplished country when it comes to traditional spycraft, was nimble enough to recognize the potential of Wikileaks and built a relationship with the organization. Snowden was escorted to Russia by Wikileaks' Sarah Harrison; Assange himself had a regular show on Russia Today. It would not surprise me if the TPP drafts were supplied to Wikileaks by Russian intelligence.
The instantly famous leak of legal and financial secrets from the Panamanian firm Mossack Fonseca, has the appearance of an American counter-gambit. MF itself may be a CIA asset, now being sacrificed. What better way to gather intelligence on who uses the offshore world, than to be the middleman yourself? The exact objective is a little unclear to me, but it's probably a move in the unipolar-vs-multipolar conflict over the shape of the world system. Pax Americana is a liberal international order in which justice is defined and administered by institutions based in America and Europe. Associations like BRICS, SCO, and OBOR threaten to establish a rival paradigm of international order. We shall see if the MF leaks have only propaganda value, or whether they are a stepping stone to something more.
The instantly famous leak of legal and financial secrets from the Panamanian firm Mossack Fonseca, has the appearance of an American counter-gambit. MF itself may be a CIA asset, now being sacrificed. What better way to gather intelligence on who uses the offshore world, than to be the middleman yourself? The exact objective is a little unclear to me, but it's probably a move in the unipolar-vs-multipolar conflict over the shape of the world system. Pax Americana is a liberal international order in which justice is defined and administered by institutions based in America and Europe. Associations like BRICS, SCO, and OBOR threaten to establish a rival paradigm of international order. We shall see if the MF leaks have only propaganda value, or whether they are a stepping stone to something more.
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