STRANGE TIMES

“Negotiators have finalised a deal which will see the complete withdrawal of US troops from Iraq by 2011, ending an eight-year occupation, the top Iraqi heading the team said today.“  (from today’s “Age” newspaper)

This is a victory for the Iraqi people, the US, and for democratic forces throughout the Middle East.

The negotiations which led to this deal took some time and are yet another indication that Iraq is ruled by its own sovereign,  democratically elected government.  This is exactly what we wanted (and predicted). Now  we are seeing it.

I guess the full import will still take a while to sink in among those who opposed the war and predicted initially that its purpose was to install a US puppet government and then  sometime later, that Iraq had been tipped into an unwinnable civil war.   They were wrong on both counts.

Andrew Bolt wrote quite a good article on all this in today’s Herald-Sun: The War in Iraq has been won.

What we are seeing now is the beginning of the very first Arab democracy.  Currently it has an Islamist face and is not particularly pro-American (which confuses the conservative Right).  But this is exactly what is needed if we are to see a transformation in the region.

The Shia in Iran will be looking on for sure (and the Mullahs there will be feeling very threatened).  This will also be the case with the surrounding Sunni autocracies.  The Old Order in the region has been thoroughly disrupted.

The next thing to look forward to is a Palestinian State.  That is a necessity and I think that it may well be achieved by the end of Bush’s term.  If Marwan Bhargouti is among the Palestinian prisoners due to be released this coming Monday (August 25), I think it may be in the bag.

Links to some of what we have said about this on our old forum, when things didn’t look so bright:

Spelling out the “drain the swamps theory”

Draining the swamps in 2007

The Canberra Times (a daily newspaper published in Australia’s Capital Territory) has published an article by me in its Saturday edition (16th August 2008). It hasn’t gone on-line yet but I’ll add a link as soon as it does.   The letters’ section may be interesting in response to the article.

Here’s the text:

We live in strange times. Ideas that would normally be identified as belonging to the right are widely accepted as being of the left.

At a time when governments around the world are trying to convince their subjects that humanity’s carbon footprint is a catastrophic problem rather than just another measure of industrial progress, environmentalism has become a case in point. Prior to the 1970s, groups that warned the end was nigh unless people started living in harmony with nature were properly seen as being on the far right. With origins in seventeenth century romanticism and pagan ‘nature worship’, the green opposition to modern industrial society and capitalism is reactionary. Read the rest of this entry »

Now that Iraq has not disintegrated into ‘endless civil war ‘, the anti-war camp should be feeling some confusion, at the very least. A year ago, the received view was that the situation in Iraq was hopeless. However the news coming out of Iraq over the past 6 months runs directly counter to this. It really is very clear now that the overthrow of Saddam will result in a democratic Iraq. And that’s something to celebrate! The first democracy in the Arab heartland! Wonderful for the Iraqis, and potentially something which can change the dynamic of the entire region. Hardly something to sniff at!

I’m wondering where the anti-war movement will go with this. Surely those who regard themselves as “on the left” will need to do some real thinking? It’s now undeniable that a fascist dictaorship has been overthrown and that its replacement has been an increasingly stable elected Iraqi government rather than an American puppet. Read the rest of this entry »

Pushpa Kamal Daha (better known as ‘Prachanda”, meaning “the fierce one”) has just become Nepal’s new Prime Minister. He received 464 out of 577 votes in Nepal’s Constituent Assembly.

In the recent elections, the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) received more votes than any other party (although not an absolute majority). So they are “legally” in power. However this legal victory can be traced to the successful Maoist led people’s war in Nepal which forced the holding of elections as part of the peace process. As soon as real elections were on the agenda, the Maoists called off the war and oriented themselves toward winning via the ballot box.

The policy of the Nepalese Maoists is clear: what Nepal needs is capitalistic development and democracy! Read the rest of this entry »

This guy has got Saudi women glued to their television screens. He’s the male star of a Turkish soap opera which has been dubbed into Arabic and is broadcast across the region by Dubai based MBC 4.

Our men are rugged and unyielding,” quipped a 26-year-old Saudi house-frau who preferred to remain unnamed. “I wake up and see a cold and detached man lying next to me, I look out the window and see dust. It is all so dull. On Noor, I see beautiful faces, the beautiful feelings they share and beautiful scenery.

Although the Middle East has satellite access to many foreign soap operas, this one has struck a very deep chord because the characters are Muslims.

The story line as described in this article is classically silly:

[it concerns] ..the trials and tribulations of Noor and her husband Muhannad, a young couple with a child and the kind of lives that could only be dreamt up by a scriptwriter: Muhannad’s beautiful first wife fell into a coma and, thinking her dead, he married the almost as beautiful Noor, only for wife No 1 to recover. Noor herself has been kidnapped, threatened with rape at gunpoint, estranged from her family and has undergone a difficult pregnancy. She has been jealous, in and out of love with her rich spouse, happy and sad.

Nothing to write home about! But…. it takes place in a Muslim society and that makes all the difference.

Although the characters are Muslims, they are not seen praying. They are wealthy, educated and largely independent. The female characters do not wear Islamic headscarves, preferring tight jeans, bare arms and, occasionally, plunging necklines more associated with Paris than Riyadh.

Read the rest of this entry »

The motor vehicle is one of the key features of modern affluence along with such things as plumbing, electricity, universal education and modern health care. It gave us mobility and independence, and allowed us to move from the slums to the suburbs.

It has various shortcomings as we all know. Driving is stressful and dangerous, with millions killed and disabled every year. And when there is insufficient investment in freeways and public transit, it can eat up a lot of our time.

However, as with other challenges thrown up by our material existence, we can expect human ingenuity to come to the rescue. In this case the solution is the driverless vehicle which require the traveler to do no more than specify their destination. Much of the technology has already been developed and prototype vehicles are well advanced. Read the rest of this entry »

There’s a new documentary feature film being produced by PhelimMcAleer and Ann McElhinney called ‘Not evil, just wrong’. It counters the dominant global warming alarmism, particularly Al Gore’s widely distributed film.

Phelim and Ann hope to raise $(US) 3.5 million and have already raised a million US dollars. They are raising the money from everyday people in the US, with a view to having the documentary screened in 150 cinemas across the US.

Hopefully their movie will be better than that by Martin Durkin which, while having strengths, was in my view in many respects a lost opportunity.

Visit the website here: http://www.noteviljustwrong.com/

Barry

It appears that Abbas has ‘won’ the release of the first group of ‘important’ prisoners/hostages (150 or more). We can now predict that in a few weeks time Hamas will get another 300-400 released (less prominent hostages) in exchange for the Israeli soldier Gilad Schalit, or some such arangement.

http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5jD4YSkDPlclqd9dHvg2f0Ij18zEgD92D6KL80

A small wager on Marwan Barghouti being released on August 25th anyone?

On the bigger picture there is still time for the ‘big breakthrough’ required to end the war for greater Israel this year. It really is only Israeli leadership weakness that is holding up the agreement. If Barghouti walks free on August 25 this will indicate indicates that the deal is effectivly done. The Israeli argument against it until recently, has been that releasing him would be counter productive because once freed, Barghouti would take a more militant stance to demonstrate that he had not sold out to them.

We will see on August 25!

All sorts of good things have been happening in Iraq.

Just the other day, the Sunni bloc formally ended its twelve month boycott of the Maliki government and has been given 6 ministeries including the Deputy Prime Minister post. In other news, coalitions of tribes in both Anbar and Najaf have taken the decision to participate in the upcoming elections on platforms independent of the existing religious parties. These events are just two of many events indicating a realignment of forces which has been occurring over a much longer time period. Central to this has been the decision of the Sunni population to choose the rational option of working with (and seeking the protection of) the US. At the same time, the Maliki government has shown that it is prepared to stand up to the lawlessness of the Sadrist militias. Across the entire country, the Iraqi Security Forces are showing increasing capacity to maintain internal discipline, subordinate sectarian and personal interests, and operate as an arm of the State. Overall, sectarian violence has been reduced by about 80%.

So much for the idea that the situation in Iraq was one of hopeless civil war.

Confronted with the dramatic improvement in Iraq since the Surge began, Obama still maintains that he was correct to vote against it. He now says that the Surge was never necessary because the Iraqis were already on the way to reconciliation before it began! This contradicts the entire basis of his campaign against the war.

Everybody surely knows that Obama’s expressed reason for voting against the Surge was that he believed that the war was hopeless. He’s on the record all over the place as taking the position that Iraq had descended into a severe civil war and that the only chance of improving the situation was to put pressure on the Iraqis to “stand up”and “take responsibility” by withdrawing American support. According to Obama , the Surge was bound to worsen the situation. Read the rest of this entry »

“We need capitalism before socialism” says Prachanda, the head of the Communist Party of Nepal (Moaist), according to a report in the The Independent .

This is one of those old Marxist ideas that must take off again if a genuine left is to re-emerge from the ether. It has to become a new meme.

What Prachanda is referring to is the fact that a system based on social ownership can only be built on the conditions created by capitalism. This means eliminating the conditions that are the basis of class society - routine labor, low levels of education, a general lack of sophistication and economic backwardness.

Look at it this way. A society based on sharing is only viable when we are generally sharing good things, in particular interesting jobs and affluence. Sharing poverty and jobs that should be done by machines is a no show. Furthermore, we need average people who can do most of the thinking and deciding, and when they cannot, are at least able to monitor and hold accountable those with special knowledge and ability.

In poor countries a major obstacle to progress is statism in its various (including “socialist”) guises which has allowed those in power to plunder the economy and to hold back the development of an entrepreneurial capitalist class. This has usually been assisted by agencies such as the World Bank [1]

Another obstacle is the pseudo left in the rich countries who do not want poor countries to become rich. That would require lots of power plants, roads, railway lines, modern housing and factories. Instead, they just want to make subsistence agriculture more viable by things like donating goats, digging wells and “fair trade”. [2] Read the rest of this entry »